Struggling with Anti/Fascism

This interdisciplinary series addresses the relation between media and cultural memory. Its publications study how media construct, store, and disseminate memory. The series' focus is on different media and technologies, such as text and image, the cinema and the new digital media, on transmediality, intermediality, and remediation, as well as on the social (and increasingly transnational and transcultural) contexts of mediated memory. The aim of the series is to provide a vibrant international platform for research and scholarly exchange in the field of media and memory studies. Manuscripts submitted to the series are peer reviewed by expert referees.

The rise of rightwing populism, authoritarianism and (neo)fascism in the early 21st century has come to place focus on the relations between history-writing and aesthetic interventions. This anthology ask if there is something as an emerging antifascist memory culture? It looks at the ways in which authoritarian forms of revisionism, nationalism and suppression of memory are met and countered through aesthetic, critical and environmental responses.

The volume brings together scholars of cultural history, memory and cultural theory in a critical reflection of the recent authoritarian turn in European politics. Specifically, the contributors look at how monuments, art works and other forms of aesthetic expression commemorate historic anti-fascist movements. By illuminating how the arts are themselves intervening into the aesthetic, material, historical and environmental discourses that condition memory culture, it argues that art and memory are, in fact, more interdependent than is often acknowledged. . Whilst taking empirical material and examples into account, the volume foregrounds theoretically informed research into the ideologically motivated "mnemonic" and "memory wars" unfolding today. It is concerned with critical examples of culturally produced memories of anti-fascist, but also widens the scope to include environmental perspectives.

Autorentext

Professor Cecilia Sjöholm , Södertörn University, Stockholm, Sweden; Assistant professor Gal Kirn , University of Ljubljana, Ljubljana, Slovenia; Associate Professor, Rebecka Katz Thor , Linköping University, Linköping, Sweden.