Abstract
The collective memory of the 1947 Partition has persisted for its survivors through oral history and storytelling, passed from generation to generation. Since the early 2010s, online memorialisation and digital archiving have stepped in as carriers of memories, creating technological tributaries for these memories to spread beyond the confines of family history. The 1947 Partition Archive on Facebook is one such resource, that records memorial evidence of the Partition, and this project traces the trajectory of memory in a technologically mediated environment to identify its communicative and cultural qualities. Here, Aleida and Jan Assmann’s conceptions of cultural memory theory, emanating from collective memory, are used in conjunction with frameworks of technologically mediated memory. While memory theory largely forms the groundwork for this inquiry, Fairclough’s Critical Discourse Analysis is used to examine the contents of the 1947 Partition Archive Facebook page to uncover textual, discursive, and societal themes of cultural memory production and dissemination. This study also provides insights into how Facebook conducts the production of cultural memory and artificially produces its themes when living testimonial memory fades. An additional outcome of this study is the induction of South Asian, and specifically, Indian postcolonial memory into literature on memory theory and mediated memory, which has previously been occupied majorly by World War 2 and Holocaust memory – although this has served as a significant entry point for this study, it is crucial to extend its scope for the admission of new ways of processing memory and re-living its lessons.
Details
Presentation Type
Paper Presentation in a Themed Session
Theme
KEYWORDS
Memory studies, Cultural Memory, Critical Discourse Analysis, Media
