Cres Manifesto for Slow Memory Scholarship

Cres Manifesto for Slow Memory Scholarship

In this era of rapid acceleration, scholars are subjected to unprecedented pressures to deliver at a pace that is unsustainable. The “boom” in memory studies and memory practice since the 1980s is one expression of this sped-up environment. We operate in systems that require the fulfillment of simultaneous roles of teacher, researcher, administrator, manager, counselor, networker and more. All of these roles are shaped by embeddedness in the regime of neoliberalism in the Anthropocene. Imperatives and deadlines of scholarship are determined by funders, institutional concerns, and administrative checklists, rather than the needs of high-quality, rigorous and engaged research. This is not only detrimental to our health and wellbeing but leads to mediocre research at best and to missing key insights about (slow) memory at worst.

Slow memory conceptualizes practices of remembrance that are ‘multi-sited’, ‘eventless’ and refer to slow-moving phenomena. But we are hampered in our ability to study these processes by a 24-hour news cycle coupled to a 24-hour academic assembly line. To succeed in this system we are expected to work at such a breakneck speed that it seems the only options are to keep the pace at an unsustainable rate or drop out. We believe there is another way that involves slowing down our research methods, processes and thinking. To this end, we propose the Cres Manifesto.

Find your island!

Engaging in research about slow-moving pasts and slow practices of remembering requires that we slow down ourselves. This presents an enormous challenge in the context of the accelerated pace of academia. To create time and space to step out of those fast-flowing currents, find and travel to an island! It can be an actual island like Cres or Portland: the act of moving there temporarily, the feeling of being on or near water, can create a shift in perspective and space to think. Alternatively, consider how you can create your own spatial, temporal or mental islands on a regular basis.

Don’t be afraid to get lost and wander!

You find the most interesting things when you go off the beaten track. In the endless treadmill of keeping up to speed with and meeting our interminable deadlines, we are obliged to set explicit and ultimately restrictive objectives. In so doing, we leave little or no scope to go off-piste and learn en-route. Slowing down and factoring in time to make the most of the unexpected discoveries of the journey will help us unearth new findings and broaden the scope of our memories and how they are shaped.

Mind the gaps and listen to the silences!

In the inherent rush to keep pace or step aside, we deprive ourselves and our research of the benefit of contingent discovery. For it is often in the cracks and chinks where the most innovative and enlightening discoveries can be made. And this is all the more the case in the realm of memory where the silenced and marginalized are all too often passed over. Being captured by the loudest voices or the seemingly brightest discoveries is a trap. Slowing down to ensure that this does not happen must be a fundamental element in our approach. 

Activate all your senses!

The slowing of our approach provides time and space for a more rounded appreciation of our environment and our relationship to it. We are therefore afforded greater freedom and scope to deploy all our senses to enrich our appreciation of the past and not just those that define stereotypical, deadline-oriented, academic expectations. We need fewer vision statements and more quiet listening. Fewer flavors of the month and more gentle aromas. We need to shout less and spend more time watching and waiting. Memory studies can benefit from an inclusion of a wider palate of sensory analysis, and how these trigger our understanding of processes from nostalgia to the recovery of forgotten pasts.

Dig where you stand!

Slowing down demands a deeper appreciation of where we are. Instead of rushing from one shallow objective to another, take the time to fully appreciate, explore, and enjoy where we find ourselves in the here and now. Engaging slowly and in greater depth with our actual environment can enhance our appreciation of it and help forge a greater level of affinity and understanding of our past. We need to learn to savor the joys of the past and carefully endure and witness the pain and distress of the world around us. This also means taking responsibility for the past, because as inhabitants of this planet, we are implicated.

Take a journey together!

A successful academic is today a lonely academic…with all the nefarious and ludicrous consequences that ensue. Equally, teamwork that merely involves a joint race to the finish is joyless and often pointless. Inculcating slowness to how we work reopens space for deep and meaningful relationships to form, develop, and flourish. Slowing down to facilitate this inherently lengthy process – not often possible in modern day academia – paves the way for the advantages that emerge from truly collaborative relationships grounded in genuine trust and mutual appreciation. Memory studies involves analyzing the connections between individual recollection and collective remembrance, and transdisciplinary memory scholarship flourishes from dynamic intellectual exchange. 

It’s not the size that matters!

Whose size is it anyway? In the metrics-driven, performance management, high-speed world of modern academia, our work (and existences) have come to be defined by key performance indicators and deliverables that have led us to lose sight of what really matters to us as researchers and as people. Step off that treadmill, slow down, and reconsider such imperatives; take the time to forge what defines the deliverables of the future and those that are really worthy of our time, energy, and sacrifice. Become immeasurable, cultivate the as-yet-undeliverable. Slowing down should not be a privilege of only experienced scholars, but should be a common goal across the board to balance top-notch research with individual and community well-being. 

Make the system work for you, not the other way around!

The modern-day academic system, with its multi-facetted, never-ending demands and expectations, obliges academics to be fast-moving cogs that serve only to keep the machine moving. But the machine is fundamentally broken. Our efforts may well keep the system afloat but our well-being and capacity to produce meaningful research (the reason we all came into this game in the first place) are compromised. Invert the model. Slow down. Prioritize what really matters. Find allies within and without. Our research in memory studies is valuable not only to academic institutions but to state and other social actors; don’t be afraid to use leverage and negotiate working conditions on your own terms.

Slow scholarship does not negate urgent action!

Our concept of slowness is not to be confused with inaction…on the contrary. We believe that our call to slow down will help us better identify and appreciate the most urgent and pressing issues of our time – particularly those that have long suffered from neglect. Furthermore, slowing down will also help us define innovative, efficient, and effective solutions to such challenges that require our most urgent attention. Slowing down is the way to properly take stock and to find the appropriate way to act. There is much to be done, and seemingly little time left to do it. And yet we must avoid the double traps of being too overwhelmed to act and rushing pointlessly towards meaningless goals.

No slow jokes!

You think we haven’t heard them all before? Really?  We can’t do any of this without humor. Let’s not take ourselves too seriously.

Table of Contents

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Future Perfect Park - Info
Chris Reynolds and Sara Dybris McQuaid

Click on each of the players to reveal pop-ups with the exhibition pieces. 

5. ????

8 March 2024, Tirana Albania. Image: Paola Williams

Red Shoes” (Zapatos Rojos) is an art project by Mexican artist Elina Chauvet. The installation features shoes painted red. It serves as a powerful reminder of women murdered or disappeared due to gender-based violence. This symbolic form of protest has become a yearly tradition in Tirana and other cities across Albania.

In Albania, 8 March is celebrated as International Women’s Day. Under Enver Hoxha’s regime, this day was given special significance, not only as a celebration of women’s social, economic, cultural, and political achievements but also as a platform for promoting women’s rights and equality. The regime’s publication, Shqiptarja e Re, was used as propaganda and a pedagogical tool, with the party-state portraying itself as the “Mother of Albania”.

Even today, 8 March is still commonly perceived as “Mother’s Day” by many, with women often celebrating at dinner parties and receiving red roses. However, in recent years, the day has taken on a deeper meaning, serving as a reflection on the ongoing challenges women face, such as femicide, gender-based violence, discrimination, and unequal opportunities in both their professional and personal lives.

Gilda Hoxha (Mediterranean University of Albania)

4. Shifting Commemorations in Spain

Image: Johanna Vollmeyer

8 March demonstrations in Spain are huge with 1000s of people on the streets. Many people participate as part of a very strong and progressive feminist movement in Spain. However, in recent years the movement has split into two parties. One in favour of the new transgender law, which is one of the most progressive in the world, while the other party is very critical of this law, being concerned about perceived disadvantages for women. For two years now, two separate demonstrations have therefore taken place on 8 March. The image is of my son on his first 8 March demonstration: there were many people (mostly, but not only, women) on the streets fighting for women’s rights, which felt empowering and encouraged me to attend in the future. This cheerful character of my first demonstration with my son has since been lost to me due to the fragmentation of the feminist movement, but I still believe it is important to continue the fight for equality.

Johanna Vollmeyer, Universidad Complutense de Madrid

3. Contemporary Kosovo

Credit: @Marshojmë S’Festojmë.

Disenchanted by mainstream gender equality rhetoric accompanying the neoliberal rationality of post-war state and nation-building, the commercialization of International Women’s Day, and its conflation with Mother’s Day, a feminist awakening and movement rose in Kosovo under the banner “Marshojmë S’ Festojmë” [“We March, We Don’t Celebrate”]. Since 2016, “Marshojmë S’ Festojmë” has staged protests every year on 8 March in Prishtina, the capital city, and other cities in Kosovo against structural inequality, gender oppression, gender-based violence, and discrimination. “Marshojmë S’ Festojmë” creates a feminist platform demanding an end to gender-based violence, equal pay, the valorization of housework, and equal rights to employment and inheritance, while promoting solidarity. It highlights the political dimension of 8 March and the memory of the international women’s struggle for equal rights and social justice. It bridges waves of feminism and the enduring memory of women’s collective mobilization for gender equality across time and space. By reconnecting with historic women’s marches, “Marshojmë S’ Festojmë” reflects the evolving times, deep-seated gender regimes, struggles for equality, and the essence of the feminist movement in contemporary Kosovo. It demonstrates the power of gender and memory in shaping events and how marching on International Women’s Day carries a temporal dimension of slow memory, an alternative imagining of a socially just future locally and globally, constantly in flux.

Vjollca Krasniqi, University of Prishtina

2. Post-Dictatorship Portugal

In 1975, one year after the 1974 revolution, women and men marched side by side for the first time to celebrate International Women’s Day. Source: Archive of “Diário de Notícias” newspaper.

In Portugal, 8 March is not a holiday and never has been. On 8 March 1975, the first International Women’s day was commemorated in Portugal with a march celebrating working antifascist women, in the aftermath of the revolution of 25 April 1974. Men and women gathered in this march that also claimed equal rights for women, as in Portugal the right to vote was only extended to every woman after the 25 April revolution. However, men and older generations in general – who actively participated in these first marches – are now distancing themselves from the contemporary marches of 8 March. Nowadays, International Women’s Day is referred to in the media, and there are marches for women’s rights and against domestic and gender violence in the main cities of the country. They reflect international agendas more than celebrate national figures, leaders or role models in women’s rights. Some people offer “their women” (friends, relatives, mothers, wives, etc) flowers but that’s a personal option – albeit increasingly promoted by media and commerce – to which, more often than not, many educated women reply “I don’t want flowers I want rights”. 

Clara Sarmento, Polytechnic University of Porto

1. Soviet Latvia

An International Women’s Day greeting card sent to Maija Spuriņa’s family by distant relatives in 1981. Typed on the front: “Greetings on Women’s Day!”. Handwritten on the back: “Warm greetings to you all on women’s day! We wish you joy and good mood! Akmentini family, in Talsi, 1981.” (From family archive)

In Latvia, 8 March is associated with the Soviet era, when it was widely celebrated in workplaces and at home. It was common to send greeting cards via post, and for men to greet women with fresh cut flowers, sweets, and small gifts. Because being a mother was seen as an integral part of women’s identity, the date also served as a Mother’s Day. Even though this date was not perceived as explicitly ideological, Soviet propaganda clearly used it to emphasize and celebrate the supposed gender equality in the Soviet Union, while the flower and gift-giving tradition to a certain extent reinforced traditional gender roles.

When the Soviet regime collapsed, Latvian society underwent extensive cultural de-Sovietization. The tradition of flower- and gift-giving lived on, but for many Latvians acquired a negative connotation due to its Soviet roots. More recently, local feminist movements have started organizing Solidarity marches on the date and thereby redefined it as a day to raise awareness of enduring gender inequalities rather than a day to receive flowers and gifts.

Maija Spuriņa (Latvian Academy of Culture)

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