Memory Before Violence

In this work­ing paper, TraCe re­searchers from various fields (including the social sciences and the hu­manities, history, media studies, and linguistics) reflect on “memory before violence.” Initiat­ing an inter­disciplinary dia­logue about the tempo­ralities of violence and memory, the authors focus on different case studies across the globe. The work­ing paper suggests turn­ing around the temporal per­spective on the memory-violence nexus. It asks how collect­ive memory unfolds its agency not only after, but also before acts of polit­ical violence. What memory dy­namics are at play when it comes to pro­ducing violence in the future—or when it comes to mak­ing future violence more (or less) likely to occur? The aim of this paper is to address the temporal intri­cacies of the violence-memory nexus, paying particularly close attention to the distinctive dy­namics unfolding in specific cases. In six case studies, we address “memory before violence”—in Brazil, in Canada, in Uganda and Kenya, in Russia and Ukraine, and in Ger­many.