What is ‘virtual Holocaust memory’?

As more Holocaust memorial and educational organizations engage with digital technologies, the notion of virtual Holocaust memory has come to the fore. However, while this term is generally used simply to describe digital projects, this paper seeks to re-evaluate the specificity of virtuality and it...

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Bibliographic Details
Published inMemory studies Vol. 15; no. 4; pp. 621 - 633
Main Author Walden, Victoria Grace
Format Journal Article
LanguageEnglish
Published London, England SAGE Publications 01.08.2022
Subjects
Bergson
digital media
virtual
Deleuze
memorialization
Holocaust memory
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ISSN1750-6980
1750-6999
DOI10.1177/1750698019888712

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Summary:As more Holocaust memorial and educational organizations engage with digital technologies, the notion of virtual Holocaust memory has come to the fore. However, while this term is generally used simply to describe digital projects, this paper seeks to re-evaluate the specificity of virtuality and its relationship to memory through the thinking of Gilles Deleuze and Henri Bergson in order to consider how both digital and non-digital memory projects related to the Holocaust might be described as drawing attention to the virtuality of memory because they bring us into critical interstitial spaces between multiple layers of pasts and present in embodied ways that encourage us to consciously recognize the movements towards temporal planes which characterize memory. After reviewing the philosophies of Deleuze and Bergson in light of collaborative Holocaust memory, this article considers a range of digital and physical memorials to assess where we might find examples of virtual Holocaust memory today. I propose that we should see the virtual as a methodology – a particular form of memory practice – rather than a medium.
ISSN:1750-6980
1750-6999
DOI:10.1177/1750698019888712