For Tibetans in exile, memory is never just an act of recollection, it is how culture endures. Before such things ever made it into an institution’s files, they made their way through the home and the prayer hall, in song and in the ordinary course of talk, conveying language and faith and an abiding connection to Tibet over the years.
mandag 20. juli 2026
Can AI Preserve a Homeland in Exile? Tibetan Memory in the Age of Artificial Intelligence
In the Sonamling Tibetan Settlement outside Leh in Ladakh, I found that the most venerable memories were not to be had in any museum or archive. They were to be found in conversation. My fieldwork there put me in the company of elderly Tibetan refugees who would talk of the monasteries from their youth, the villages they put behind them and the Himalayan crossings that altered the course of their lives. Younger members of the family would be seated about them, keenly listening. Now and then, one might subtly raise a mobile phone to put the exchange on record. An unremarkable thing to do, perhaps, but with no small import. In a sense, these were more than family tales, they were pieces of a homeland being put aside for the keeping of those who have never set eyes on it.
For Tibetans in exile, memory is never just an act of recollection, it is how culture endures. Before such things ever made it into an institution’s files, they made their way through the home and the prayer hall, in song and in the ordinary course of talk, conveying language and faith and an abiding connection to Tibet over the years.
For Tibetans in exile, memory is never just an act of recollection, it is how culture endures. Before such things ever made it into an institution’s files, they made their way through the home and the prayer hall, in song and in the ordinary course of talk, conveying language and faith and an abiding connection to Tibet over the years.