Mediations of Outrage: How Violence Against Demonstrators is Remembered

Abstract

This paper examines how the memory of violence against demonstrators is culturally produced. In line with cultural theories of trauma, it assumes that the collective meaning of violence is socially mediated. However, it critiques the primacy of trauma as an analytic frame because its gravitation towards victimhood and negativity occludes the dynamic of action and reaction that defines contentious politics. Drawing on cultural memory studies to identify complex processes of mediation and remediation that render some events more memorable then others, the paper shows how the memory of outrages committed against demonstrators is made meaningful and imbued with a mobilizing capacity.