Performing Emotional Histories: Centenary Commemorations and Memories of the First World War.

One Hundred years on, the First World War continues to play a prominent role in British cultural memory. It was known as 'the war to end war' but the unexpected scale of causalities and the destruction of full-scale industrial warfare resulted in the events of 1914-18 becoming seared into the British popular memory. Representations of the war have shifted over time, but one of the dominant narratives since the late 1950s has been that of tragedy. In contrast with the popular memory of the Second World War this was not Britain's 'finest hour'; it was 'lions led by donkeys'. Despite various recent attempts to reconceptualise the war as a strategic military victory, the dominant perception is that Britain was drawn into a conflict for reasons most did not understand, where brave men were lead by incompetent officers, and many men were left with physical and mental scars.
A turn toward affect within historiography, coupled with an interest in the psychological and affective representations of the First World War have produced a fertile atmosphere for new styles of commemorative activity and the exploration of new narratives. The commemorative activity surrounding the centenary of the First World War has included a significant amount of performance art-based commemoration that draws on elements of re-enactment (hereafter 'performative re-enactment'), and stimulates affective engagement with both performers and their audiences. While based in the study of history and memory, this research will take an interdisciplinary approach to performance-based commemorations of the First World War throughout the centenary years of 2014-2018.
Questions
As the First World War moves out of living memory why has performative re-enactment become an increasingly popular mode of commemoration during the centenary years, and what is its contribution to the wider cultural memory of World War One?
Has the wider cultural shift towards an emphasis on experience and emotion opened up new possibilities through which our understanding of the uses of the past in the present can be enhanced through performative re-enactment?
What is the relationship between the individual subjective embodied experience of performative re-enactment and the transmission of collective memory?
To what extent do performative re-enactments challenge, or conform to, the dominant cultural memories of the First World War, and what is the relationship between such performances and the wider debates surrounding the remembrance of the First World War?
Aims
To explore the relationship between the embodied experiences of performative re-enactment as a mode commemoration, and the circulation of historical knowledge and cultural memory between participants and audiences during the centenary years of 2014-2018.
To determine whether performative re-enactments can be viewed as an attempt to inscribe past events from communicative memory into cultural memory, or, alternatively put, as a way of trying to maintain the intimate bonds of communicative memory, lost as generations die out.