This presentation discusses youth civic subjectivity in light of historical memory and the communicative aspect of silence grasped through intergenerational relations and transmissions. Using ethnographic data gathered in six months of fieldwork in a public school in Colombia, I further explore the ways in which students face and engage with historical memory and records of silence that infuse their civic understandings, roles and future expectations with historical interpretations about the Colombian Armed Conflict. This analysis demonstrates that mnemonic transmissions entail constant exchanges of historical interpretations and self-positioning within the narrative of the conflict that are not self-evident nor automatic in contributing to political transition and national rebuilding. The interplay of silence and historical memory –not in opposition, but intertwined to each other– allow us to better understand memory as a creative process in which youth co-produce the semantics of the armed conflict and relate it to their present civic lives and decision-making. This research explores the question of what is passed over in silence and what becomes solidified and contested when silence in its various forms is taken into account for the making of historical memory and how it shapes (and is shaped by) students' subjectivities. This study challenges notions on historical transmissions as a one-way process. It also expands the vision from school-centered transmissions and formal education, to rather integrate the dynamic relations and porous boundaries between the classroom and the world beyond it.

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