Christiane Wilke, Associate Professor, Dept of Law and Legal Studies, Carleton
Remembering Complexity? Memorials for Nazi Victims in Berlin
How do memorials shape who we think we are? And how are our identities involved when we debate, create, and interact with memorials? This presentation connects scholarship on intersectional identities and memorial practices in Berlin. Intersectionality scholarship, with its roots in US critical race feminism, has much to offer for thinking about the complexity of identities, yet it does not consider the role of memory, time, and temporality. The scholarship on memory and memorials, in turn, does not sufficiently consider the complexity of identities of those who are memorialized and of those who visit memorials. The presentation examines two case studies: the memorial for the Jewish and Socialist resistance group around Herbert Baum and the Memorial to the Homosexuals Persecuted under National Socialism. It shows the connections between memorials for Nazi victims and contemporary social movements and calls for a more self-reflexive approach to the role of identities and complexity in memorial scholarship and practice.