ECREA16-Abstract

310

Saturday, November 12

1 1 : 0 0 – 1 2 : 3 0

IIC06

Power and the Contestation of the Past: Memories, Legacies and Strategic Narratives in International Perspective

D. Marko

Analitika - Center for Social Research, Communication, Sarajevo, Bosnia and Herzegovina

With his seminal book on “The invention of tradition” the historian Eric Hobsbawm fundamentally changed the way in which scholars approach the past.

Rather than being a sequence of objective events, history came to be understood as a social construction, emerging from narratives and interpretations gen‑

erated by the stories told by people, official rituals of memorization and even the symbolic environment of artefacts and everyday objects. In the construc‑

tivist view, history is fluid, malleable and ambiguous and thus open to evaluative contestation and re-invention. Current conflicts and social transformations

frequently trigger the search for meaning and explanation in historical events, thereby re-inventing how the past is understood. It can therefore be argued

that the present shapes the past as much as the past shapes the course of present events. Most of the existing research focuses on the role of collective mem‑

ories in the formation of social and cultural identities. Less attention has been given to narratives of the past that utilize historical frames in order to achieve

political goals. Moreover, we know very little about the role of frames of the past in international politics where different narratives intersect, compete and

collide.The papers of this panel aim to address these gaps by addressing the strategic role of history and collective memories in processes of power struggles

and contested politics in the context of international relations and global developments. All studies presented in this panel focus on particular moments

of rupture and discontinuity: Two papers (Krstic and Milojevic; Lohner, Banjac and Neverla) explore how the regime transition from authoritarianism to

democracy is interpreted and contested in public discourses. Two other papers (Baden and Tenenboim-Weinblatt; Sangar) use sophisticated methodologies

to investigate conflict discourses in different Western and non-Western contexts. And O’Loughlin and Miskimmon the role of strategic narratives in inter‑

national negotiations. In all cases, the framing of the past played a crucial role in the dynamics and outcomes of the contestation. However, while there

are clear indications that the mobilisation of the past perpetuates and intensifies conflict, there is evidence that the past can also serve as a force to broker

consensus and reconciliation. Another theme that runs through the five papers of this panel is the role of the media and journalism in constructing the past.

In ongoing conflicts and social upheavals the media serve as a forum where narratives of the past are remediated and reinterpreted. Periods of social and

political discontinuities therefore fundamentally challenge the position of journalism and journalists, forcing them to forge new professional identities

between the legacies of the past and the changing realities of the present. Taken together, this panel provides insights into the role of narratives of the past

in contemporary conflicts and power struggles.The analysis of international conflicts and global ruptures helps to understand the ambivalent role of history

frames as both a polarizing and a bridging force. Furthermore, the studies presented open up new avenues for future research in an emerging field.

PN 288

The Iran Deal and the Past as Resource: Connective Memory in the Strategic Narratives of the US, EU and Iran

B. O’Loughlin

, A. Miskimmon

Royal Holloway- University of London, London, United Kingdom

This paper explores the role of memory and narrative in the forging of the 2015 nuclear deal between Iran and the UN Security P5+1 and the European

Union.We hypothesize that narrative alignment between Iran and its interlocutors only became possible when President Obama recognized Iran’s grievanc‑

es about the role of the US in overthrowing Iran’s government during the ColdWar. A strategic narrative is ‘a means for political actors to construct a shared

meaning of the past, present and future of international politics to shape the behavior of domestic and international actors’ (Miskimmon, et al., 2013: 2).

This advances strategic narrative theory (Krebs, 2015; Miskimmon et al., 2013, 2016) by explaining how narrative alignment can occur through the re-con‑

textualisation and re-narration of past events. It also illustrates why the concept of ‘collective memory’ is problematic and assesses the explanatory value

of Hoskins’(2011) ‘connective memory’proposition that memory is activated in the present and dependent upon the remediation of visual representations

from the original event.This study examines the interlocutors’narratives from 2001–2015, with particular focus on UN Security Council debates and Geneva

Talks. Such moments of high politics represent ‘tests’in which the (moral, political) criteria of worth present in each actor’s narrative is evaluated by others

with reference to an empirical problem: in this case, Iran’s nuclear programme (Boltanski and Thévenot, 1991/2006). We examine participants’ narrative

strategies, the style and mode of delivery or projection, and the manner in which each took the others’ strategic narrative and its delivery into account

during interactions in this period. How were principles of justice, legality, legitimacy and so forth invoked and negotiated as each actor pursued their

interests?We explore the forms of evidence presented and made public by each actor, and the visual and rhetorical modes used to contextualise and frame

the meaning of the evidence presented. We also analyse how these stylistic and evidentiary aspects of each actor’s diplomacy was received in the national

media of each actor, and the degree to which this fed back into the process being reported on. This multimodal analysis allows for consideration of the ‘ac‑

tivation’of memories of US actions in Iran 1953 and 1979 as the instantiation of connective, not collective, memory. Such memories were denied in US and

EU accounts until 2013; what made their activation in 2013–15 sufficiently compelling for Iran to yield. Bibliography Boltanski, Luc, and Laurent Thévenot

(2006). On Justification: Economies ofWorth. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press. Hoskins, Andrew (2011). "7/7 and connective memory: Interactional

trajectories of remembering in post-scarcity culture." Memory Studies 4, no. 3: 269–280. Krebs, Ronald. R (2015). Narrative and the Making of US Nation‑

al Security. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Miskimmon, Alister, Ben O'Loughlin, and Laura Roselle (2013). Strategic Narratives: Communication

Power and the New World Order. London: Routledge. Miskimmon, Alister, Ben O'Loughlin, and Laura Roselle (eds.) (2016). Forging the World: Strategic

Narratives and International Relations. Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press.