Contested Amnesia and Dissonant Narratives in the Global South: Post-conflict in Literature, Art, and Emergent Archives

The Cold War period and its subsequent post-conflicts are characterized by a remarkable amnesia, a politics of invisibilization, and the neglect of the archives that reflect the epistemic order of decolonization and the geopolitical configuration of the Global South. Yet counter-semantics and dissonant narratives that challenge historical oblivion have been articulated by artists, writers and institutional initiatives that increasingly seek to contest this amnesia with alternate fictitious material or visual archives. Conflict and post-conflict situations such as Colombia (1964-) and Lebanon (1975-1989/91) reconfigured an increasingly diverse landscape of memory cultures that claim truth and accountability. While some post-conflict societies opt for an amnesty that fosters the invisibilization of the protracted conflict (Lebanon), others initiate cultural and political processes of transitional justice (Colombia).

Nurturing official silence, amnesia, and the fragmentation of society, the related political violence has generated complex and conflicting memory cultures that are shaped both by local and global biases. Drawing upon a comparative cultural analysis, this project examines the role of cultural production, aesthetic interventions, emergent archival practices, and dissonant narratives in processes of reconciliation, symbolic reparation, and remembrance in the post-conflict period, which may allow alternate and plural writings of history.