Reading, Anna2019-09-252019-09-252011-10-272010-040143-5558http://hdl.handle.net/20.500.12424/181452"Part of what Primo Levi (2002) calls, ‘the demolition of a man’, and what the Italian philosopher Giorgio Agamben (2005) terms the reduction to ‘bare life’ during such states of exception includes a war on the public uses of the past and what can only be termed ‘nonmemory’. This non-memory is not simply forgetting or the state censoring of particular memories. It is a void in terms of the public and mediated record of events. Despite the seeming pervasive ubiquity of media, especially in developed countries, atrocities can happen with no mediated record of what took place. There may be for some period of time during and after a state of exception only the personal and private memories of those directly involved. Non-memory also involves at its core the demolition and the violation of gendered norms, boundaries and identities of a given society, as Levi’s words imply. The past is not gender neutral and neither is its public invocation in the present. This is what makes the debate about the Right to Memory and how this is gendered important."engWith permission of the license/copyright holderGender ethicsmemoryhuman dignitygendered normsCommunity ethicsLifestyle ethicsSocial ethicsFamily ethicsSexual orientation/genderIntercultural and contextual theologiesArticle