Within the context of contemporary technological transformations, which have redefined ways of life on a planetary scale, memories historically conceived as collective in Latin America are undergoing profound mutations, reconfigurations and decouplings linked to the digitization of archives, the expansion of digital platforms, and the emergence of new spaces for the circulation of historical, political and cultural narratives. In this sense, we are witnessing a renewal of fields of knowledge through the redefinition of analytical categories, the updating of data processing, the incorporation of AI renderings, and the redesign of methodologies that reveal technodigital, automation and image-generation phenomena. This symposium proposes to examine how digital technologies, their cyberspace, and their computing and data units reconfigure practices of conserving, transmitting and mediating memory/memories in the Americas. It also aims to question inequalities in access to digital technologies in Latin America and the alternative forms of circulation of knowledge and different memories (local, indigenous, Afro-descendant, dissident, digital, etc.). It will seek to analyze how digital spaces—or cyberspace—produce new territorialities of memory/memories with a transnational, transdigital and transgenerational character. In dialogue with the congress’s axes, particularly “Tradition and Innovation: The Memories of the Americas,” this symposium seeks to bring together researchers from the social sciences, digital humanities, cultural studies, visual studies, communication, archival science and history to reflect on the political, social and cultural challenges of digital memories. Contributions may address, among other topics:
community and citizen digital archives;
memories of political violence and dictatorships in digital environments;
social media as spaces of heritage-making and collective memory;
virtual museums, collaborative platforms and digital humanities;
challenges of technological sovereignty and access to archives;
audiovisual, sound and interactive practices for transmitting memory;
artificial intelligence and new forms of mediating memory;
tensions between memory, forgetting, algorithms and global platforms;
algorithmic memories and automation;
memories “in the cloud” as emerging repositories;
the production of digital memories through new technologies (AI, big data, etc.).
This symposium will promote an interdisciplinary and comparative approach in order to contribute to contemporary debates on the relationships among memory, innovation and technologies in the Americas.
