Budapest’s Living Memorial and the Reperformance of Countermemory

Authors

Jamie L. Downing, Georgia College & State University
Jonathan S. Carter, Georgia Southwestern State University

Document Type

Article

Publication Date

1-1-2022

Publication Title

Western Journal of Communication

Abstract

Condemned as a “forgery of history,” Budapest’s “Memorial to the Victims of the German Invasion of 1944” depicts Hungary as a victim of Nazi aggression, ignoring the state’s active participation in the deportation and murder of Hungarian Jews, Roma, homosexuals, and others. Since 2014, activists have maintained the nearby living memorial, inviting visitors to leave mementoes and converse about Hungary’s past, current events, and the national future. Reperforming the official monument, the living memorial disrupts the government’s problematic revisionism. We theorize reperformance as a tool for engaging the politics of contested memory and modeling democratic culture.

Department

Communication

Volume Number

86

Issue Number

1

First Page

103

Last Page

127

DOI

10.1080/10570314.2021.2007991

Recommended Citation

Downing, Jamie L. and Carter, Jonathan S., "Budapest’s Living Memorial and the Reperformance of Countermemory" (2022). Faculty and Staff Works. 552.
https://kb.gcsu.edu/fac-staff/552