Who’s Afraid of Memory Laws? Theorising Deterrence in Memory Politics

Memory laws regulate the legitimate frames of remembering the past righteous and perpetrators. But who is supposed to be afraid of punitive memory laws? What do memory laws seek to prevent and how is their deterrent effect supposed to be achieved? What can they practically expect to avoid from taking place? Building on the collaborative Volkswagen Foundation-supported MEMOCRACY-project (2021-2024), this talk will engage Central and East European memory laws as unorthodox deterrence devices in national and international ontological security politics. Maria Mälksoo will conceptualize mnemopolitical deterrence and assess the aims and sought effects of various CEE memory laws.

Maria Mälksoo is a Senior Researcher at the Centre for Military Studies, University of Copenhagen. She is the principal investigator of the ERC Consolidator Grant project RITUAL DETERRENCE (2022-2027) and in the Volkswagen Foundation-supported collaborative project on memory laws (MEMOCRACY, 2021-2024). She is the author of The Politics of Becoming European: Polish and Baltic Post-Cold War Security Imaginaries (Routledge, 2010), a co-author of Remembering Katyn (Polity, 2012), and the editor of the Handbook on the Politics of Memory (Edward Elgar, forthcoming).

3/4 ADVANCES IN INTERNATIONAL STUDIES

This seminar is part of Advances in International Studies is the IIR's flagship series of academic talks. We invite both established and emerging scholars who make a novel or unfamiliar contributions to our understanding of global politics. Each session will consist of an introductory talk and will be followed by an open discussion in a seminar setting.

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