Entanglements of art and memory activism in Hungary’s illiberal democracy | Amsterdam University Press Journals Online
2004
  1. Home
  2. A-Z Publications
  3. Heritage, Memory and Conflict Journal
  4. Volume 2, Issue 1
  5. Article
Volume 2, Issue 1
  • E-ISSN: 2666-5050
file format pdf download PDF

Abstract

Abstract 

This paper explores how art contributes to the articulation of memories that counter the official historical narrative of Hungary’s self-proclaimed political and ideological system, illiberal democracy. Amid deepening polarization between Europe’s post-colonialist and post-socialist countries, the Hungarian government promotes a Christian conservative national identity against the “liberal” values of Western Europe. Systematic appropriation of historical traumas is at the core of such efforts, which largely manifests in removing, erecting and reinstating memorials, as well as in the re-signification of trauma sites. Insufficient civic involvement in rewriting histories generates new ways of resistance, which I demonstrate through the case study of a protest-performance organized by the Living Memorial activist group as a response to the government’s decision to displace the memorial of Imre Nagy in 2018. I seek to understand the dynamics between top-down memory politics, civil resistance and art within the conceptual apparatus of the “memory activism nexus” (Rigney 2018, 2020) and “multidirectional memories” (Rothberg 2009). I argue that artistic memory activism has limited potential to transform the dynamics of memory in a context where a national conservative political force has gradually taken control over historical narratives, triggering inevitably polarizing responses in the society. Although profoundly embedded in local histories, the case-study may offer new ways of negotiating traumatic heritages through the entanglement of art and memory activism.

Reka Deim
Loading

Article metrics loading...

/content/journals/10.3897/hmc.2.70927
2022-01-12
2024-07-22
Loading full text...

Full text loading...

/deliver/fulltext/26665050/2/1/HMC_2_70927.html?itemId=/content/journals/10.3897/hmc.2.70927&mimeType=html&fmt=ahah

References

  1. Allier-MontañoECrenzelE [Eds] (2015) The Struggle for Memory in Latin America. Recent History and Political Violence. Palgrave Macmillan. https://doi.org/10.1057/9781137527349
  2. AndermannJ [Ed.] (2015) Place, Memory and Mourning in Post-Dictatorial Latin America. Memory Studies Special Issue. London: SAGE.
  3. AndrásE (2013) Hungary in Focus: Conservative Politics and Its Impact on the Arts. Artmargins.com
  4. ArendtH (1958) Totalitarian Imperialism: Reflections on the Hungarian Revolution.The Journal of Politics20(1): 5–43. https://doi.org/10.2307/2127387
     [Google Scholar]
  5. AssmannJ (1995) Collective Memory and Cultural Identity.New German Critique65: 125–133. [JSTOR 488538] https://doi.org/10.2307/488538
     [Google Scholar]
  6. AssmannJ (2008) Communicative and Cultural Memory. In: ErllANünningA (Eds) Cultural Memory Studies.An International and Interdisciplinary Handbook. Berlin, New York, 109–118.
     [Google Scholar]
  7. BenazzoS (2017) Features of Fidesz’s Politics of Memory.In: Journal of Nationalism, Memory & Language Politics11(2): 198–221. https://doi.org/10.1515/jnmlp-2017-0009
     [Google Scholar]
  8. BenzigerKP (2000) The Funeral of Imre Nagy: Contested History and the Power of Memory Culture.In: History and Memory12(2): 142–164. https://doi.org/10.2979/his.2000.12.2.142
     [Google Scholar]
  9. BlutingerJ (2010) An Inconvenient Past: Post-Communist Holocaust Memorialization.Shofar29(1): 73–94. https://doi.org/10.1353/sho.2010.0093
     [Google Scholar]
  10. BorosG (1997) Emlékművek ’56-nak. 1956-os Intézet.
  11. CreetJ (2013) The House of Terror and the Holocaust Memorial Centre: Resentment and Melancholia in Post-89 Hungary.European Studies30: 29–62. https://doi.org/10.1163/9789401208895_004
     [Google Scholar]
  12. CsillagÁ (2018) Tiltakozás a Nagy Imre emlékmű eltávolítása ellen (video, 23 September 2018). https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0IssmEqsCzw&feature=emb_title
  13. DavidL (2020) The Past Can’t Heal Us: The Dangers of Mandating Memory in the Name of Human Rights. Cambridge University Press. https://doi.org/10.1017/9781108861311
  14. ErllARigneyA (2009) Mediation, Remediation, and the Dynamics of Cultural Memory. De Gruyter.
  15. ErőssÁ (2016) “In Memory of Victims”: Monument and Counter-monument in Liberty Square, Budapest.Hungarian Geographical Bulletin65: 237–254. https://doi.org/10.15201/hungeobull.65.3.3
     [Google Scholar]
  16. ErőssÁ (2018) Living Memorial and Frozen Monuments. The Role of Social Practice in Memorial Sites.Urban Development Issues55: 19–32. https://doi.org/10.2478/udi-2018-0002
     [Google Scholar]
  17. EyermanR (2016) Social Movements and Memory. In: TotaALHagenT (Eds) Routledge International Handbook of Memory Studies.London: Routledge, 79–83.
     [Google Scholar]
  18. FridmanO (2015) Alternative Calendars and Memory Work in Serbia: Anti-war Activism After Milošević.Memory Studies8(2): 212–226. https://doi.org/10.1177/1750698014558661
     [Google Scholar]
  19. Gárcia MárquezG (2003a) [1957] Magyarországon jártam [I Visited Hungary].Nagyvilág48(11): 884–896.
     [Google Scholar]
  20. Gárcia MárquezG (2003b) [1958] Nagy Imre hős vagy áruló [Imre Nagy, Hero or Traitor].Nagyvilág48(11): 884–896
     [Google Scholar]
  21. Gárcia MárquezG (1983) Our Own Brand of Socialism. In: New Left Review.
  22. GutmanY (2017) Memory Activism: Reimagining the Past for the Future in Israel-Palestine. Nashville: Vanderbilt University Press. https://doi.org/10.2307/j.ctv16759tr
  23. GyörgyP (2000) Néma hagyomány. Kollektív felejtés és a kései múltértelmezés [Silent tradition. Collective forgetting and delayed evaluation of the past]. Magvető, Budapest.
  24. HalbwachsM (1992) On Collective Memory. University of Chicago Press. Translated from: Les cadres sociaux de la mémoire, Paris, Presses Universitaires de France, 1952, originally published in Les Travaux de L’Année Sociologique, Paris, F. Alcan, 1925. https://doi.org/10.7208/chicago/9780226774497.001.0001
  25. HarmsV (2017) A Tale of Two Revolutions: Hungary’s 1956 and the Un-doing of 1989.In: Laczó F, Wawrzyniak J (Eds) East European Politics and Societies: and Cultures31(3): 479–499. https://doi.org/10.1177/0888325417703184
     [Google Scholar]
  26. Human Platform (2020) Hungary Turns Its Back on Europe: Dismantling Culture, Education, Science and the Media Under Orbán. Hungarian Network of Academics.
  27. JelinE (2003) State Repression and the Labors of Memory. Minneapolis, MN: University of Minnesota Press. https://doi.org/10.3362/9781899365654
  28. JudtT (2005) Postwar. A History of Europe Since 1945. Penguin Books.
  29. JudtT (1992) The Past Is Another Country: Myth and Memory in Postwar Europe.Daedalus121(4): 83–118. [Retrieved February 27, 2021]
     [Google Scholar]
  30. KatrielAReadingT (2015) Cultural Memories of Nonviolent Struggles. Palgrave Macmillan. https://doi.org/10.1057/9781137032720
  31. KissC (2006) The Misuses of Manipulation: The Failure of Transitional Justice in Post-Communist Hungary.Europe-Asia Studies58(6): 926–940. https://doi.org/10.1080/09668130600831142
     [Google Scholar]
  32. K HorváthZs (2008) The Redistribution of the Memory of Socialism. Identity Formations of the ‘Survivors’ in Hungary after 1989. In: SarkisovaOAporP (Eds) Past for the Eyes: East European Representations of Communism in Cinema and Museums After 1989.Central European University Press, 247–274.
     [Google Scholar]
  33. KovácsÉ (2005/2006) The Cynical and the Ironical. Remembering Communism in Hungary.Transit30: 155–169.
     [Google Scholar]
  34. KovácsÉ (2017) The Hungarian Holocaust Memorial Year 2014. Some Remarks. In: . I.M.O.N.Shoah: Intervention, Methods, Documentation4: 109–121.
     [Google Scholar]
  35. KovácsHUrsulaK. Mindler-Steiner UK (2015) Hungary and the Distortion of Holocaust History. The Hungarian Holocaust Memorial Year 2014.In: Politics in Central Europe11(2): 49–72. https://doi.org/10.1515/pce-2015-0010
     [Google Scholar]
  36. LandsbergA (2004) Prosthetic Memory. The Transformation of American Remembrance in the Age of Mass Culture. Columbia University Press.
  37. MarkJ (2010) The Unfinished Revolution: Making Sense of the Communist Past in Central-Eastern Europe. New Haven: Yale University Press.
  38. MarkJBlaiveMHudekASaundersATyszkaS (2015) 1989 After 1989: Remembering the End of Communism in East-Central Europe. In: KopečekMWciślikP (Eds) Thinking through Transition.Liberal Democracy, Authoritarian Pasts, and Intellectual History in East Central Europe After 1989. Central European University Press, 463–505.
     [Google Scholar]
  39. MihancsikZs (1994a) Nagy Imre temetése, és az 56-os emlékmű születése – Interjú Jovánovics Györggyel. [Imre Nagy’s funeral and the birth of the 1956 Memorial – Interview with György Jovánovics] Budapesti Negyed 3 (1)
  40. MihancsikZs (1994b) Nagy Imre temetése, és az 56-os emlékmű születése – Interjú Rajk Lászlóval. [Imre Nagy’s funeral and the birth of the 1956 Memorial – Interview with László Rajk] Budapesti Negyed 3(1).
  41. MunteánL (2019) Shockwave Memories: Multidirectional Sites of the Holocaust in Budapest. In: KalogerasYWaegnerCC (Eds) Ethnic Resonances in Performance, Literature, and Identity.New York: Routledge, 64–81. https://doi.org/10.4324/9781003016274-5
     [Google Scholar]
  42. NagyG (2015) Increasingly Radical Interventions: The New Wave of Political Art in Hungary. In: KrasztevPVanTil J (Eds) The Hungarian Patient: Social Opposition to an Illiberal Democracy.Central European University Press, 291–316.
     [Google Scholar]
  43. NoraP ([22 November] 2002) The Reason for the Current Upsurge in Memory. In: Transit Online. Accessed 10 September 2020. http://www.iwm.at/transit/transit-online/the-reasons-for-the-current-upsurge-in-memory/
  44. PalonenE (2008) The City-text in Post-communist Budapest: Street Names, Memorials, and the Politics of Commemoration.GeoJournal73: 219–230. https://doi.org/10.1007/s10708-008-9204-2
     [Google Scholar]
  45. PetőA (2017a) Roots of Illiberal Memory Politics. Remembering Women in the 1956 Hungarian Revolution.Södertörns University, Baltic Worlds10(4): 42–58.
     [Google Scholar]
  46. PetőA (2017b) Hungary’s Illiberal Polypore State.European Politics and Society, Newsletter Winter2017: 18–21.
     [Google Scholar]
  47. PfaffSYangG (2001) Double-Edged Rituals and the Symbolic Resources of Collective Action: Political Commemorations and the Mobilization of Protest in 1989.Theory and Society30(4): 539–89. https://doi.org/10.1023/A:1011817231681 [Accessed November 21, 2020]
     [Google Scholar]
  48. PotóJ (2003) Az emlékeztetés helyei. Emlekművek és politika [Sites of memory. Memorials and politics]. Osiris, Budapest.
  49. RévI (2005) Retroactive Justice. Prehistory of Post-Communism. Stanford University Press, Stanford.
  50. RévI (2018) Liberty Square, Budapest: How Hungary Won the Second World War.Journal of Genocide Research20(4): 607–623. https://doi.org/10.1080/14623528.2018.1522820
     [Google Scholar]
  51. RigneyA (2018) Remembering Hope: Transnational Activism Beyond the Traumatic.Memory Studies11(3): 368–380. https://doi.org/10.1177/1750698018771869
     [Google Scholar]
  52. RigneyA (2020) The Afterlife of Hope: How the Killing of Demonstrators is Remembered. The Connecting Memories Podcast. https://anchor.fm/connectingmemories/episodes/On-memory-and-social-movements-with-guest-speaker-Prof-Ann-Rigney-University-of-Utrecht-efo8dh [Accessed 22 June 2020]
  53. RothbergM (2009) Multidirectional Memory: Remembering the Holocaust in the Age of Decolonization. Stanford University Press.
  54. RothbergM (2011) From Gaza to Warsaw: Mapping Multidirectional Memory.Criticism53(4): 523–548. https://doi.org/10.1353/crt.2011.0032
     [Google Scholar]
  55. SartreJ-P (1968) The Ghost of Stalin. New York, G. Braziller.
  56. SelenyA (2014) Revolutionary Road. 1956 and the Fracturing of Hungarian Historical Memory. In: BernhardMKubikJ (Eds) Twenty Years After Communism.Oxford University Press, 37–59. https://doi.org/10.1093/acprof:oso/9780199375134.003.0003
     [Google Scholar]
  57. SodaroA (2018) Exhibiting Atrocity: Memorial Museums and the Politics of Past Violence. Rutgers University Press. https://doi.org/10.2307/j.ctt1v2xskk
  58. StanL (2009) Transitional Justice in Eastern Europe and the Former Soviet Union: Reckoning with the Communist Past. Routledge. https://doi.org/10.4324/9780203887783
  59. StanLNedelskyN [Eds] (2015) Post-Communist Transitional Justice: Lessons from Twenty-Five Years of Experience. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. https://doi.org/10.1017/CBO9781107588516
  60. StevensQFranckKAFazakerleyR (2012) Counter-monuments: the Anti-monumental and the Dialogic.The Journal of Architecture17(6): 951–972. https://doi.org/10.1080/13602365.2012.746035
     [Google Scholar]
  61. TuraiH (2009) Past Unmastered: Hot and Cold Memory in Hungary.Third Text23(1): 97–106. https://doi.org/10.1080/09528820902786735
     [Google Scholar]
  62. UngváryK (2014) The Living Horror. Hungarian Spectrum. Original publication: Az élő borzalom. In: HVG, 21 January 2014. https://hungarianspectrum.wordpress.com/2014/01/24/krisztian-ungvary-on-the-memorial-to-the-german-occupation-of-hungary-the-living-horror/ [Accessed 10 May 2021]
  63. UngváryK (2017) A szembenézés hiánya. Felelősségre vonás, iratnyilvánosság és átvilágítás Magyarországon 1990–2017 [The lack of facing the past. Accountability, public access to documents and lustration in Hungary 1990–2017]. Jaffa kiadó, Budapest.
  64. YoungJE (1992) The Counter-Monument: Memory against Itself in Germany Today.University of Chicago Press, Critical Inquiry18(2): 267–296. https://doi.org/10.1086/448632
     [Google Scholar]
  65. Van VreeF (2013) Absent Memories.Cultural Analysis12: 1–12.
     [Google Scholar]
  66. VioliP (2012) Trauma Site Museums and Politics of Memory. Tuol Sleng, Villa Grimaldi and the Bologna Ustica Museum.In: Theory Culture & Society29(1): 36–75. https://doi.org/10.1177/0263276411423035
     [Google Scholar]
  67. WilliamsR (1970) Marxism and Literature. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
  68. VillalónR [Ed.] (2017) Memory, Truth, and Justice in Contemporary Latin America. Rowman & Littlefield Publishers.
  69. ZomboryM (2019) Traumatársadalom. Az emlékezetpolitika történeti-szociológiai kritikája [Society of trauma. The historical and sociological critique of memory politics]. Budapest, Kijárat Kiadó.
http://instance.metastore.ingenta.com/content/journals/10.3897/hmc.2.70927
Loading
Entanglements of art and memory activism in Hungary’s illiberal democracy
HMC 2, 61 (2022); https://doi.org/10.3897/hmc.2.70927
/content/journals/10.3897/hmc.2.70927
/content/journals/10.3897/hmc.2.70927
Loading

Data & Media loading...

Keyword(s): Hungary; illiberal democracy; illiberal memory politics; memory activism; multidirectional memory

Most Cited Most Cited RSS feed

This is a required field
Please enter a valid email address
Approval was a Success
Invalid data
An Error Occurred
Approval was partially successful, following selected items could not be processed due to error