CLASHING CULTURAL MEMORIES: An exploration of the political instrumentalization of cultural memory in Cyprus

Abstract

This thesis gives insight into the interplay of cultural memory, its political instrumentalization and emergent consequences by exploring remembrance and cultural memories of the ethnonational conflict in the case study of Cyprus. Therefore, this study highlights the multifaceted characteristics of cultural memory and how the past can be instrumentalized in political and everyday scenes. This study uncovers a reality-representation divide by employing the cultural memory lens. This is important since understanding the ‘constructive’ dimensions and how we perceive them relates to how we imagine the future. In the case study of Cyprus, the future of the island has the potential to hold fundamentally different futures depending on the cultural memories of the communities, some tending to divide while others to unify the different cultural memory groups. As seen in the case of Cyprus, cultural memory and narratives are the consequences of some political choices and essential variables that need to be worked on for a better future.