Memory as reproductive labour : from traumatic remembrance to institutionalised victimhood

english

2025

volume 41, issue 108/109

Slovensko sociološko društvo
(Obvezni izvod spletne publikacije)

The aim of the text is to connect the idea of remembrance to that of social reproduction labour, referencing as a case study the mass graves as an outcome of the coup, the civil war, and the dictatorship in Spain since 1936. These mass graves have been the central axis for articulating memorialist discourse in contemporary Spain. The memory of the mass graves is therefore a relevant object of study. The frameworks of analysis developed by Lise Vogel, Alva Gotby, Tithi Bhattacharya, Susan Ferguson, Silvia Federici, and Hannah Proctor are applied to the results of historical and ethnographic research, which have reclaimed a way of relating to the mass graves, from mourning to monumental practices or institutional political action. The article addresses the importance of emotional labour as part of memory, and how this is a contested field in which the possibility of consciousness-raising is confronted by the state and its apparatuses, whose imperative is to reproduce the mode of production.

22.04.2026