kult-ur, a journal dedicated to reflection on the ‘culture of the city’, explores the relationship between memory, politics and citizenship in this edition, considering that memory-related politics take place within the coexistence in the city. In other words, the politics of memory are originally located in the coexistence among fellow citizens, in contrast to the imperial exercise of political dominion. Memory occurs in this fundamental siting of citizens that is the city; hence, Hannah Arendt calls the polis “a kind of organized memory” (2003: 220). Because memory is fleeting and short lived, it needs consolidated institutional spaces in order to last beyond the act of its realisation, and within this stable space the political actors who keep the memory alive can be seen and heard in public. But remembering also implies approaching the past from “the instant of danger” (Benjamin, 2008: 307), revealing its dark sides and resisting those who want to impose the notion that the dead are just that: dead (Reyes Mate, 2009: 115).

The articles contained in this issue seek to initiate new discussions and debates about the relationship between memory, politics and citizenship. Specifically, they explore the tensions that arise between the processes of institutionalisation and the polemics in constructing memory in Argentina and Spain. […]

Guillermo Pereyra, Cood. Àgora