From the Editor: The Past in the Present

As I assume my responsibility as the new editor of History & Memory, I would like to warmly thank my predecessors, Saul Friedländer, Gulie Ne'eman-Arad and Dan Diner. They have made History & Memory a distinguished journal, a lively site of research and debate. This is also an appropriate occasion to outline some of the issues which I would like the journal to explore in the coming years.

Since the launching of the journal twelve years ago, memory has become an established and flourishing field of study across the human sciences. To be sure, the surge of academic interest cannot be seen in isolation from the major political upheavals of the late twentieth century, which have made issues of memory and identity central to political discourse and practice. The rapid expansion of the notion of memory in scholarly discourse went hand in hand with a growing interest on the part of political actors in the representation of the past. History & Memory has often provided timely comments on such processes. There is, however, ample scope for further rethinking our categories of analysis and scholarly practice.

"Memory" has become an all-encompassing category applied across scholarly disciplines and historical epochs. Historicizing the notions of both memory and history has been part of the agenda of History & Memory since its inception. We would hence especially welcome theoretical and methodological contributions which question prevalent notions of memory, both lay and scholarly. A debate on the uses, limitations and mystifications of notions of "collective memory," for instance, is long overdue.

By the same token, studies focusing on the particular meanings of "memory" and "history" in past cultures and on specific ways of coming to terms with the past in different historical and cultural contexts could significantly enrich our research concepts. History & Memory will continue to explore current representations of the past; it also retains its commitment to analyzing the persistent presence of the memory of the Holocaust in modern societies. But it would also seek contributions that set modern ways of representing the past in relation to premodern ones and consider how the past is reconfigured by changing technologies of communication and transmission.

History & Memory would especially welcome papers that go beyond describing monumental designs for projecting images of the past and seek to elucidate their impact and reception, or focus on the complex interactions between official designs, lay appropriations and academic discourse.

Beyond exploring representations of the past, History & Memory would give particular attention to other modes of its presence such as the material traces it leaves on the landscape, its embodiment in ways of organizing space and its imprint on patterns of perception and cultural repertoires. These may be more elusive objects of research, but their enduring impact can hardly be doubted. No less important than repre-sentations of the past are the scars it can leave in people's lives, the ways it marks their trajectories. In this context, oral history, which some studies of memory have tended to ignore, could make a significant contribution to the discussions in the journal.

History & Memory would thus seek to provide an arena for a critical dialogue between different approaches to studying the past in the present. In this task, it relies primarily on its readers and contributors.

Gadi Algazi

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