Memory as a means of governmentality

Abstract

The article proposes to pursue Memory Studies as Studies of Governmentality. It aims to demonstrate how an analysis of memory, undertaken from the perspective of governmentality, can provide an important diagnostic of our time(s) and its political conditions, while furthermore illuminating how these are derived from narratives about the past. For this, I put into dialogue theoretical considerations of the Foucauldian concept with findings from a study of the Canadian Museum for Human Rights. With a special focus on public memories that are performed and produced at the juncture of Holocaust memory and advocacy for human rights, this article puts forward an innovative approach to public memory’s entanglements with contemporary politics and subsequently argues that any public memory can in the broader context of governmental rationalities be understood as a technique of government itself.