Open AccessEnacting Remembrance Day in the Public Sphere
Author(s) -
Noor Iqbal
Publication year - 2010
Publication title -
constellations
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
ISSN - 2562-0509
DOI - 10.29173/cons9578
Subject(s) - nationalism , patriotism , ideology , public sphere , collective memory , narrative , power (physics) , representation (politics) , sociology , aesthetics , public history , history , media studies , gender studies , political science , law , politics , literature , art , physics , quantum mechanics
The form of commemoration offered by Remembrance Day ceremonies works to produce a sense of nationalist patriotism. The ‘public history’ of the nation, as a mode of self-representation, presents a particular narrative of limited scope, occluding all elements that do not fit its ideological framework. Remembrance Day simultaneously invokes and educates Canadian collective memory and public history, mediated through the contemporary power/knowledge discourse on war. The values, structure, and 'tendencies of a society' become evident in collective memory and this cultural heritage of society becomes a site at which it is 'visible to itself'.