Cosmopolitan normalisation? The Culture of Remembrance of World War II and the Holocaust in Unified Germany

Abstract

自1990年代以來，整合東德和西德的集體與個人記憶，一直是德國必須處理的棘手課題。對加害歷史的記憶，在公共領域中較為顯著；不過，關於德國受害的記憶也得到了更高度的關注。同時，歐洲逐漸成為在論及國家文化記憶時所參照的對象。這些發展受到種種後國家因素的影響，譬如歐洲化及國際化所帶來之不同層面的衝擊，以及多元文化在社會文化上產生的影響等。然而，記憶文化在德國也同時出現了一股再國家化（renationalisation）和正常化（normalisation）的強勁潮流。1990－2010年這二十年間，在記憶文化中，「他者」一方面得到了積極的肯定，卻也因為再國家化的趨勢而被排斥在外，相關研究者將這個過程稱為記憶的普世化（cosmopolitanisation）。本文從歷時性的角度評估1990年代以來，這種普世化的過程在德國關於二戰及戰後餘波的記憶文化中實際運作的初步結果。

Since the 1990s, Germany has dealt with the difficult integration of collective and individual memories from East and West Germany. Alongside the publicly more prominent remembrances of perpetration has occurred an upsurge in the memories of German suffering. At the same time, Europe has increasingly become a point of reference for national cultures of remembrance. These developments have been influenced by post-national factors such as Europeanisation and transnationalisation along with the emergence of a more multicultural society. However, there have also been strong trends toward renationalisation and normalisation. The last twenty years have witnessed a type of interaction with the `other` as constructively recognised; while at the same time it is also excluded by renationalising trends. Researchers have described the combination of the latter two trends as the cosmopolitanisation of memory. This article adopts the diachronic perspective to assess the preliminary results since 1990 of the actual working of this cosmopolitanisation process within the culture of remembrance of World War II and its aftermath in Germany.