From Memory Wars to Memory Work

In his LECTURE From Memory Wars to Memory Work: Relational Remembrance in Pınar Öğrenci's Aşît (The Avalanche), Michael Rothberg examined recent debates in German memory culture, tracing what has been termed the "Historikerstreit 2.0" through several public controversies in the German media landscape. He discussed the 2020 case of Cameroonian historian Achille Mbembe, who faced accusations of antisemitism for relating aspects of South African apartheid with Israeli occupation and the Holocaust in his scholarly work. Rothberg also addressed attacks following the 2021 German translation of own book Multidirectional Memory (originally published in 2009) and the 2022 documenta 15 exhibition scandal, exploring how practices of German Holocaust memory, comparative approaches to genocide, and discussions of Israel/Palestine have generated significant tensions to the point of a “memory war” in German public discourse.

The lecture's focus, however, was Pınar Öğrenci's film Aşît (The Avalanche), a sixty-minute essay-film by a Kurdish artist in Berlin, which had been shown at documenta 15. Through careful cinematography and montage of image, sound, and archival material, the film excavates the intertwined histories of Armenians and Kurds in eastern Turkey. Rothberg highlighted how Öğrenci's work practices "relational remembrance" – connecting the Armenian genocide, Kurdish experiences, and other histories of violence while respecting their distinct contexts.

Rothberg concluded by arguing against what he termed the "provincialism of German memory culture." Öğrenci's cosmopolitan approach, he suggested, offers an alternative: one that acknowledges entangled histories across borders and refuses narrow nationalist frameworks. The film demonstrates how attention to interconnected pasts can open new possibilities for memory work.

The LECTURE can be viewed online and will soon be published as an open access book with the Universitätsverlag Halle-Wittenberg