Description
Since roughly the 1970s, calls from second-wave feminists to ‘write women back into history’ have been answered with a considerable, interdisciplinary body of literature addressing the inextricable relationship between gender and memory. Whilst this body of work is wide-ranging in its geographical and temporal scope, it remains largely preoccupied with the erasure or co-opting of women’s histories for nation-building memory practices. Whilst not dismissing the salience of this perspective, this paper seeks to extend the understanding of gendered memory practice beyond national borders. Through analysis of museum and memorial sites that represent conflict-related sexual violence, the paper will draw attention to the transnationalising processes of memorialisation and museumification in this case. It will highlight how these practices may reflect essentialising and racialised trends in the project of making visible conflict-related sexual violence—what might be termed as cosmopolitan memory—and posits that we should afford as much critical and feminist attention to this phenomenon as we do to the well-trodden realm of national memory politics.
