Performing social forgetting in a post-conflict landscape: The case of Cyprus
[Thesis]
Rabia Harmansah
Hayden, Robert M.
University of Pittsburgh
2014
308
Place of publication: United States, Ann Arbor; ISBN=978-1-321-61577-7
Ph.D.
Anthropology
University of Pittsburgh
2014
This dissertation examines social practices of memory-making and forgetting in Cyprus after the partition of 1974, based on analysis of Orthodox Christian and Muslim religious sites in the Greek/Southern and the Turkish/Northern parts of the island. The central contribution of the dissertation is the development of the concept of social forgetting as a corollary of social memory. I consider forgetting to include selective remembering, mis/disremembering, and omitting, distorting, or silencing past events and experiences, in order to shape collective memory. In the literature, remembering is usually privileged over forgetting, which is taken as negation, neglect, failure to remember, or unintended social amnesia in which people are considered passive actors. This study, however, shows that forgetting can be a desirable goal and positive process for some social actors, accomplished by obscuring material evidence of what another community wishes remembered.
Cultural anthropology; European Studies
Social sciences;Collective memory;Cyprus;Religious landscape;Sacred sites;Social forgetting