This talk will introduce the notion of Borders of Memory as a means to analyse contests over sites of heritage, and demonstrate its application through a series of contemporary examples from the Asia Pacific. Borders of Memory reflect the growing prominence of political and social disputes over the historical narratives that shape heritage sites and practices, and thus the meanings which come to be attached to them. Such contests emphasize that heritage constitutes a means of narrating the past through demarcated sites of material and praxis, sites within which varied intersections of actors, networks, and scales of governance interact, negotiate and compete.
Borders of memory is used to refer to a site or practice through which the heritage claims of a variety of groups come into contact. Highlighting this contestation as a border of memory is not to argue that these are permanent, nor to claim that the mnemonic cleavages which they demarcate are necessarily irreconcilable. These mnemonic borders are constituted as and through processes, performances and practices, and run through these spaces between distinct memory communities, whose contesting ideas and narratives regarding the site both connect and rub up against one other at the site itself.
The utility of the concept will be illustrated through a series of cases, ranging across Japan, Korea, Northeast India, and out into the Pacific. Focussing particularly on the ways in which the materiality of the past comes to serve as the archive for understandings of its present, these cases will collectively illustrate the ways in which borders of memory serve to structure how heritage is thought about today. Borders of Memory “uses knowledge of a variety of places and a variety of disciplinary approaches in order to elucidate problems that cross boundaries” (Morris-Suzuki 2020), and interrogates how historical and future relations within the Asia Pacific region are interpreted and contested at its heritage sites .
Speaker bio:
Edward Boyle is Associate Professor at the International Research Center for Japanese Studies (Nichibunken), Kyoto, and the editor of Japan Review. He researches boundaries and borderland spaces in Japan and its neighbourhood, the wider region, and Northeast India. Recent publications include 'Heritage, Contested Sites, and Borders of Memory in the Asia Pacific' (with Steve Ivings, Brill 2023), 'Geo-Politics in Northeast Asia' (with Iwashita Akihiro and Yong-Chool Ha, Routledge 2022) and 'Japan’s Borders: Between State and People' (with Naomi Chi, Hokkaido University Press 2022). Ongoing projects include research into the role and significance of borders of memory in Asia (see www.bordersofmemory.com), and a long-term collaborative interdisciplinary investigation entitled ‘Island Japan: Fluid Bodies, Senses, Imaginaries’. More details can be found at www.borderthinking.com.
