Funded in 2016 as part of the European Commission’s Horizon
2020 programme (Reflective 5-2015: The cultural heritage of war in contemporary
Europe), the three-year project Unsettling Remembering and Social Cohesion in
Transnational Europe (UNREST) brings together researchers and non-academic
partners from Germany, Denmark, Poland, Spain and the UK to address pressing questions
about the role of memory of conflict in Europe today.
UNREST starts from the
observation that the EU’s foundational myth of transnational reconciliation is
increasingly being called into question. While the EU has consistently
championed a consensual approach to traumatic memory, reaching from the abyss
of the World Wars and the Holocaust to post war peace and prosperity, this
narrative is today losing its lustre. All across Europe, populist and
nationalist movements are successfully challenging the official EU narrative.
They use the heritage of war and violence to promote confrontational notions of
collective belonging – with very dangerous consequences.
UNREST
proposes to fill the perilous vacuum between top-down cosmopolitan EU memory
and bottom-up, antagonistic memory. UNREST pursues a third mode of memory,
which acknowledges and engages with widespread discontent with the EU’s
official narrative, without losing sight of fundamental EU ideals. We call this
third way agonistic memory. It designates a new mode of remembrance that
embraces political conflict as an opportunity for emotional and ethical growth.
For this purpose, UNREST combines ground-breaking theoretical reasoning with
the empirical study of existing memory cultures and the implementation and
rigorous testing of innovative memory practices.
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