Being on the periphery of a country's official memory culture tends to not be perceived positively. "Memory actors" often want "sites of memory" to be built in significant economic and transportation locations to not only highlight their importance, but to also magnify the structure's importance. In states grappling with how best to commemorate past crimes committed against a minority group, moreover, it is often demanded that the state in question acknowledge its past wrong by placing memorials in prominent urban locations, often in national capitals. In this line of argument, occupying a prominent location in a state's "official memory culture" makes a statement that the minority community is indeed an integral part of the nation.
However, by highlighting the example of the Peršmanhof-a former farm turned memorial site in Carinthia (Austria) dedicated to maintaining the memory of Carinthian Slovene persecution and resistance from the Second World War-my presentation argues the opposite. It is actually the remoteness of the Peršmanhof that enables a counter-memory to be manufactured and supported for the Carinthian Slovenes, a type of memory that is directly at odds with the official memory of the war in the state. I demonstrate that in contrast to European memory approaches, memory of the Second World War in Carinthia is still locked in a competitive memory dynamic between the official and the vernacular. I do not see this competitive landscape negatively, however, but rather as the prerequisite for the counter-memory to be able to develop.
