Experiencing 11 November 2018 Commemoration and the First World War Centenary

In a unique collection of international and interdisciplinary research, this book focuses on commemorative events around the world on the same day: 11 November 2018, the centenary of Armistice Day, the end of the First World War. It argues that we need to move beyond discourse, narrative and how historical events are represented to fully understand what commemoration does, socially, politically and culturally. Adopting an experiential reframing treats sensory, affective and emotional feelings as fundamental to how we collectively understand shared histories, and through them, shared identities. The volume features 15 case studies from ten countries, covering a variety of settings and national contexts specific to the First World War. Together the chapters demonstrate that a new conceptualisation of commemoration is needed: one that attends to how it feels.

Reframing commemoration at the end of the First World War centenary: new approaches and case studies Shanti Sumartojo PART I: Cities 11 November 2018: Liège, Mons and Brussels commemorate the Great War Chantal Kesteloot and Laurence van Ypersele 2018 Armistice Day in Flanders Fields: how complex is commemoration at the end of an era? Dominique Vanneste and Gregory Ramshaw Vienna, November 7-10, 2018: A four-day journey into public commemorations of November 1918 in the Austrian republic Olivier Luminet The role of a politics of memory and the digital, in reframing the commemoration of Polish Independence Danielle Drozdzewski PART II: Sites Remembrance, participation, (re)emergence: Washington’s National Cathedral, 11 November 2018 Jeremy Foster Pozières: The never-ending war on the Somme Caroline Winter The sound of the cow: observing Remembrance Day in New Delhi Peter Stanley 9.Observing Silence: Experiential Reflections on the 11 November 2018 Armistice Day Commemorations in London James Wallis Part III: Art Pages of the Sea: A UK Case Study Emma Hanna Memorial Chairs and Transitory Fictive Kinship in the Centenary Commemoration of the End of the First World War Kingsley Baird 12 Flowers of War: 11 November 2018 at Melbourne’s Shrine of Remembrance Shanti Sumartojo Just like being there: technologies of reconstructed experience and First World War commemoration Katherine Smits Part IV: Multiplicities To be or not to be Danish? Commemorating the First World War in Denmark on 11 November 2018 David C. Harvey The 10 November 2018 Indian commemoration in Villers-Guislains in the north of France: Atmosphere and the experience of alterity Anne Hertzog and Rafiq Pirzada What is still known about 11 November 1918 by German-speaking Belgians? Christin Camia, Clara Falys, Jelena Scheider and Olivier Luminet

Shanti Sumartojo is Associate Professor of Design Research and a member of the Emerging Technologies Research Lab at Monash University, Melbourne, Australia.