War memory and commemoration have had increasingly high profiles in public and academic debates in recent years. This volume examines some of the social changes which have led to this development, among them the passing of the two World Wars from survivor into cultural memory. Focusing on the politics of war memory and commemoration, the book illuminates the struggle to install particular memories at the centre of a cultural world, and offers an extensive argument about how the politics of commemoration practices should be understood. The book presents a wide range of international case studies and analyses a range of forms of remembrance.
Topics covered include: * the South African War/Anglo-Boer War of 1899-1902 and political memory in South Africa * the nation and male subjectivity in Second World War films * post-traumatic stress disorder and its relationship to war commemoration * nostalgia and Australian returned soldiers after the First World War * second generation questionings of the role of national identity in Holocaust memory in Israel * struggles over the memory of state terrorism in Argentina Emerging from this book is an important critique of both 'state centred' approaches to war memory and those which regard commemoration primarily as a human response to loss and grief. Offering a wealth of empirical research material, this book will be an important read for cultural and oral historians, sociologists, researchers in international relations and human rights, and anybody with an interest in the cultural construction of memory in contemporary society.