Politics and the Art of Commemoration: Memorials to struggle in Latin America and Spain

Memorials are proliferating throughout the globe. States recognize the political value of memorials: memorials can convey national unity, a sense of overcoming violent legacies, a commitment to political stability or the strengthening of democracy. State-sponsored memorials can also seek to silence unsavory dimensions of the past.This book explores relationships among art, representation and politics through memorials to violent pasts. Drawing on curators, art historians, psychologists, political theorists, holocaust studies scholars, and others, the book uses memorials as conceptual lenses into deep politics of conflict and as suggestive arenas for imagining democratic practice.