“We have no memory except digital”: Introduction to the forum on the present and future of digital memory studies

Abstract

Digital memory studies (DMS) is the latest turn in the theoretical understanding of collective and cultural remembrance of the past, mediated by digital technologies, gadgets, social media, digital collectives and institutions. Having appeared in the late 2000s, the theory of digital memory has become extremely popular in recent years. Digital memory and memory in the Web are attracting the attention of an increasing number of historians, archivists, philosophers, cultural scientists, media specialists, sociologists, anthropologists and other scientists. However, the revolutionary shift in memory structures in the digital age, the current state of research and the development of DMS in the future still lack generalization and detailed discussion. In his introduction to the forum “Digital Turn in Memory Studies”, organized by the Center for the Study of Cultural Memory and Symbolic Politics of the EUSP, the author summarizes five radical transformations that collective memory has experienced in the digital era (“connective turn”, “mobile memory”, “digital archive”, “agency of digital non-humans”, “simulated interactive historical worlds”). Next, the author analyzes the main approaches to the study of digital memory in Russia in the 2010-2020s (analysis of collective memory in social media, online memorials, digital archives, medial and receptive approaches, game studies, study of adaptation and popularization of public history digital memory as a memory of the adaptation and popularization of public history digital memory as a memory of the Internet of the previous decades etc.). Referring to the answers of the forum participants, the author summarizes their opinions on concepts, methodology, and disciplinary optics in the context of DMS. Following the participants in the discussion, the author emphasizes that the future of the new DMS research field in social sciences and humanities in Russia depends not only on its institutionalization, but also on the “irascibility” and mutual “visibility” of disciplines studying digital memory in relation to each other.