Memory work or memorialization: that which constitutes our relationship with the past. History is the past, it is what happened, and the discipline of History is the study of that past.
Memorialization can be deceptive because memory work is often couched in the language of the past and in competitive attempts to speak for the dead even though it is ultimately driven by presentist political concerns. Jan Assmann claims that remembering the dead is a universal practice across space and time. My work suggests that the reflexive and restrictive commitments produced by the mutual reconstitution of national identity and memory work are relatively recent; the quotidian political constraints that result from monopolistic attempts to limit access to the past to certain communities--that, for instance, the Zhou past can no longer serve as a political resource, an instructive past for multiple East Asian states--constitutes a historically recent constraint. It is not novel to suggest that our relationship with the past is not invariable and static; what is new is the argument that the structure of that relationship and its capaciousness has changed over time. The very power of the past to affect our present is a technology of power, and therefore a contested object for political ambition.
Philosophically, memorialization is an important mode of future-orientation, a way of positioning ourselves towards our various possible futures; hence a more inclusive memorialization can be a powerful way to construct imaginary communities across identity and nation-state boundaries. Conversely, my work suggests that memory work can be instrumentalized to further state violence, to legitimize its use of force, and to shield its expropriation and resource extraction from its citizens.
The Imjin War (1592-1598) is the first "world war" in East Asia. Fought primarily on Chosǒn Korean soil, the war has extraordinary contemporary resonance in both South and North Korea today. My first project examines this six century history of war commemoration.