The project aims to contribute to a deeper understanding of collective memory in contemporary society. The research explores how digital media transform commemorative practices by (re)defining the public discourses on the role of women in history, as well as by generating new forms of subjectivation through the performative portrayal of feminine historical presence. In this sense, commemoration is approached as a powerful social and political instrument of self-constitution and collective identity formation.

The project is built on a coherent and unified approach to historical knowledge inspired by four theoretical traditions: (1) socio-constructivist perspectives on social memory and collective remembering (Misztal, 2003, 2010; Wertsch, 2002; Zerubavel, 1996, 2003, 2012), (2) discourse-analytic approaches and feminist epistemologies (Austin, 1962; Butler, 2004; West & Zimmerman, 1987), (3) post-phenomenological philosophies of technological mediation in digital contexts (Ihde, 1995; Kiran, 2012; Verbeek, 2006, 2008) and (4) Foucauldian approaches to subjectivation and views of the self as a locus of power relations (Foucault, 1988).

References:

  • Austin, J. L. (1962). How to Do Things with Words. Oxford: Clarendon Press.
  • Butler, J. (2004). Undoing Gender. New York: Routledge.
  • Foucault, M. (1988). Technologies of the Self. In P. H. Hutton, H. Gutman, & L. Martin (Eds.), Technologies of the Self. A seminar with Michel Foucault (pp. 16–49). The University of Massachusetts Press.
  • Ihde, D. (1995). Postphenomenology: Essays in the Postmodern Context. Northwestern University Press.
  • Kiran, A. H. (2012). Technological Presence: Actuality and Potentiality in Subject Constitution. Human Studies, 35(1), 77–93.
  • Misztal, B. (2003). Theories of Social Remembering. Open University Press.
  • Misztal, B. (2010). Collective Memory in a Global Age: Learning How and What to Remember. Current Sociology, 58(1), 24–44.
  • Verbeek, P.-P. (2006). Acting artifacts. The technological mediation of action. In A. Slob & P.-P. Verbeek (Eds.), User Behaviour and Technology Development. Shaping Sustainable Relations Between Consumers and Technologies (pp. 53–60). Springer.
  • Verbeek, P.-P. (2008). Obstetric Ultrasound and the Technological Mediation of Morality: A Postphenomenological Analysis. Human Studies, 31(1), 11–26.
  • Wertsch, J. (2002). Voices of Collective Remembering. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
  • West, C., & Zimmerman, D. (1987). Doing Gender. Gender & Society, 1(2), 125–151.
  • Zerubavel, E. (1996). Social memories. Steps to a sociology of the past. Qualitative Sociology, 19(3), 283–299.
  • Zerubavel, E. (2003). Time Maps. Collective Memory and the Social Shape of the Past. Chicago and London: The University of Chicago Press.
  • Zerubavel, E. (2012). Ancestors and Relatives. Genealogy, Identity, and Community. Oxford: Oxford University Press.