Stewards of Memory: Helping the Next Generation Navigate a Contested Past
- Frazer Macdonald Hay
- May 27, 2021
- 4 min read
Updated: Jun 10
Image: Bias Memories.......
Written by #FrazerMacdonaldHay
The Fragility of Memory in an Age of Violence and Disinformation
We are living through a time of heightened political violence, social disorientation, and the re-emergence of humanitarian crimes—often justified through distorted histories or collective silences. In this toxic and manipulative era of contested narratives, it is essential to understand not only what we remember, but how we remember—and why memory can both help and harm. If today's crises are the legacies of unresolved violence, we must ask: are we preparing future generations to face the risks of weaponized memory, or to resist its distortions?
When Memory Misbehaves: Four Key Fragilities
Memory is not a passive recording device. It is an active, malleable mental system that shapes how we understand ourselves, our relationships, and our world. Without memory, we would be unable to form identity, belong to a community, or learn from experience.
Yet memory can fail us—and others—in profound ways. While it is vital to individual and collective life, memory can also:
Perpetuate or reignite violence
Obstruct the return of internally displaced persons (IDPs)
Undermine social cohesion
Be manipulated by political leaders, media, and dominant cultural narratives
Fuel hatred, othering, guilt, and fear
In post-conflict settings, these vulnerabilities become especially dangerous. Four cognitive fragilities of memory are particularly important to understand:
Suggestibility Memories can be influenced or implanted through leading questions, comments, or external suggestions. In post-conflict contexts, individuals may unconsciously internalize politicized versions of events through social, media, or institutional channels.
Misattribution This involves assigning a memory to the wrong source—confusing fiction with fact, or attributing an anecdote to a friend that was actually read in a newspaper. Misattribution can distort collective memory, sow mistrust, or sustain falsehoods about violence or responsibility.
Persistence Some memories, especially traumatic ones, return unbidden and repetitively. These intrusive recollections can prolong personal and social suffering, even when the event is long past, and can impede healing or coexistence.
Bias Our current knowledge, emotions, or beliefs shape how we reconstruct past experiences. Stereotypical biases, in particular, reduce complex individuals to simplified group traits, fuelling inaccurate, unfair, and often dangerous assumptions.
Memory Is Not Neutral
Memory does not operate like a computer or camera. It is subjective, emotional, and socially shaped. It evolves over time, incorporating new information and influenced by context. This flexibility makes memory both a site of healing and a tool of manipulation. Recognizing its fragility is not a sign of weakness—it is an essential step toward building sustainable peace.
Research and Policy Recommendations
To address the political sensitivity and social significance of memory, especially in post-conflict societies, we recommend the following:
1. Develop a Global Programme on Memories of Violence
Create a structured international initiative to gather, authenticate, and disseminate narratives of past atrocities in ways that are locally accessible and broadly trusted.
2. Memory Recognition Through Design
Explore subtle, non-intrusive spatial interventions—urban markers, design cues, material remnants—that help communities acknowledge and engage with local histories of violence.
3. Government Engagement
Work with local and national authorities to recognize the critical role of collective memory in peacebuilding, transitional justice, and social reconstruction.
4. Balanced Memorialisation Strategies
Combine top-down institutional efforts with grassroots, everyday practices of remembering. Avoid imposing singular narratives and encourage plural, lived forms of commemoration.
5. Peacebuilding Protocols for Memory Awareness
Integrate memory literacy into peacebuilding processes. Practitioners must be trained to understand memory’s fragility, its ethical sensitivities, and its political uses.
6. Nationwide Mapping of Everyday Memory Sites
Identify and document socially meaningful everyday places—homes, schools, public buildings, religious sites—infused with memories of violence, silence, or survival.
7. Active and Reactive Archiving
Collaborate with stakeholders to create archives that reflect diverse memory categories, including:
Gendered experiences of violence
Victim vs. perpetrator memory processes
IDP, stayee, returnee, refugee, and diaspora narratives
Youth memories
Institutional perspectives (INGOs, NGOs, UN)
Temporal markers (e.g. post-2003 memory frameworks)
8. Celebrate Places of Positive Meaning
Expand public awareness of places that hold not just traumatic significance, but also resilience, solidarity, or transformation.
9. Educational Tools on Memory Fragility
Produce accessible, culturally appropriate educational materials to raise awareness of how memory works—and how it can be exploited or healed.
10. Guidance for Memorialisation Practice
Offer governments and NGOs frameworks for ethical, inclusive, and context-sensitive memorialisation, especially in contested environments.
11. A Toolkit for Memory-Sensitive Redevelopment
Move beyond binary choices—demolition, museumification, or neglect—when working with buildings marked by violence. Propose creative, layered approaches:
Preserving fragments within new structures
Embedding narratives into materials or layouts
Allowing architecture to “speak” multiple truths over time
Conclusion: Memory as Risk and Resource
Memory is fragile—but it is also powerful. In post-conflict societies, it can be a source of reconciliation or a trigger for renewed violence. Understanding its cognitive vulnerabilities and social consequences is essential if we are to prevent today's toxic legacies from becoming tomorrow's inherited traumas. In this sense, working with memory is not a backward-looking exercise—it is one of the most urgent forms of future-building we have
