In recent years, Hungary has been portrayed as a negative example of memory politics, exercising political influence over the study, interpretation, and emphasis or concealment of past events. Hungary is seen as a starting point for the paradigm shift in the memory politics of World War II.
This happened again in Poland when the right-wing populist PiS government passed the infamous law criminalizing certain perspectives in historical research. Andrea Pető's lecture discusses elements of this paradigm shift in Holocaust commemoration: nationalization of a hitherto transnational narrative, de-Judaization, competitive victimization, establishing a new terminology, double speech, delegitimizing secular memory frames, and anti-intellectualism. These elements are present in different contexts, but nowhere else are they as prominent as in Hungary. In this lecture, Prof. Andrea Pető explains that this paradigm shift occurs without using original ideas and yet successfully reshapes memory discourses and provides strategies for activists.
Date: Thursday, September 14, 2023
Time: 2:30-5:30 pm
Place: Aula Universiteit van Amsterdam, Singel 411, Amsterdam
Program
2:30 pm: Walk-in
3:00 pm: Lecture "Illiberal memory politics as a paradigm shift in the memory of the Holocaust"
3:45 pm: Q&A
4:15 pm: Drinks
5:30 pm: End
*To attend this lecture, please register by e-mail: communicatie@niod.knaw.nl