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'Memory Politics and Collective Identities' by Awa Sow
Contributors
Host: Awa Sow
Guest: Ellen Sow
Edited by: Awa Sow
Recording starts
00:23
*Podcast Tune*
Awa 00:23
Welcome, this is diaspora diaries. I'm your host Awa, and I'm here with Ellen today.
Ellen Sow 00:28
Hello.
Awa 00:29
Do you want to tell us a bit about yourself?
Ellen Sow 00:32
My name is Ellen Sow. I'd say I'm student, social science enthusiast I would say. My academic background is that I did a BA in European Studies, and I'm currently finishing an MA in African Studies. Yeah.
Awa 00:51
How do you perceive yourself? Do you consider yourself as part of a diaspora or not?
Ellen Sow 00:56
Well, okay, I think this is actually an interesting question, because I think there's kind of a shift happening there, as in, I've been perceiving myself a specific way my whole life, and people have been perceiving me in a specific way, and that is kind of changing. Let me explain it. Basically, I am born from a German mother and a Senegalese father, which means that I'm mixed. I've perceived myself my whole life as a black woman, light skinned black woman, and since I started covering my hair recently, a few years ago, I've been perceived quite differently, maybe more on the North African side, usually more than actually, as a black woman,
Awa 01:42
How about the diaspora aspect? Do you consider yourself as part of a diaspora? I don't think you responded concretely.
Ellen Sow 01:48
I hear a lot of talks, especially here in Switzerland where I live, around you know people like kind of people equating diaspora, people of the diaspora with people from, in our case, African descent, and they kind of make it out to be interchangeable words or interchangeable ideas, which I really don't feel like I subscribe to. I wouldn't actually say that I consider myself as an African descent, because that puts kind of distance between me and my African identity. I don't feel like this is something that I just descend from, that is far away from me, but I feel like this is something that is very active, very present in the moment, and not something of the past. I think that also relates to something that someone on a previous episode said about feeling that the diaspora is really something that feels mislabeling to her. I can relate to that a lot, because I do feel so close to my black Senegalese identity that I don't feel like this is just something that I descend from. I think this is something that I actively live. Although diaspora does feel a little lighter of a word, I definitely don't feel like I am part of African descent. I would say I just feel I am African, African descent. To me, sounds more accurate, maybe to black Americans, for instance, those are people that I can understand, feel like their African descent. I am actively, currently African.
Awa 03:24
That's interesting, because I think I have quite a different perspective on diaspora. I would consider myself as part of a diaspora. I think it actually complements the idea of feeling African more than distancing both ideas. But I definitely hear that it is often employed to, yeah, create this distance between some kind of homeland that is far away and your current self, that I wouldn't subscribe to either, despite the fact that I consider myself sort of a diaspora, if that makes sense.
Ellen Sow 03:57
No, yes, for sure. And I think what I was trying to say is, I want to emphasize that my idea of diaspora would definitely be extremely different from the idea of being of African descent, which I mentioned because I've had the feeling that where I live, a lot of people do use these words interchangeably. I could see myself being part of a diaspora, and I think to a certain extent, I do, but my understanding of it is very different than the understanding that I've seen around me.
Awa 04:29
Your academic research focuses a lot on ideas of national identities and like European identities. I think it's quite relevant in the context of Europe, where we often see a clash between Europe's self image and our understanding of it and the diasporas understanding of it. Do you want to tell us a bit about how you understand the history of European identity building?
Ellen Sow 05:01
Yeah. So to give a little bit more context, my research in the recent years has been focusing a lot on kind of memory studies in general or different aspects of memory studies. I find it very interesting how collective memory national narratives actually do influence national identities, European identities, quite a bit, and I've been looking at several cases where that shows up. So in the context of European identity building, what I find interesting is that actually identity building is not something that just happens, and identity is not something that just happens to be a specific way. It's actually something that's always, always, always very calculated, especially in the European context. For instance, in Europe, we can see that after World War Two, when the European political integration process started with the creation of successively different European entities, European institutions and communities. This was actually very calculated move which led to the Europe that we have nowadays, where the European Union proceeds over national countries. European law proceeds over a national law. And this was actually very calculated because Europe realized, well, first of all, fighting inside of Europe between countries is not something that was good for each countries, for the for the European countries themselves. Of course, we didn't want wars, which is why those institutions were built in the first place, starting with the European Coal and Steel Community, and slowly developed through different stages to the European Union we know today. And all of that, of course, started with the fact that Europeans didn't want to fight among each other anymore. They just wanted peace on their continent. But the European Union we know today is also just a big, huge hegemonic entity. Also with the creation of NATO, actually, it's just a very powerful entity that was also created and meant to uphold European supremacy over the rest of the world, because as single countries, I mean, European countries are quite small, especially when you compare it to like massive countries like the USA. So the European Union needed to become stronger, right? It needed to become stronger so that it can uphold power over the rest of the world. They realize that small countries such as, I don't know, Belgium, Luxembourg, the Netherlands, France, Italy, all of those countries, they just didn't really have a chance against the rest of the world. Or let's say they would gain much more from being one entity together. And this, some people say, and I think there's also big part of truth in that, that it's just the new kind of imperialistic way of Europe to operate in this globalized world. But where I wanted to go with that is just that it's interesting how intentional Europe was with making us Europeans. Now, I mean, even on passports, you see on top you've got European Union, and underneath only you've got, like, the name of your country. It's been a very calculated move that we've become Europeans where we're Europeans before being French, we're Europeans before being German. Individual countries might not always be happy with that statement, which is why we've got cases like Brexit and all of that. And I think there's also more and more countries nowadays that that do start to have a little bit of reluctance around that, but this is for completely different reasons. Eventually those countries agreed to do that because they still believed in kind of white supremacy, I would say, and they realized that exerting white supremacy over the rest of the world, they would be more powerful. You'd be more powerful as a European with all of Europe backing you, as compared to if you're just like from from a smaller country representing just their own interests.
Awa 08:56
What I find really interesting in what you just explained, and like the general topic of European identity building is how it seems to involve some kind of erasure, some kind of silencing of all the other people that do not correspond to the image Europe painted of itself, in some ways. And so I don't know I was thinking about Michel-Rolph Trouillot, who talks about like silencing as an active process in the production of history. So he talks about four key moments in historical production, and very specifically, the creation of sources, so basically, when you write down what has happened. Then there's the making of archives, so like collecting different works and putting them together to create an archive. Then there's the creation of historical narratives, so the discourse on what history was like. And then in retrospective significance, we also select the things that we find relevant from the past to our present. And so in these four key moments, he talks about how silencing is always involved, and how there's always this active silencing, of selecting what wants to be said, what should not be said, which I think very well fits with what he said. And I'd be interested in your perspective, like, how do you think that looks like on a national level?
Ellen Sow 10:14
Yeah, so, as I said, just for the European identity creation, even national identity creation, it's never something that just happens. It's always crafted in a very specific way and for very specific means. So as I said earlier, countries, they have specific interests that they want to pursue, right? And I think the narratives that a country follows or puts out is always meant to go a specific way. It's always meant because there is an idea behind it, right? It's always calculated so on the national level, we do see that as you said, histories, facts, whatever, crisis, events, historical events, stuff like that. It's always... they pick and choose, right? What they keep in national history. This is done through very specific memorialization processes. And this is mainly what I've been researching over the past few years. Those memorialization processes, right? These processes, they kind of stem from specific kind of memory politics.
Awa 11:23
Can you clarify here what you understand by memory realization and memory politics? What is it?
Ellen Sow 11:30
All right, so we're talking about narratives. I think it simply means, what kind of stories, what kind of facts, what kinds of events are being kept alive in the collective memory. Collective memory is also an important concept created by Maurice Halbwachs, a French scholar who basically studied how each person has their own like memories of what they did yesterday, of what they've been through, what they experienced in life. But there's also an element of collective memory. It's the memory basically kept alive by a group, by a community, or here maybe by a whole, like nation. And this collective memory is basically the tool that is being used to justify specific political orientations, specific political trajectories by governments and by a country. And how do we create those collective memories? How do we build How do collective memories actually come to life? It's through specific practices which are being called memorialization processes. These processes are very simple tools that can be used. It can be done through, for instance, school programs, through school books, for instance. It can be done through material memorization processes, such as in Europe, it's used a lot, statues or plagues, remembering specific places, places which are also called places of memory, for instance. It can be done through naming of streets, for instance, giving names of streets of events or people that are meant to be remembered, so that those are tools that are being kept alive and are kept around for people to remember on the daily basis. It can also be national holidays, for instance. I mean, in Europe, we have like those... Well, not in all of Europe, certainly not in Germany, but in France, for instance, we have national holidays for days remembering the victory in World War One and in World War Two also. Other tools, for instance, are being used in that I think everyone knows, are museums. What is being kept in museums? I think you also talked about Michel-Rolph Trouillot's creation of sources, archives and historical narratives. And this is the exact process that you go through in a museum. You keep the sources, you archive them in the museum, and then you tell stories, which are the narratives, historical narratives that you will find in historical museums. All of those things are things that are actually being fostered by access, you know. Not everyone has the resources to say, okay, I'm going to build a museum here. I'm going to remember this and this and that. You need funds, you need subsidies. The government is actually in charge of that. The government is also in charge of building statues, of naming streets, of declaring national holidays. And through those practices, through those memorialization practices, specific memories will be kept alive.
Ellen Sow 14:19
I think Germany is a great example where we see that clearly. I think one of the historical events that was best memorialized worldwide. I would actually say the two events that would be best memorized worldwide would be one, the Holocaust, two, maybe 9/11. Those are two events that have been very well kept alive, that have been very well memorialized because of all of these different tools that can be used, right? Germany is a great example, and this is what I focused part of my research on. How well the Holocaust was memorialized and remembered in Germany. You've got tons and tons and tons of museums. It is a subject that is being thoroughly studied in school. You've got million different street namings. You've got everything in Germany to keep the memory of those who lost their lives in World War Two, of the horrible events that happened during the Third Reich, etc. This is a history that is being kept alive, memorialized, and that Germany eventually actually built their identity around. Also this form of apologetic remembrance, which is a term coined by Jennifer Lind, who studied specifically how societies after traumatic events engage with remembrance and apologies. On the other hand, the genocide they committed just a few decades before that in Namibia, what was called back then, German Southwest Africa, the genocide on the Herero and Nama and various other groups, we can see that there is barely any or actually no reference at all in school programs, no reference at all on street namings. There's no museums, there's no national holidays remembering that, and most Germans don't actually know about that. This reminds me of this time where I was actually working on that research on the train, and I started talking to a man sitting next to me, and he was telling me that he had actually been to Namibia. He was German, and he had been to Namibia, and yet he still didn't know that Germany had committed genocide there, where more than, I think, 80% of the Herero population was decimated. So this is actually a really big deal, but Germany chose to not engage with that history. Germany chose to ignore it and to not work with that. And this actually is the best example to see how a country chooses to remember events and silence other events, how a country builds their identity around narratives that they choose to put forward, but also how a lot of countries in Europe, most countries in Europe, are very reluctant, if not completely refusing, to engage with their colonial past. I think that this is also partly due to the fact that the Holocaust is a genocide that happened on the continent, and therefore they were forced by international community to actually engage with that, because it was happening right here. Namibia is far away from what Europeans can see, and therefore decided to just ignore it because they could, because they believe that it's not relevant.
Awa 17:38
I think we can also relate that to Vincente Raphael's idea of national identity being formed through a double process of substitution and estrangement. So he talks about substitution as the process where nationalist discourse replace what does not want to be heard or acknowledged about, like the history's past. For example, in the case of Germany, the genocide in Namibia, there's no real incentive for them to want to recognize it. So in their discourse of national identity, they will put those things aside and choose either the battles or the events or the key moments that have been important and have been key to the building of their self image. So in the case of Germany, it's basically the idea of recognizing the Holocaust but not recognizing the genocide in Namibia. So we see here, like a selection of one that has to be recognized and that they will also, in some kind of way, proudly remember, in the sense that they want to make sure that this is something of the past. They're not happy about it, but they're working towards something else, and they are actually now something else in their discourse, right? They do not want to be what happened in the Holocaust. They want to be this Germany that is like very open to human rights. And then there's the second step, which is the estrangement. So in order to set the moral terms of the community, they have to estrange some things that are literally part of the nation's history. So in this case, again, the genocide in Namibia. They cannot really recognize that genocide is something that has happened continuously throughout their history. I don't know. I kind of feel like it contributes to this idea of the Holocaust is one event, and it's like kind of one mistake, something that has happened because a very, very bad person was in lead. But it's not something they inherently are, right? And so I guess recognizing other very, very horrible things that they did, such as the genocide in Namibia, would be kind of acknowledging that this is also part of their history, and their history is actually much heavier than what they want to recognize. So yeah, I think in regards to that, this idea of double process of substitution and estrangement to constitute and to construct national identity also helps us make sense of what is at play here.
Awa 20:06
So how does, in your perspective, everything we've just discussed, meaning, memorization and Europe's silencing in the production of its history and its self image, have an impact on us? Meaning in our case, obviously, like racialized Muslim women living in Europe, but also more broadly, the diaspora in Europe, and also the racialized people from Europe, because there's some too.
Ellen Sow 20:33
Yeah. So I think the most interesting about Europe is that most European countries don't want to perceive themselves as immigration countries, as opposed to countries like the USA, who, even though they still have a problem with immigration nowadays, they are aware that they are a country of immigration, right? And many European countries, especially countries such as France, I want to say especially countries such as Switzerland, are not countries who are even willing to take the step of considering that they could be an immigration country. The thing is, closing your eyes and just ignoring it, putting your head in the sand, is not going to change the fact that it is an immigration country, whether you want to accept it or not, right? And I think that this then becomes a problem when it comes to actually the memorization processes and their memory politics. I think you actually do have interesting examples to share with your research in Guadeloupe and the school systems of France claiming some sort of universalism that absolutely don't fit all of the French territories.
Awa 21:45
Yeah. So I think what I was trying to access with my research is this idea that France does not really include the history of its overseas territories in its discourse on national identity. So the overseas, which used to be former colonies, they were French colonies, with a majority of racialized people, and actually black people that descend from people that have been enslaved. And so I think especially in school programs, you can see how France does perceive French history as something that is proper to mainland France, France in Europe, white France, but something that is not really France in the Caribbean, for example. And so when France talks about its national history and national identity, what it refers to is actually the history of mainland France. It completely excludes racialized people's experiences and racialized people's history from the perspective of people that have been colonized. Because, as a matter of fact, that also is France. France is not just the people that have colonized. A big part of France is also the people that have been colonized. And this is not really recognized.
Ellen Sow 22:58
Yeah, yeah, exactly. So it's the very blatant exclusion of racialized French people. And I think this is kind of where the problem lies for diasporic people in Europe, because we are constantly being erased from history. We are constantly being erased in all parts of life in Europe, and this is simply because the countries don't want to be an immigration state, and they don't want to be associated with being a country of immigration. And I think all of those problems, as we said before, are coming from the memory politics, which is basically a very, very powerful game of keeping the status quo alive. Memory politics is actually one of the best tools there is to uphold racial hierarchies that we live with, the systemic discrimination, to actually keep all of that really in place. And this actually leads to, I want to say, the suffering of all people with an immigration background, all people of color. Yeah.
Awa 24:10
Can you clarify the link between these countries not wanting to perceive themselves as immigration countries, and the thing that we spoke about in the context of diaspora. Because on a legal basis, for example, people from the overseas are not immigrating to France because they're already part of France. So say, if you're from Guadeloupe and you move to mainland France, you would still be perceived as an immigrant, right, despite the fact that you're French, just because you're racialized, just because you're black. So how do you see the link here?
Ellen Sow 24:40
Yes, I think this is exactly what I was gesturing towards, because at the end of the day, with those kind of practices, when they leave out certain parts of history, the mainland French white people have a very specific imagination when it comes to their own country. They have a specific view on what their national identity is, of what they belong to. And if we erase stories histories of racialized people in the national trajectories, it makes France look as something that it isn't. It makes this history incomplete, and therefore people who, as you said, are French people from overseas are still perceived as immigrants, are still perceived as outsiders, and there's some sort of xenophobia happening that is actually tied with racism, because French people have a hard time understanding that French people are black sometimes, that French people are all types of race and colors, and that the history that has been fed to them is just not the entire story. And this is exactly what will then lead to far right voting, because those kind of narratives, these specifically selective narratives of French history, is what is used by far right parties as a tool for legitimizing their very harsh anti-immigrant, their very harsh policies. And this is how they will justify what they claim. This is how they will justify what their ideologies are based on, and this is what they will justify their policies with, and this is how they will actually use immigrants, immigration and racialized people as a scapegoat to French problems, right? And this, in turn, will lead to lower class white people being attracted to voting far right parties because they are being actually fed a story and a history that is incomplete.
Awa 26:55
And I think this can be applied to most European countries, and even outside of Europe.
Ellen Sow 27:03
And I think this actually brings us to questioning, again, the legitimacy of democracy altogether, the unbiasedness, the objectiveness of democracy. Because at the end of the day, people are voting with the knowledge that they have, with the tools that they have. But when national histories are actively being used and actively directed and curated by a government that leaves out half of the history, or that picks and chooses specific events, stories, people to remember, then people are not always equipped with the right tools to make their choice.
Awa 27:52
I think that's a very important point, but also a very techy one. I'd say, just because obviously democracy is what we know, and we've been taught that this was the way to access more rights. So how do we go about this? Because if we now establish that due to the consequence of memory politics, democracy is not as objective as we thought it was, how do you navigate this clash between the idea of democracy, but then also, I'm assuming wanting to have a just electoral system?
Ellen Sow 28:27
Yes, so don't get me wrong. I'm not saying that democracy is all good or all bad. I'm just saying that we know that, first of all, I mean, democracy is a very Western concept. Not everything that is Western is good, but not everything that is Western is bad, either. I'm not saying that because it's a Western concept. It just should be thrown out of the window. I'm just saying that democracy in itself, is also a concept that can be flawed, that is actually flawed. And while we don't have any better options nowadays, we need to be honest about where we stand with democracy. We need to be honest about how to navigate it, and what are the factors that lead to an actual objective electoral results. I don't think that throwing democracy out of the window and going back to other kind of more restrictive ruling systems is better. I'm just saying that we need to take into account that memorialization processes, that remembrance and memorialization practices are extremely important to be living in a just society.
Awa 29:43
I think that's a great way to conclude. Thank you so much for coming.
Ellen Sow 29:48
Thank you for having me.
Ellen Sow 29:49
Feel free to let us know if you have a different perspective on the matter, if you have things to contribute to the conversation we're looking forward to hearing from you. Thank you so much for listening.