ABSTRACT
The search for an understanding of law and memory’s intersections has taken us first through sociology, philosophy, and theory of law and then through the various legal institutions of memory. To fully comprehend the relationship between the two, however, I propose to take a step back and look also in a slightly different direction: to the question of power and politics. These issues have already been touched upon earlier in the book, particularly in the section on Foucault’s thoughts on power-memory relations, but they need to be analysed in greater detail, given that it is through their lens that the theoretical and conceptual of the previous chapters is brought into practice. Legal institutions of memory may be Durkheimian rituals; however, they need to be perceived as more than performative acts of social unity – also “as political projects whose goal is to cultivate and promote specific understandings of the past as part of an on-going political agenda” 1 – and analysed as such.
