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2020 WINTER IKS Special Lecture Series: The Memory of Wartime Sexual Violence, Space of Postmemory Generation

Poster Comfort Women

Poster Comfort Women

Since the 1990s, wartime sexual violence such as Kosovo war rape, forced sex work in Nazi’s military and concentration camp, and Japanese military “comfort women” during World War II have become “transnational memory”. It implies that the memory of these crimes and tragedies is no longer limited to those who perpetrated or endured them directly, but belongs to all who have lived or live in this world in the period from the end of the war to the present day. Numerous memorials and statues which have erected since 2010 in the world are the attempts to call attention to the engagement of postmemory generation with the memory of wartime sexual violence. They often have become literally “battleground” where diverse and even opposing viewpoints compete and conflict. To give a recent example, “girl statue” representing “comfort women” in Berlin was ordered to remove by Berlin Mitte Office with doubtful reasons. Moreover, in our era, this sort of memorial space is not limited to tangible material but included intangible field. This special lecture series explore the politics of memorial space for wartime sexual violence focused on transnational postmemory generation.