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2 results

Dealing with Dark Pasts

Dealing with Dark Pasts
  • A European History of Auto-Critical Memory in Global Perspective
  • Itay Lotem
  • Published online:
    04 December 2024
    Print publication:
    16 January 2025
    • Element
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  • Since the end of the Second World War, the political rationale to remember the past has shifted from previous focus on states' victories, as these began commemorating their own historical crimes. This Element follows the rise of 'auto-critical memory', or the politics of remembrance of a country's own dark past. The Element explores the idea's gestation in West Germany after the Second World War, its globalisation through initiatives of 'transitional justice' in the 1990s, and present-day debates about how to remember the colonial past. It follows different case studies that span the European continent – including Germany, France, Britain, Poland and Serbia – and places these in a global context that traces the circulation of ideas of auto-critical memory. Ultimately, as it follows the emergence of demands for social and racial justice, the Element questions the usefulness of memory to achieve the goals many political actors ascribe to it.

  • Chapter 11 - European Crime Fiction

  • Edited by Jesper Gulddal, University of Newcastle, New South Wales, Stewart King, Monash University, Victoria, Alistair Rolls, University of Newcastle, New South Wales
  • Book:
    The Cambridge Companion to World Crime Fiction
    Published online:
    14 April 2022
    Print publication:
    21 April 2022, pp 196-220

  • Summary

    In this chapter we argue that a predominant concern in many contemporary European crime novels is the consolidation of a democratic culture that protects the rights of citizens and upholds the rule of law. Drawing on a wide range of literary texts from across the continent, we analyse this overall ambition via three of its major manifestations: democratization as seen most clearly in post-dictatorial transitional societies, the treatment of immigrants as an indicator of inclusiveness and social equality and the honest discussion of the national past as the foundation for a healthy democratic culture. What these three themes have in common is that they embody our greatest social aspirations while at the same time being vulnerable to horrific criminal aberrations, which is why crime fiction is a particularly apt medium for analysing and understanding them. This duality forms the basis of one of the master narratives of European crime fiction: the story of how the unsettling and often dangerous process of uncovering crime is the precondition for a more perfect democratic society.