ABSTRACT
In recent years, there has been a ‘transcultural turn’ in memory studies, led by scholars seeking to overturn a taken-for-granted connection between specific national or ethnic groups and particular collective memories. Focusing on academic, artistic, literary, and mass-mediated representations, this scholarship has drawn attention to memories that cross or transcend national boundaries, and has often emphasised the productive moral potential of transcultural memory to undermine exclusivist and competitive understandings of identity and history, and to generate new transcultural solidarities. This chapter suggests that anthropologists and historians can make important contributions to this burgeoning literature by taking up the challenge of systematically exploring the everyday implications and permutations of transcultural memory. Three important questions are raised that are addressed in the following chapters. 1) How valid is the suggestion that the transcultural sharing of memories might replace traditional identities and enmities with nation-transcending solidarities? 2) Can theoretical models developed primarily in relation to Holocaust memory be sustained when considered in other contexts of remembrance? 3) How do the transcultural dynamics of memory manifest themselves in people’s narratives and understandings of the past?
