02251nas a2200265   4500000000100000000000100001008004100002653001800043653001700061653002300078653002100101653003400122653001100156653001500167653002400182653003400206653001400240100001900254245004600273856014900319300001000468490000700478520148000485022002001965                                       d10aShoah selfies10aDark tourism10agenealogy websites10agrievable moment10amemorials and memorialization10aMemory10aobservance10aperformative action10aremembrance and commemoration10athe Shoah1 aMarquard Smith00aObservance, Notes towards Decipherability  uhttps://www.scopus.com/inward/record.uri?eid=2-s2.0-85046791091&doi=10.1177%2f1470412918772462&partnerID=40&md5=6489ae7b31135b4a05cd058b80b757d0  a68-960 v173 aProvoked by the terrorist-related murders in England that marked the spring and summer of 2017, I have felt compelled to write this article on the idea of observance (observe, care, follow, obey). I engage with this idea in the context of our contemporary Memory Industry – that confluence of memorialization, remembrance and commemoration culture; Memory Studies and Trauma Studies; tangible and intangible heritage; digital memory and media archaeology; and its series of facing-backwards-to-go-forwards impulses (the archival impulse, the genealogical impulse and the archaeological impulse). Through the Contemporary’s prism, I deploy observance as a rejoinder to the seeming irreconcilability between, on the one hand, the incomprehensibility of the Shoah and, on the other hand, the prevalence of its rendering in figurative and abstract memorials, literature, art and film; and by way of dark tourism, Shoah selfies and genealogy websites. I propose that, because of its assorted senses, as a grievable moment observance may be a way of negotiating (without necessarily wanting or needing to reconcile) such irreconcilability. I argue that this is possible because of how observance (observing a minute’s silence, for instance) as a (secular, vernacular) performative action somehow opens up a space of the imagination that might lead, for good and ill, to a decipherability all the more necessary in our interminable state of exception that is the Contemporary.  a14704129 (ISSN)