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This week's Inimkond seminar will be held by independent scholar Denise Thorpe, who will speak about "Multidirectional Memory in Lithuanian Velines Cemeteries". The seminar will take place on December 3rd, from 18.00 to 20.00 in room T-415 (Tallinn University Terra building). All are welcome.

Abstract:
Michael Rothberg critiques the force of what he calls competitive memory: thought and discourse that imagines that we live in a world where capacities for memory and empathy are limited by scarcity; the acknowledgement of suffering by and among one group of people necessarily limits capacity for remembrance and honoring of suffering among another group. Not only does Rothberg challenge this notion of limitation, he also challenges the lines upon which identity and memory are drawn within the imagination of competitive memory. As an alternative, Rothberg proposes multidirectional memory: an imagination and discourse that acknowledges complexity and connection in human relationships and explores the process by which memory of one form of suffering is often interwoven with or triggered by other forms of suffering. I explore Lithuanian cemeteries as sites of multidirectional memory.

Cemeteries are sacred space in Lithuania. Both public and private, the cemetery is an extension of the domestic space of family--social space where roles and relationships are negotiated and displayed. Yet the cemetery is also public, deeply inscribed by both church and state. As a predominately Roman Catholic country, most cemeteries in Lithuania are Christian spaces, yet also semi-Christian, non-Christian, even secular in the forms critiqued by Talal Asad. Cemeteries tell important truths about the nature of community in Lithuania. Since Lithuania’s re-establishment as a nation-state in the late twentieth century, the regnant historical narrative proclaims a clear and direct lineage of Baltic identity as foundational to the young nation, while also prizing a history of tolerance and welcome in the 14th and 15th centuries. The details of history are not quite so definitive. Shifting dynamics of power and affiliation, occasional alliances with neighboring countries, and struggle between the different regions now together designated "Lithuania" offer a different story. Cemeteries point to a messy hybridity often shrouded by popular narratives of clear and sharp national boundaries and notions of purity.

With a focus on material culture and particular attention to sensory regimes within ordinary practices, I draw on the work of Muslim ethicist Ebrahim Moosa and his image of the dihliz to explore the stories Lithuanian cemeteries tell us during a particular time of the year: Visu Sventuju diena (All Saints’ Day) and Veliniu diena (All Souls’ Day—the first day of an eight day octave in the Roman Catholic church calendar). The composite of names and cemetery headstones and the porousness of these spaces during the season of Velines express a significant truth about Lithuania: religious and ethnic identity remained in flux over the years. During some periods purity of language, religious affiliation, and ethnic lineage loomed large here. At other times, neighbor lived beside neighbor, different religious groups nurtured distinctive practices holding varying importance among their members, and lines of purity and ethnicity were subsumed beneath other concerns. Velines illumines this intricate and shifting web of relationships woven throughout Lithuanian history.


About the speaker:
Rev. Dr. Denise Thorpe is an independent scholar in Practical Theology, apart from being a Teaching Elder in the Presbyterian Church (USA), an attorney, and a Trained Mediator. Her doctoral dissertation, from 2013 (Duke University), was entitled "Memory on Fire: The Re-membering of the Lithuanian Body (Politic)". 
In Denise’s own words: “My dissertation draws upon practices of ethnography and theories of space, place, and material culture to explore All Souls' Day practices in Lithuania. I argue that these memory practices create porous spaces inscribed by but not under the control of the church, spaces that invite welcome and healing in a country marked by profound trauma. Lithuanian cemeteries produce opportunities for empathy and connection while also risking the repetition and re-instantiation of practices of exclusion.”
Find out more about Denise on her website/blog .


Seminar Series:
Inimkond: Current Issues in Anthropology and Beyond
full program at 

This seminar series features speakers from anthropology and related fields, and fosters discussion of their research with a transdisciplinary audience. It aims to contribute to the culture of academic scholarship and debate at Tallinn University. Speakers include both local researchers and guests from a variety of disciplinary backgrounds and with various takes on anthropological theory and methods. Presentations in the seminar series will be of interest to staff and students in anthropology, cultural theory, sociology, and history, among others.