The Mystery of the Missing Pandemic

In the history of medicine, the 1918 influenza pandemic (otherwise known as the Spanish flu) occupies a curious place. For decades, historians have claimed that this event reshaped human history, but then somehow disappeared, leaving little historical trace. They have also claimed that this forgetting is particularly evident in the Global South, which experienced the worst devastation. If the Spanish flu has been forgotten, what would its memorialization look like? The first part of this essay outlines the dangers of presuming a proper mode of remembering. The second part proposes an alternative: what if we take the absence of memorialization not as a lack demanding intervention but as a conceptual insight? Finally, this essay clarifies the implications of this refusal to identify the Global South as a zone of exceptional abjection—of human lives as well as of historical accounting—for our practices of remembering COVID-19. [ FROM AUTHOR] Copyright of History of the Present is the property of Duke University Press and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full . (Copyright applies to all s.)

INTERFACES OF SOCIAL MEMORY: MUSEUMS, VIRTUALITY, ACTUALITY

This work aims to present part of the master's dissertation "Interfaces of Social Memory", defended by the author in 2017, expanding the reflections, to think about the field of social memory and cultural heritage from the Covid-19 pandemic. Through the characterization of digital culture, cyberculture, cybrid culture, interface culture and memory culture, it recognizes the movement of virtualization of memory and the interface of culture that makes humanity immerse itself in screens and networks, real-time and cyberspace. It presents four museological phenomena and one memorialistic phenomenon to reflect on the virtuality/actuality of museums, and the virtual forms of memorialization emerging from cyberculture. It considers the role of the interfaces of social memory in the virtual/actual processes of musealization and memorialization since they have the potential to enable the dialogue between historical memory and living memory, absorbing the notion of place of memory and memory medium.

Memory dynamics in times of crisis: An interview with Sarah Gensburger

Working at the intersection of political science, ethnographic sociology, and contemporary historiography, Sarah Gensburger specializes in the social dynamics of memory. In this interview, she talks about her book Memory on My Doorstep: Chronicles of the Bataclan Neighborhood, Paris 2015–2016, which traces the evolving memorialization processes following the 2015 terrorist attacks in Paris, their impact on the local landscape, and the social appropriations of the past by visitors at memorials and commemorative sites. She also discusses her new project Vitrines en confinement—Vetrine in quarantena (“Windows in Lockdown”), which documents public responses to the coronavirus pandemic from different sites across Europe through the creation of a photographic archive of public space. The interview highlights issues around the immediacy of contemporary memorialization practices, the ways in which people engage with their local space during times of crisis, and how we are all actively involved in preserving memory for the future. © The Author(s) 2021.