memorycide

English

Etymology

memory +‎ -cide

Noun

memorycide (countable and uncountable, plural memorycides)

1. The deliberate destruction of all traces and physical reminders of a people.
   • 2002, Lynn Meskell, Archaeology Under Fire, →ISBN:

     And we can but fear the consequence of this memorycide on the future of Lebanon.

   • 2003, Robert Gellately, Ben Kiernan, The Specter of Genocide: Mass Murder in Historical Perspective, →ISBN:

     They foreshadowed a total war against a population threatened with "memorycide," to use Mirko Grmek's terminology, as well as "Urbicide," a fundamental dimension of this memorycide, as Bogdan Bogdanovic put it.

   • 2007, Asking, we walk: the South as new political imaginary:

     I remembered the first peace activists who came with their ideas of nonviolent actions against the war already in 1991; I could evoke many images of war atrocities, tortures and moments of memorycide but also the miraculous situations of human support and actions across borders; I couldn't foget my own restlessness facing women victims of rape, their silence, their shame and their dignity.

   • 2012, Dan Stone, The Holocaust and Historical Methodology, →ISBN, page 62:

     Beyond that, the assumed project of memorycide offers a negative foil for the duty to remember and for the dedication of museums, memorials, and monuments.