2025/07/01 by Taylor Borowetz, Felix Berenskötter · 1 voice
Social Sciences · #Educator Training and Historical Pedagogy
paper · pdf · doi:10.1177/03058298251367422
openalex publication_date 2025/07/01 · openalex created_date 2025/10/10 · openalex updated_date 2026/07/22
This paper explores the connection between concepts and memories. Although the meaning-making capacity of concepts is well recognised, their role in the formation and contestation of collective memories is rarely addressed by IR scholars. To clarify this relationship, the paper discusses the mutual grounding of concepts and memories in experiences. It argues that concepts and collective memories interact in the creation of meaning and develops two heuristic angles to characterise these processes: first, it explores how concepts shape and organise the content of collective memory, and second, it discusses how collective memories impact and guide the meaning attributed to politically salient concepts. In both processes, we argue, the representation of and relation to experiences plays a key role. The paper illustrates the two angles with two examples: (1) how the use of different concepts shapes the epistemic recovery of the Haitian Revolution by historians, and (2) how the memory of the Holocaust impacts the German government’s interpretation of the concept of genocide.