Thursday, April 14, 2016
Assembly B (DoubleTree by Hilton Philadelphia Center City)
During the First World War, Woking and Nogent-sur-Marne became the unlikely centers of convalescence, death, and burial for Muslim soldiers from the British and French Empires, respectively. In the decades following the war, both sites—along with the imperial histories they encompassed—were largely erased from memory as national narratives of the war coalesced. The centenary has provided an opportunity to remember, reassert, and reconstruct this troubled past through the lens of a contested national and European present. Yet while many of Nogent’s key sites remain neglected and forgotten, Woking has transformed its former Muslim burial ground into an Islamic-inspired, multicultural peace garden. This paper traces the processes of forgetting and remembering in Woking and Nogent in the context of British and French traditions of national memory, recognizing that these traditions have emerged in reaction to, and in relationship with, one another. Drawing from the literature on memory studies, postcolonial theory, and the sociology of nationalism, I argue that the creation of the Woking peace garden represents an attempt to manage and re-nationalize memory, while the neglect of Nogent reveals the impossibility of qualifying a global war and its legacies. Both approaches mark a departure from their respective traditions of national memory. Further, both demonstrate that the nation is shaped by the transnational past and present.
