Description
While social movements scholars have long explored collective memory as a significant explanatory factor of political mobilisations, the focus has often remained on domestic politics. This paper extends that scholarship to explore social movements and collective memory from a transnational perspective by bringing a broad range of Asian studies literature into conversation with memory politics and social movements. Focusing on commemorative events of past movements, the paper examines their roles in making and remaking transnational solidarity amongst pro-democracy activists in East and Southeast Asia, particularly Hong Kong, Taiwan, Thailand, and Myanmar. Drawing on primary materials from interviews, archives, and field observations, the paper advances two arguments. First, political anniversaries are sites of transnational connection beyond their domestic relevance, as seen in global commemorations of the Tiananmen Square Massacre and protests marking the 2021 Myanmar coup in Bangkok. These events embed transnational causes within local practices, transforming remembrance into activism. Second, such commemorations reveal that solidarities are not static but continually remade: annual gatherings anchor political memory while enabling activists to recalibrate their understandings of democracy and collective struggle in response to shifting authoritarian contexts. This paper, therefore, shows how transnational activism and solidarities are crucially and indelibly entangled with history and memory politics, with anniversaries functioning as sites to platform these entanglements.
