The intergenerational persistence of colonial macro-narratives in contemporary family narratives in Belgium
(2024) Intergenerational Memories of Mass Violence — Location: Palais des Académies, Brussels (19.December.2024)
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- Authors
Ballière, Louise 
- et. al.
- Abstract
- Over the past fifteen years, increasing research attention to family memory and the intergenerational transmission of narratives of the past gave rise to a call to examine the family as a privileged space of interactions between individual and collective memories (Erll, 2011; Barclay & Koefoed, 2021; Barnwell, 2021; Cordonnier et al., 2022). This attention to family dynamics should be seen in the context of growing critique of so-called ‘collectivist’ approaches to memory studies (Kansteiner, 2002; Olick, 2015), and the subsequent appeal for a more relational or interactional approach to memory (Gensburger, 2016). Recently, interscalar studies of memory (Keightley et al., 2019) examine the interplay between memory dynamics on different societal levels (the macro-cultural, meso-institutional and micro-interactional). This focus on the interscalarity of memory is helpful to understand the various and complex ways in which people in postcolonial societies relate to the colonial past of the country in which they live. In her doctoral research, Louise Ballière examined the evolution of macro-level narratives of Belgian colonization as represented in Belgian press articles and school textbooks. In this presentation, she will elaborate on how memory mechanisms for dealing with the controversial aspects of the colonial past have shifted since 1960 against changing sociohistorical contexts. Returning to the family level, Barnwell (2021) argues that colonial storytelling in the family sphere is a ‘fruitful site’ to reflect upon the transmission and preservation of colonial memory (Barnwell, 2021, p. 57). Using data from three interviews with family members of the same family, Wouter Reggers then examines how family members of a former Belgian colonial relate to both their family past and the macro-level narratives of colonization that circulate in Belgian society. In doing so, Ballière and Reggers show how memory narratives and cultural meanings that are declining or even disappearing on the macro level can persist on the family level. At the same time, the presented data also shows how interlocutors draw on a wide range of memory narratives, adopting sometimes contradictory discursive mechanisms as they navigate the intersection of a personal, familial and colonial past in the interactional context of the interview. These insights allow us to move beyond more simplistic concepts of ‘persistence’ and ‘decline’ of macro-level memory narratives, as well as to complicate more static notions of the family as a realm of deep socialization.
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Citations
Ballière, L., & et al. (2024). The intergenerational persistence of colonial macro-narratives in contemporary family narratives in Belgium. Intergenerational Memories of Mass Violence, Palais des Académies, Brussels. https://hdl.handle.net/2078.5/244034