Most studies of the politics of collective memory assume a kind of enlightenment prejudice. Confronting the memory of a collective trauma or accomplishment is seen as being the precondition of some sort of progressive action. Examples I have thought about, both as a scholar and a citizen, include: the Jewish and specifically Israeli confrontation with the Holocaust as a political precondition of “never again.” And in a parallel fashion, the German confrontation with the genocide understood as a requirement for a decent democratic society in the shadows of the Nazi regime. The need to “re-remember” the trauma of slavery in the United States, as Toni Morrison put it in her classic novel, Beloved, as a way of addressing the enduring problems of race and racism in America. The need of Poles to remember their history apart from communist ideology as a way of developing an independent democratic movement in the 70s and 80s, contributing to the great events of 1989.
An example of a memory project left undone: I remember talking to a visiting scholar from China. He was studying the Cultural Revolution with the American journalist and student of recent Chinese history, Judith Shapiro. He admired the Jewish memory work on the Holocaust and wondered why there was no similar work being done in China, confronting the atrocities of the Great Leap Forward and the Cultural Revolution. He asked me once: was there something about the Jewish and the Chinese political culture, or, at least, their distinctive collective experiences that explained these different approaches to collective trauma? The supposition was that to remember was to set one free.
Poland
Then there is Adam Michnik, Poland’s leading intellectual opposition leader in the 70s and 80s, and later after the changes of ’89, the editor of Poland’s major newspaper, Gazeta Wyborcza. And also importantly for me a personal friend and a friend and colleague of many at my university, the New School for Social Research, a frequent visitor since he received an honorary degree from us at the 50th anniversary of the University in Exile. He is memory worker, although he calls himself a historian. He uses history in special ways. He reminds his readers of something in the past and proposes it as a guide for future action, thinking between past and future, as Hannah Arendt would put it. Thus, in his classic essay “The New Evolutionism,” he remembers the so called Polish positivists of the 19th century who proposed pragmatic reform over romantic revolt, and he remembers those who joined the communist system from Catholic parties and made small differences in the post Stalinist period. He presents such memories to his readers as he proposed in 1976 a new course of resistance to the communist system, remembering the failures of 1956 in Budapest and of 1968 in Prague. He proposes not revolution from below or reform from above, but reform from below for social change. He proposed a vision of change that anticipated, even guided, the action that became Solidarność and contributed in a significant way to the democratic postscript of the Communist experience.
And I also am very much involved in what I have called the enlightenment prejudice. In my work on the relative autonomy of culture as one of the definitive structures of modernity, I have posited a positive connection between collective memory and creative independence. I studied artists who remembered the past, a variety of artistic traditions, to establish their distinctive work apart from the orthodoxies of the old regime of previously existing socialism. Solzhenitsyn used the officially available works of Tolstoy to create a new literary alternative to socialist realism (the post-Stalinist Lukacs not withstanding). Grotowski used Stanislavsky. My beloved Polish student theaters drew upon the literary and theatrical imaginations of Witkiewicz and Gombrowicz. The inherited socialist and nationalist cultural traditions available because of official support for a dominant interpretation, the officially supported collective memory of the cultural past, provided the grounds for critical creative innovation. One of my favorite quotes comes from Milan Kundera. It comes from his The Art of the Novel. He asserts “The novelist needs answer to no one but Cervantes.” (Kundera, 1988, p.144) His is an argument for a specialized collective memory as the basis for artistic creation. When this is enacted a significant support for cultural freedom is constituted. I have worked with this insight repeatedly in my comparative studies in the sociology of the culture.
With such observations in mind, why then the full title of this presentation, why am I presenting a paper not only for but also against memory, when collective memory is so important for human achievements that I deeply admire and have dedicated much of my career to studying? I now turn to some details, some small things, to explain.
It has to do with a complexity of the sociology of collective memory, much examined by specialists on the topic. I am just looking at this complexity from a different point of view, not only asking how we work to remember but also how we work to forget, understanding, as has been often been observed, that memory and forgetting are two sides of the same coin.
In order to remember together, we must forget together, pay attention to some things that happened by ignoring others. And sometimes, we need, or at least want, to change what is to be remembered and what is to be forgotten. This is what Michnik was trying to work on when he came up with his politically wise counsel: “amnesty without amnesia. It is also what happens in the various memory battles over controversial exhibits that reveal hitherto unexamined aspects of the past, as for example, Vera Zolberg has studied in the case of the controversies over Enola Gay exhibit at the Smithsonian. Or, as Robin Wagner Pacifici and Barry Schwartz, analyzed in their brilliant analysis of Maya Lin’s Vietnam Veterans Memorial. People go to the memorial calling a truce in a cultural war, forgetting their differences on the War, at least situationally. They remember together a shared, though differently understood, collective experience.
In the idea of amnesty without amnesia, Michnik wanted to pretend that it is possible to have it both ways: to both remember the injustices and suffering of Polish society under communist rule, and to avoid the problems of revolutionary justice. He wanted to forgive, but not forget. There was a real practical problem with this. Poland is a complex modern differentiated society, meaning many different people, doing different things at different times. It is because of these differences that Michnik’s idea could not succeed. It required concerted forgetting that he didn’t work on. Michnik, standing in a very privileged position in society, could come up with his subtle idea, and his informed reading public, both at home and abroad (including me), were persuaded. But when he acted following his idea and was seen by a broader, differently positioned public, the meaning of his actions was understood in very different ways. He presented his subtle position, but in his actions he appeared to the less informed, the less well connected, to just forget what happened, or worse, he seemed to want people to forget what happened because he was somehow implicated in the crimes of the past. Beyond the political class, when he had his weekly meetings with his former jailers and publicly treated them with respect and deference, he appeared as one who didn’t remember and who was complicit in the injustices of the communist regime.
In a sense that was Michnik’s point. He wanted to act as if the wrongs of the past were forgotten so that the pressing problems of the present and the near future could be acted upon. Being too involved with the past would not allow for sensible action. Because he didn’t convince the broad public to willfully forget together in their actions, while they remembered what happened in the stories they told each other about theirs past, the problems of “lustration,” of purging those complicit in the communist regime, has haunted Poland ever since. Thankfully the party that was building its future around this theme of retribution has not too long ago lost in Poland’s parliamentary elections, and the progressive collective project of forgetting is again on the agenda.
Of course, I am being ironic using the phrase “progressive forgetting,” but only a bit. Looking closely at politics, looking at what I call the politics of small things, I have become very impressed by the importance of forgetting in developing a free politics. The politics of small things is a concept drawn from the political theory of Hannah Arendt and the sociology of Erving Goffman. When people meet and speak in each other’s presence, and develop a capacity to act together on the basis of shared commitments, principles or ideals, they develop political power. This power is constituted in social interaction. It has its basis in the definition of the situation, the power of people to define their social reality. In the power of definition, there is the power of constituting alternatives to the existing order of things. When this power involves the meeting of equals, respectful of factual truth and open to alternative interpretations of the problems they face, it has profound democratic capacity. As Hannah Arendt has theorized, it constitutes political power as the opposite of coercion.
Israel – Palestine
But each element of this conceptualization of micropolitics has to be worked on. It is in fact much harder than my simple formulation makes it seem. Meeting and speaking to each other, developing a capacity to act in concert is no easy matter for Israelis and Palestinians. There are the physical mechanics of occupation, which are meant to separate people, and, less apparent though no less significant, there are memory problems.
Consider scenes from Encounter Point a moving film about The Parents Circle, a Palestinian Israeli organization of bereaved families for peace. The film depicts the extraordinary side of rather ordinary people on both sides of the conflict. These are people who have lost love ones in the conflict, victims of wars, military raids, suicide bombings, terror of the state apparatus and of resistance organizations. The group members are dedicated to not having their loss used to justify a politics of retribution. It started in Tel Aviv, among a group of Israeli parents. It now has both Palestinian and Israeli branches, with the Palestinian group slightly outnumbering the Israeli one. The groups operate independently and also work jointly. Getting together, a crucial part of their endeavors, though, is not easy. Travel restrictions make Palestinian movements within Israel proper difficult if not impossible. And Israeli citizens also are restricted in their movements in the occupied territories. In the film we see a group meeting in Jerusalem. What we don’t see are the obstacles and checkpoints that had to be surmounted for the Palestinians to take part. We are shown an attempt by the Israeli group to meet a group in the West Bank, and though they finally do get through, their difficulties are clearly depicted. It includes a postscript of the Palestinian host of the gathering being arrested as a terrorist, but released from prison thanks to his Parents Circle Israeli colleagues. Road blocks, checkpoints, official regulations and fear are the group’s immediate obstacles. But memory is a more profound one.
In the report of the Jerusalem meeting we see a discussion between two families who lost their daughters to the conflict, in an anti terrorist military operation in Bethlehem and in a suicide bombing in Tel Aviv. It is a quick empathetic conversation, casual, seemingly not of profound significance. But we see more outside the meeting. We learn that the family from Bethlehem had the bad luck of driving their late model car on a shopping trip on the same day a group of suspected terrorists were driving the same model. And when their car came into view of the Israeli army, they were attacked and their daughter was killed. We see the funeral, a full martyr’s ceremony, with aggressive nationalist, almost militaristic, rhetoric and with the father actively taking part. And we see the father, later, now a member of Parents Circle, as deputy major of the city. This is a moving sequence of events. The family, of course, has not forgotten the loss of their daughter, but in their actions, they are undermining a dominant way of remembering, trying to create another way, apparently with some success. Their Israeli counterparts do the same thing. We see the father who lost his daughter to the suicide bombing go to school groups and argue not only for peace and reconciliation, but also against the linking of memory and retribution. He may not convince, but he is, at least, opening up new possibilities. Both fathers know that as they work in their own communities, they make it possible to work together, and in doing so, they are creating new political alternatives to the logic of the central authorities, by redefining their situation and acting together based on that redefinition. As I work on such politics of small things in Israel Palestine, formally named as an SSRC project “Micropolitics: Spaces of Possibility?” I am struck by the fact that working against memory, or, at least, “re-remembering,” collectively remembering in a different way, is a first act of establishing a space of possibility. This is the case in the many examples of alternative practices in the region, which I would be happy to discuss with you in the question and answer period. Representative of these in a highly dramatic way is a movement that Yifat Gutman is studying: an Israeli Jewish group that is working to remember, in Hebrew, the Nakba, the disaster, as the moment of Israeli independence is commemorated among Palestinians. As they describe themselves on their website: “Zochrot [“Remembering”] is a group of Israeli citizens working to raise awareness of the Nakba, the Palestinian catastrophe of 1948.” They go on to describe their goal: “We hope that by bringing the Nakba into Hebrew, the language spoken by the Jewish majority in Israel, we can make a qualitative change in the political discourse of this region. Acknowledging the past is the first step in taking responsibility for its consequences. This must include equal rights for all the peoples of this land, including the right of Palestinians to return to their homes.” Note how their project of coming together is pitted against memory. It is about remembering in a different way, re-remembering. It’s not a Jewish memory of the Jewish state, but a memory for an Israel for all its people.
The United States
“Re–remembering,” a notion Toni Morrison presented in her masterpiece, Beloved. She challenged the collective memory of slavery in America. When I read the book, it helped me to find my position on the ethical question of the relationship between poetry and atrocity, first opened by Adorno. I think Morrison revealed that necessity of poetry, the necessity of artistic imagination after horror. It makes an ethical political life possible. More specifically for this presentation, Morrison has helped me understand how memory works, and how working against memory is so important. Her idea about re-remembering is exactly my point in this paper. So I will conclude with how what I have said thus far applies to the American experience, and specifically how it relates to the American dilemma, race in America.
We are living through extraordinary times in the United States, markedly more hopeful than our most recent past: a Presidential election campaign in which the likely victor will be either an African American or a woman. As I wrote these words, and as I now utter them, I am revealing the problems I wish to raise. Perhaps I should have said “an African American man or a white woman?” The former coupling, “African American or woman,” assumes the normality of the white man, the latter, “African American man or white woman,” seems to emphasize the masculinity of Obama and, it is my sense, especially, the whiteness of Clinton. There is a dilemma here even revealed at the moment that the issue is raised. The politicians, the media and the public are struggling with the problem of memory and with the problem of forgetting. That is my point, and part of the struggle is to work not only on collective remembering, but also on collective forgetting, not only for, but also against memory.
How do we remember gender and racial injustices and also overcome them? This re- remembering, this for and also against memory involves tough work, work that occurs in and through interaction. When we remember the significance of race and gender, we are perpetuating their continued salience. But if we don’t pay attention, if we imagine that the significance of Obama’s and Clinton’s candidacies as being about two able people who “happen to be” a black and a woman, we don’t do any better. Clearly the moment that either of them becomes President will be of great significance beyond their personal qualities. I personally think that Clinton’s case is more complicated in that she is Bill’s wife, and for me less compelling (as many know about me). So let me discuss the issues involved more closely in the case of Obama and race.
(Written on January 23, 2008) Obama has faced a dilemma, he is running to be President of the United States, not the first black President. He needs to make appeals to the public that don’t draw attention first to race and our memories of what race means in America. His candidacy is reported in the press most often without reference to race. His opponents engage him in debate, also most often as if race were not central. All are working against memory, but it is not easy. Race matters in America and although acting as if it did not, does have situational effect, the effect does not last, because we remember.
After his surprising victory in Iowa, blacks came to realize that it just might be possible that white America might elect an African American, and started moving in his direction. Whites realized the same thing, and then suddenly the problem presented itself to the fore. It was collectively remembered. Nothing crassly racist, but Clinton, the former President, called the black candidate a kid. Clinton, the candidate, said odd things about the relationship between Martin Luther King Jr. and Lyndon Baynes Johnson. What these things meant, whether they were subtle attempts to use racial attitudes to diminish Obama’s legitimacy as a serious politician, is in the eyes of the partisan beholder, much debated in the media and by the public. In the rabid Obama camp that is my family, I (the author of The Cynical Society) am the only one that thinks that this may not have been an intentional political calculation. I actually don’t know whom this helped, perhaps Obama in the short run in South Carolina, perhaps Clinton, in the long run, on Super Tuesday. But I am here not as a talking head, not as a race track handicapper. Rather, I want to show how working against memory is an important part of political action — note how difficult it has been to work against the memory of race and racism in the campaign.
In South Carolina, the former President attacked the press, noting that his wife may lose this primary because of the African American vote and complaining that the press is being fed a line about the Clintons injecting race into the campaign. As the New York Times observed:
Mr. Clinton also suggested in public remarks that his wife might lose here because of race. Referring to her and Mr. Obama, he said, ‘They are getting votes, to be sure, because of their race or gender, and that’s why people tell me that Hillary doesn’t have a chance to win here.’
And a little further down in the same article:
Mr. Clinton said no one in the audience in Charleston had asked him about how race was being used in the campaign. ‘They [the Obama campaign] are feeding you [the press] this because they know this is what you want to cover,’ he said. ‘What you care about is this. And the Obama people know that. So they just spin you up on this and you happily go along.’
And after this, Clinton, Bill that is, made infamous comparisons between Jesse Jackson and Obama.
Yet, I still do not think that the Clintons are rabid racists, using the race card to prevail. And Obama is not a cunning advocate of black power. But as they compete in their little gestures and sound bites, in employing political tactics as usual, they reveal how race still matters, racism still exists, perhaps because, more likely it seems to me, despite, their own intentions. It matters as they appear, as they present themselves in a highly mediated social situation, and re-produce the collective memory of race in America. It is a memory worth fighting against.
To conclude with a general observation: there is power when people come together and speak and act in each other’s presence, developing a capacity to act in concert. How we manage to actually come together, recognizing each other as equals involves the difficult challenges of social interaction, working on a common definition of a situation, which often involves a re-definition. When the definition is drawn from the inherited collective memory, which is usually the case, (Erving Goffman structured his “frame analysis” around this), it is the dynamic force that constitutes memory, for better and for worse. Redefining in our actions makes re-remembering in creative ways a possibility. It makes it possible to overcome the looming repressive implications of memory. But this is a difficult political project that requires much more than Michnik’s beautiful formulation: “amnesty without amnesia,” whether this is on the European killing fields, in the lands of Israel and Palestine, or on the American campaign trail.
P.S. This project of re-remembering plays a key role in the re-invention of political culture, something which I developed in greater detail in my most recent book, Reinventing Political Culture: The Power of Culture versus the Culture of Power.
Leave a Reply