Abstract
This afterword asks why it is that the social within social movement studies, cultural memory studies and digital media studies tends to dominate and occupy a place of conceptual centrality and significance that remains opaque. To problematise this, I develop a sense of what I term the antisocial memory assemblage, suggesting the need to surface the antithesis of connection and all that is social. How are digital media platforms disruptive and destructive, far from engendering the social? In what ways are cultural memories of social movements necessarily social? Are political movements sometimes antisocial and disconnected? I look at how the social and antisocial may queer our understanding of sociality and refer positively to being disconnected and isolated; of being alone; as well as highlighting how being socially connected can also lead to non-progressive, divisive, disruptive and destructive political movements. I re-examine the studies in this book through questioning the assumptions held in relation to the social and the critical interplays in this particular volume between social movements, cultural memory and digital media.
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Reading, A. (2020). Afterword/Afterweb: The Antisocial Memory Assemblage. In: Merrill, S., Keightley, E., Daphi, P. (eds) Social Movements, Cultural Memory and Digital Media. Palgrave Macmillan Memory Studies. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-32827-6_11
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-32827-6_11
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