The Memory of Loss

Examining connections among memory, history, and the arts, I have come to believe that it is not actually memory itself but the memory of loss that defines individuals and communities, shaping our sense of the past and vision of the future.  How does the memory of loss, experienced personally and through family and community narratives, shape our individual, social and national consciousness? How do we commemorate the loss of home and how does that memory change over time? Why is the loss of land that may have happened centuries ago one of the strongest justifications for going to war? I will draw examples from primary and secondary research on the Balkans, especially the legacy of the Treaty of Lausanne (1923) which resulted in a large-scale exchange of population between Greece and Turkey.

                In the proposed paper, I will focus on the concept of loss and the legacy of loss, which constitute key organizing principles in how we write history. I will examinine the legacy of loss of place, ranging in scale from the dwelling to the home country. In Remapping Memory: The Politics of TimeSpace (1994), Jonathan Boyarin argued for the reincorporation of space into the study of history. By considering time and space together, we can recast the study of the nation-state, still rooted in “notions of fixed and unchanging geography” (p. 2). Nevertheless, the study of place as an agent of historical development has received only cursory attention till now both among historians and scholars of memory.