Z: Memory Politics in Youth Activism in the Greek 1960s

The Lambrakis Youth Movement in early 1960s Greece, although grounded in the nation’s post-Civil War political and social framework and oriented toward the future—trying to create a society of freedom, national independence, and social justice—nevertheless made memory and memory work an important aspect of its activism. More specifically, the Youth Movement cultivated a new memory and historical culture, and it was only through this process that the imagining of an alternative political and social future became possible. Memory is important not only for its symbolic content but for its relationship to the emergence of new identities.