The memory of grief in the Indo-Pacific space: transitional justice and nationalist construction through digital games

Abstract

Historical memory is one of the fundamental features in the formation of group identity. Authors such as Anthony D. Smith indicate that ethnicity, nation or religion are the basis of historical myths that define who belongs to a group, what it means to be a member of a group, and who the enemies are. These myths usually have a basis in reality, but they are selected or exaggerated in their historical representation. Group identity is also largely based on the memory of certain confrontations in the course of its existence. And the recourse to these past episodes can be divided into two ways: chosen glories or chosen traumas. These events are transmitted from generation to generation, whether from the family, educational or political sphere, through participation in ceremonial rituals of exaltation (joy) or sorrow. Both elements serve as a timeless link between the collectivity of a given nation, and the memory—for better or worse—as a bond of union.

This exercise in memory and identity is linked to the growing prominence of technology in recent decades, which has brought about profound changes in the communicative strategies of different state and supranational actors in international society. The contemporary fixation on strategic narratives and the need to control the media that frame how audiences perceive international actors suggest a resurgent role for soft power in the practice of statecraft. Technology is perceived as indispensable for the dissemination of certain messages, as well as for audience control and participation. Culture, values and public policy are positioned as elements of external action with the aim of persuading, influencing, shaping behaviour or pressuring foreign governments. To this end, communication strategies are designed that include educational, informative and entertainment programmes, which multiply their reach and dissemination through different formats and technological platforms. In these cases, we can speak of Technonationalism, which denotes the use of technology to promote nationalist agendas, such as in forging a stronger national identity. The memory of national heroes in the struggle against the enemy (whether in a war or as part of an anti-colonial independence process) is one of the social, cultural, political and religious identity bases of many countries. For collective memories to be functional, more important than their veracity is that they are plausible. This is achieved, above all, through intertextual references; that is, through recourse to preceding memories, and, one might say, to a canon of memory. For a place of memory to be so—and by this we mean moments of meaning-making and community—the historical whole must be perceived as authentic, which does not imply that it corresponds to the results of historical research. A rigorous and critical scientific approach to the past—as is the case with historical studies in particular—is not a prerequisite for the functioning of memory cultures. On the contrary, it can even become an obstacle. Much more important is coherence with the corresponding and already established collective memory: it is a matter of repeating what is already known. Previously accumulated information forms the conceivable framework on which all other elements operate. It is not surprising, therefore, that a growing number of countries are using the video-play format to convey to their citizens their particular vision of history and of the state's collective memory. This glorification effort, in addition to the physical space (numerous large-scale memorials with high budgets), has for years been accompanied by video games, which allow greater accessibility to state narratives.

Popular culture through entertainment can be a tool with great memorialising potential to raise awareness of traumatic events of the past in order to prevent them from being repeated and forgotten. Video games, due to their accessibility and empathetic capacity, contribute to transitional justice manoeuvres in the Indo-Pacific space.

Q.I.1: How does entertainment, through memorialisation, contribute to transitional justice in Asia? In post-conflict contexts (of which Southeast Asia is very representative), it is a primary obligation of the state to strengthen access to a system of guarantees that involves enquiry and the search for truth, through the action of the competent bodies, in order to finally do justice. In the case of democratic transition processes, achieving national reconciliation necessarily requires recovering historical memory as a collective patrimony of society, and it is important to remember that there can be no democracy without justice, nor justice without truth. The four basic pillars of Transitional Justice are: truth, justice, reparation and non-repetition. To this end, it is essential to know about the crimes and human rights violations. And, in this sense, popular culture, through its new forms of representation and narration, constitutes a very powerful and valid tool (Jeffery y Kim, 2013; Kim, 2015; Frank y Falzone, 2021; Mälksoo, 2023).

Q.I.2: Can we consider video games focusing on contemporary Indo-Pacific traumatic episodes as virtual museums of memory, and are they a suitable medium for the digital memory of grief among the new Asian generations? We will start from Vandewalle's (2023) conception that, when referring to titles such as God of War: Ragnarök, categorises them as mythological virtual museums. In our case, this epithet will be replaced by the propagandistic and educational component, a practice already visible in the video games that pay homage to the Iranian martyrs in the context of the Sacred Defence (Moreno y Moya, 2023) or those Chinese titles that reinterpret and disseminate events such as the Nanjing massacre of 1937 (Schneider, 2018).

Following the results of research on commemorative cultures (Kolek et al., 2021; Pfister y Görgen, 2020), it is plausible to think that players not only internalise mechanisms, but also the lived emotional "history" that is virtually reconstructed in the game. This makes sense, since "media are not neutral carriers of memory-relevant procedural information, [but] seem to encode what they generate and multiply: versions of reality and the past, values and norms, concepts of identity". Felix Zimmermann's model of the 'atmosphere of the past' is particularly appropriate here, since 'atmospheres are a means employed to generate certain sensations in certain contexts, such as that of authenticity in the context of historical video games' (2021, p. 25). In order to try to analyse how memory of the past is constructed and the reconciliatory and educational potential of video games such as Unfolded, Resistance War Online and Jordan Magnuson's interactive creations about Cambodia, we will also use the categories of memory proposed by Jo (2022, p. 775) for the case of South Korea: framing, accrediting and binding. We will focus mainly on framing, that is, strategies for reconstructing the past through digital media.