Memoria diabolica. Interpretare i conflitti sul passato, tra cancel culture e mutamento sociale

Abstract

The article examines the social and political importance of current conflicts surrounding public memory. It suggests that these manifestations are often characterized by assigning alternative values and meanings to collective memories, rather than enforcing historical censorship or perpetuating destructive forgetting. In a second passage, the article advances a more general idea and explores its implications: we are witnessing a global movement of political reactivation of the past and democratization of history, which consists of the recent and sudden emergence of the memories of a galaxy of groups and actors ‘for whom rehabilitating their past is part and parcel of reaffirming their identity’ (Nora 2002). What explains these fluctuations in the relationship between memory and social change? What new entrepreneurs break into the structure of participation in the definition of institutional memory? To what extent does this dynamic stand in discontinuity or continuity with the past?