MC: Wulf Kansteiner: Auschwitz as Videogame? In Search of the Future of European Self-Reflexive Memory

This masterclass explores the changing mediascape of memory with particular focus on the rise of digital technologies and the challenge they pose to traditional, linear media that have shaped collective remembering. Holocaust memory, the backbone of our official collective memories, provides the central case study of this masterclass. The session will be of relevance to researchers in memory studies, cultural history, Holocaust studies, games studies and media studies, in particular, as it explores the intersections of memory, media and technology.

The persistence of cultural engagement with violent pasts has resulted in a pervasive, self-reflexive memory landscape and mediascape, especially - but by no means exclusively - in the West. But the seemingly firmly established discourses and institutions, all part of the rush to memory since the 1970s, face significant challenges. Popular and academic memory cultures, including their self-critical late twentieth-century renditions, are the product of linear media and the catastrophes of the World War II era. Holocaust memory is a creature of film, television, the print media, and an extensive museum and memorial infrastructure. Moreover, Holocaust memory was crafted by generations whose members either experienced World War II violence first hand or had emotional ties to people who did. Consequently, our memory culture has to come to terms with two powerful, irreversible trends. People with autobiographical investment in World War II memory are quickly disappearing and the linear media of the 1980s are rapidly reframed and displaced by interactive digital networks. The contents and structures of our collective memories of violence will have to change, embracing the frightening experiment of developing fully interactive historical worlds of large-scale persecution, ethnic cleansing, and forced migration. We have to offer consumers of these digital worlds the opportunity of 3-D and 4-D geo-immersion according to their own narrative preferences in the roles of victims, perpetrators, and bystanders.

The masterclass will aim to show us, as teachers, researchers and heritage professionals, that it is our task to frame digital experiences and embed them in collective learning processes that allow digital natives and digital immigrants to join forces in deradicalization and violence prevention within learning environments. The masterclass will thus offer practical, theoretical and conceptual insights relevant to the academic classroom and beyond it in cultural and social institutions.

Recommended Reading:

• Wulf Kansteiner, "The Radicalization of German Memory in the Age of its Commercial Reproduction: Hitler and the Third Reich in the TV Documentaries of Guido Knopp,",in: In Pursuit of German Memory: History, Television, and Politics after Auschwitz (Athens: Ohio University Press).
• Wulf Kansteiner, “Macht, Authentizität und die Verlockungen der Normalität: Aufstieg und Abschied der NS-Zeitzeugen in den Geschichtsdokumentationen des ZDF,” in Norbert Frei/Martin Sabrow (eds.), Die Geburt des Zeitzeugen nach 1945 (Göttingen: Wallstein), 290-323.
• Wulf Kansteiner, “Alternate Worlds and Invented Communities: History and Historical Consciousness in the Age of Interactive Media” in: Keith Jenkins, Sue Morgan, Alun Munslow (eds.) Manifestos for History (Oxford: Routledge), 131-148.