Hostname: page-component-6bb9c88b65-zjgpb Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2025-07-23T14:51:08.691Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false

Defending Memory in Global Politics: Mnemonical In/Security and Crisis

Review products

Defending Memory in Global Politics: Mnemonical In/Security and Crisis. Edited by ResendeErica Simone Almeida, BudrytėDovilė, and BeckerDouglas. London: Routledge, 2025. 272p.

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  16 July 2025

Eric Sangar*
Affiliation:
https://ror.org/05dm31p35 Sciences Po Lille / CERAPS, University of Lille & Centre Marc Bloch

Extract

Building on Maria Mälksoo’s influential 2015 article “Memory Must Be Defended”: Beyond the Politics of Mnemonical Security (Security Dialogue, 46(3), 221–237), the volume Defending Memory in Global Politics: Mnemonical In/Security and Crisis, edited by Erica Resende, Dovilė Budrytė, and Douglas Becker, examines contemporary politics of memory politicisation and securitization captured in eleven case studies, structured according to actor types (state versus non-state). The book’s primary conceptual proposition is predicated on the concept “mnemonic in/security”. As with the broader concept of ontological security, this term encapsulates the tensions between the imperative to safeguard a collective memory against perceived external and internal threats to create and stabilize collective identities, and the inherent vulnerabilities and marginalizations that accompany the selection of memories to be enshrined in such an effort. In this perspective, conflicts over recognition, or even mnemonic “battles,” are inevitable. Such struggles manifest themselves, for instance, when governments promulgate specific memory narratives that neglect or reinterpret historical wrongdoings against other states. However, they can also occur within political communities. In such cases, political actors—particularly following periods of internal crisis and violence—promote amnesia or, conversely, memorialization of historical events. The purpose of this promotion is to legitimize a political order and its hegemonic forces.

Information

Type
Book Review Essay
Copyright
© The Author(s), 2025. Published by Cambridge University Press on behalf of American Political Science Association

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

Article purchase

Temporarily unavailable