"This book aims to provide a context in which a clear link can be traced between the politics of memory and its manifold representations and misrepresentations in public media towards a viable politics of justice. The assumption is that public awareness and perceptions of injustice, whether they are political, economic, or social, depend on the mass media of communication for recognition and valorization – including, today, new communication and information technologies such as social media platforms. Undoubtedly this assumption is based on a system in which mass media can operate independently, fairly, and in a balanced and unbiased way: in other words, according to a much vaunted and fast vanishing ‘public service ethos’ imbued with high standards of truthtelling, objectivity, balance, and accountability. A parallel assumption is that if the public is made aware and has access to relevant information and knowledge, it will be motivated to pressure governments for reform, reparation, and – in the best possible scenario – some kind of consensus between all parties on ways to move forward as a nation. As we have pointed out above, this argues for an a priori ‘right to memory’ that affirms and protects those frameworks and structures of collective memory that guarantee the physical, psychological, and symbolic integrity of a group of people or, indeed, a nation. There are many aspects to the debate." (Introduction, p.17)
Contents
Introduction: Public Media and the Right to Memory: Towards an Encounter with Justice / Philip Lee and Pradip Ninan Thomas, 1
1 Rethinking Justice in Peru: Between Public Amnesia and Public Memory / Germán Vargas, 23
2 Images of Disappearance in Argentina: How Films, Photos, and Television Buttress Memory / Claudia Feld, 41
3 East Timor, the United States and Mass Atrocities: Remembering and Forgetting / Joseph Nevins, 65
4 Justice, Media and Memory: The South African Transition / Charles Villa-Vicencio, 80
5 A Time of Mourning: The Politics of Commemorating the Tutsi Genocide in Rwanda / Rachel Ibreck, 98
6 The European Roma: An Unsettled Right to Memory / Anna Marie Reading, 121
7 The Chechen Memory of Deportation: From Recalling a Silenced Past to the Political Use of Public Memory / Aurélie Campana, 141
8 'Media memories' in Bosnia and Herzegovina / Zala Volcic and Karmen Erjavec, 163
9 Slavery and Emancipation in the Caribbean: Preserving the Public Memory / Hopeton S. Dunn, 184
Endnote / Philip Lee and Pradip Ninan Thomas, 200