George Orwell's novel 1984 raises a key question in the politics of memory: how far can the nation‐state reach into minds and reshape personal memories? Addressing it requires a theoretical framework that can encompass public and personal representations of the past. I develop the concept memory field, defined as the set of public and personal memories associated with a putatively past event, object, or situation. The memory field associated with the Kent State University massacre of May 4, 1970 exemplifies the diversity of memory, its constructed nature, its political uses, its brute qualities, and its implications for identities. I compare several additional cases drawn from the ethnographic and historical literatures, assessing the impact of the state's memory‐control tactics on personal memories. I close with a reflection on the emergent politics of memory in Donald Trump's United States.

中文翻译：

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记忆区

乔治·奥威尔（George Orwell）的小说《1984》在记忆政治中提出了一个关键问题：民族国家能走多远并重塑个人记忆？解决这个问题需要一个理论框架，其中应包括过去的公共和个人代表。我开发概念记忆领域，定义为与过去的事件，物体或情况相关的一组公共和个人记忆。与1970年5月4日肯特州立大学大屠杀相关的记忆领域体现了记忆的多样性，其构造的性质，其政治用途，其粗暴的特质及其对身份的影响。我比较了民族志和历史文献中的其他几个案例，评估了国家记忆控制策略对个人记忆的影响。最后，我回顾一下唐纳德·特朗普（Donald Trump）美国的新兴记忆政治。