Abstract

BERMEO OSORIO, Julián David. Re-framing the social production of memory: the experience of teachers and students in two Bogota's public schools. Rev. colomb. soc. [online]. 2017, vol.40, n.1, pp.65-82. ISSN 0120-159X.  https://doi.org/10.15446/rcs.v40n1.61953.

This article questions memory as a collective practice when violence remains active in the present. As a reference it brings in the experience of high school teachers at two public schools in the city of Bogota who, with the collaboration of their students, carried out initiatives related to the memory of the armed conflict in Colombia. These are tak ing place precisely at the moment the country is holding peace talks and implementing measures for transitional justice.

More specifically, the article identifies and interprets the framework of the narratives that these educational stakeholders adopt in order to make sense of their participation in these initiatives. At first, the postulate of the philosopher George Santayana "those who do not remember the past are condemned to repeat it" is recurrently used to insert their experiences in the collaborative production of memory.

But over the course of the narration, the past, the violent present and the uncertain future converge, leading the participants to question if there is a place for non-repetition, when the current problems, linked to the historic forms of violence and the expectations of the construction of a future peace, emerge and are the focus of the discussion. Conse quently, the educational stakeholders are forced to reframe their initial thoughts, to accept that knowledge of the past makes sense, when in the present actions are carried out that contribute to the transformation of the underlying contradictions of the conflict to thus prevent their cyclic reproduction.

In summary, using an analysis of interpretative frameworks, this article sheds light on the discourse practices and the battles that the specific actors must wage in concrete spaces, such as the school, faced with the contradictions imposed by a context in which the production of memory must coexist with different forms of violence.

Keywords : Bogota; armed conflict; education; social justice; interpretive frameworks; collective memory; peace; violence..

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