Sovereignty and Nationalism in Contemporary Iraq through the Memory of the 1991 Uprising

Abstract

Modern nation–states typically strive to define the cultural memory of a society by promoting certain historical narratives through mass media, museums, monuments, education, national holidays, and the like. Although huge differences exist between states in the realm of cultural policies, they usually entail the marginalization of certain groups or collective memories and often mark their exclusion from the imagined national collective. But even if publicly suppressed or silenced, the collective memory of marginal groups continues to thrive in the private sphere or in protected social niches. The dichotomy between public and private memory is not rigid, as state hegemony in the sphere of cultural memory fluctuates and is rarely complete.