Politics of memory
Encyclopedia
The politics of memory is the political means by which events are remembered and recorded, or discarded. The terminology addresses the role of politics
in shaping collective memory
and how remembrances can differ markedly from the objective truth of the events as they happened. The influence of politics on memory is seen in the way history is written and passed on.
Memories are influenced by political and cultural
forces. Government policies and social rules, as well as popular culture
and social norms, influence the way events are remembered. In one example, German Chancellor Helmut Kohl
instituted a politics of memory for the generation born after war
. His policies reflected the belief that there was no reason to continue the guilt of the past and that the time had come for getting past the negative historical experiences. It has also been connected with the construction of identity
.
maintain widely divergent and contrasting memories
of the events that split the island. The term selective memory is applied by psychologists to people suffering from head injuries who retain some memories, but have amnesia
about others. Societal trauma, such as war, seems to have a similar affect. Recollections that are shaped out of a phenomenon common to many countries traumatized by war and repression, may be remembered in radically different ways by people who experienced similar events.
The selectivity may also serve a political purpose, for example to justify the claims of one group over a competing group. Cyprus is a poignant case for this phenomenon. The longstanding conflict on the island reflects deep roots in the "motherlands" of the Greek Cypriot and Turkish Cypriot peoples.
's actions and ethnic cleansing
pogroms during World War II
were widely condemned, especially in the Western world
that Germany is in, the country faced something of an identity crisis in coming to terms with their "misdeeds," or coming beyond a Schadenfreude
. Many condemned the past and the need to control the rise of extreme right elements (Germany's electoral laws hinder the progress of the far right as opposed to Austria
because of the need to garner at least 5% of the votes to get state support for the next elections and grow further). In this regard, such moments as the first official "Day of Commemoration for Victims of National Socialism", on January 20, 1996, led to the Bundesprasident
Roman Herzog
remarking in his address to the German Parliament that "Remembrance gives us strength, since it helps to keep us from going astray." The politics of memory (Geschichtspolitik) has occupied a central place in its self-understanding. In similar, but somewhat opposing measure, Schroeder sought to move beyond this in saying the generation that committed such deeds has passed, and a new generation does not have the same fault because they simply weren't there to be responsible. In like measure, an attempt to build an holocaust memorial as a national monument to victims of such past conflicts and beyond was met with protests. The site for the monument was a former World War II prison and a monument during the Nazi era. A statue portraying a mother grieving over a dead son was resurrected with an inscription reading "To the Victims of War and Tyranny". This, however, met criticism, with critics saying the site was inappropriate, and that the statue fails to portray the horror that Germans inflicted on their fellow citizens and on foreigners, while the inscription failed to differentiate between victims and perpetrators, a consequence of the aforementioned identity crisis
. This was also met with another exhibition on the Germans forced to migrate following the war. Consequently it led to something of a diplomatic conflict between Germany and its eastern neighbours—especially Poland—since the exhibition organisers called on Poland to pay compensation to former German owners of Polish property, while even opposing Poland's accession to the EU. The historical conflict between Germany and Poland, and the reasons behind the paradigm shift from culprit to victim in the German view of its history conflicted with the enduring and very different memory in Poland of the German occupation.
Another effect of the politics of memory in Germany was to alter the citizenship laws from an jus sanguinis
to an ius soli philosophy in recognition of the new dynamics in Germany. Such results of an open immigration policy in stark contrast to Hitler's principles pertaining to "Aryan first."
This also resulted in a reluctance to expand Germany's military from a purely defensive measure to one of peace keeping even, though not to mention the use of the military for aggressive or preemptive
measures.
has led to a lesser political fascism
, others have questioned where the politics of memory is a good thing. Is it that "Those who cannot remember the past, are doomed to repeat it
?" In other words, it has been asked if the politics of memory is a good thing. Literature in the past has largely ascertained that it is so. Looking at truth commissions and at efforts by ravaged societies to "come to terms" with the past has caused various writers, human rights
activists, lawyers, political theorists, psychoanalysts, journalists, historians, and philosophers to argue that "forgetfulness equals impunity, [while] impunity is both morally outrageous and politically dangerous." It was also argued that forgetfulness is bad, however, it is still different than proving that memory is good. It was said that memory, like everything else, could be clumsily or unintelligently used, or even used for false purposes or in bad faith. W. G. Sebald
sees the opposite end of the convention determination in showing that German amnesia surrounding the Allied carpet bombing
s of 131 German cities and towns turned many German cities into vast necropolis
es, and resulted in an estimated 600,000 (primarily civilian) deaths (less than the deaths in the Holocaust, of course), with millions of internal refugees. It was also said, however, that the politics of memory could contribute to the formation of strategies for achieving reconciliation in post-conflict situations. Ic an be used by activists, equity workers, policy analysts and academics to address existing paradigms in order to achieve some semblance of justice and reconciliation in the aftermath of deep internal conflict.
's opening story in the Book of Laughter and Forgetting is about a German official posing with other officials for a photograph in winter. The man gives his fur
hat to cover his superior's bald head and the photo is taken. Later, when he falls out of favor and is denounced and removed from official records and documents, he is even air-brushed out of photographs. All that remains of him is his fur hat.
Winston Churchill said, "History is written by the victors." The accuracy and significance of this statement is still debated.
Politics
Politics is a process by which groups of people make collective decisions. The term is generally applied to the art or science of running governmental or state affairs, including behavior within civil governments, but also applies to institutions, fields, and special interest groups such as the...
in shaping collective memory
Collective memory
Collective memory refers to the shared pool of information held in the memories of two or more members of a group, and was coined by the philosopher and sociologist Maurice Halbwachs. Collective memory can be shared, passed on and constructed by groups both small and large...
and how remembrances can differ markedly from the objective truth of the events as they happened. The influence of politics on memory is seen in the way history is written and passed on.
Memories are influenced by political and cultural
Culture
Culture is a term that has many different inter-related meanings. For example, in 1952, Alfred Kroeber and Clyde Kluckhohn compiled a list of 164 definitions of "culture" in Culture: A Critical Review of Concepts and Definitions...
forces. Government policies and social rules, as well as popular culture
Popular culture
Popular culture is the totality of ideas, perspectives, attitudes, memes, images and other phenomena that are deemed preferred per an informal consensus within the mainstream of a given culture, especially Western culture of the early to mid 20th century and the emerging global mainstream of the...
and social norms, influence the way events are remembered. In one example, German Chancellor Helmut Kohl
Helmut Kohl
Helmut Josef Michael Kohl is a German conservative politician and statesman. He was Chancellor of Germany from 1982 to 1998 and the chairman of the Christian Democratic Union from 1973 to 1998...
instituted a politics of memory for the generation born after war
World War II
World War II, or the Second World War , was a global conflict lasting from 1939 to 1945, involving most of the world's nations—including all of the great powers—eventually forming two opposing military alliances: the Allies and the Axis...
. His policies reflected the belief that there was no reason to continue the guilt of the past and that the time had come for getting past the negative historical experiences. It has also been connected with the construction of identity
Identity (social science)
Identity is a term used to describe a person's conception and expression of their individuality or group affiliations . The term is used more specifically in psychology and sociology, and is given a great deal of attention in social psychology...
.
Cyprus
The two sides in the conflict in CyprusCyprus dispute
The Cyprus dispute is the result of the ongoing conflict between the Republic of Cyprus and Turkey, over the Turkish occupied northern part of Cyprus....
maintain widely divergent and contrasting memories
Memory
In psychology, memory is an organism's ability to store, retain, and recall information and experiences. Traditional studies of memory began in the fields of philosophy, including techniques of artificially enhancing memory....
of the events that split the island. The term selective memory is applied by psychologists to people suffering from head injuries who retain some memories, but have amnesia
Amnesia
Amnesia is a condition in which one's memory is lost. The causes of amnesia have traditionally been divided into categories. Memory appears to be stored in several parts of the limbic system of the brain, and any condition that interferes with the function of this system can cause amnesia...
about others. Societal trauma, such as war, seems to have a similar affect. Recollections that are shaped out of a phenomenon common to many countries traumatized by war and repression, may be remembered in radically different ways by people who experienced similar events.
The selectivity may also serve a political purpose, for example to justify the claims of one group over a competing group. Cyprus is a poignant case for this phenomenon. The longstanding conflict on the island reflects deep roots in the "motherlands" of the Greek Cypriot and Turkish Cypriot peoples.
Germany
HitlerAdolf Hitler
Adolf Hitler was an Austrian-born German politician and the leader of the National Socialist German Workers Party , commonly referred to as the Nazi Party). He was Chancellor of Germany from 1933 to 1945, and head of state from 1934 to 1945...
's actions and ethnic cleansing
Ethnic cleansing
Ethnic cleansing is a purposeful policy designed by one ethnic or religious group to remove by violent and terror-inspiring means the civilian population of another ethnic orreligious group from certain geographic areas....
pogroms during World War II
World War II
World War II, or the Second World War , was a global conflict lasting from 1939 to 1945, involving most of the world's nations—including all of the great powers—eventually forming two opposing military alliances: the Allies and the Axis...
were widely condemned, especially in the Western world
Western world
The Western world, also known as the West and the Occident , is a term referring to the countries of Western Europe , the countries of the Americas, as well all countries of Northern and Central Europe, Australia and New Zealand...
that Germany is in, the country faced something of an identity crisis in coming to terms with their "misdeeds," or coming beyond a Schadenfreude
Schadenfreude
Schadenfreude is pleasure derived from the misfortunes of others. This German word is used as a loanword in English and some other languages, and has been calqued in Danish and Norwegian as skadefryd and Swedish as skadeglädje....
. Many condemned the past and the need to control the rise of extreme right elements (Germany's electoral laws hinder the progress of the far right as opposed to Austria
Politics of Austria
The Politics of Austria take place in a framework of a federal parliamentary representative democratic republic, with a Federal Chancellor as the head of government, and a Federal President as head of state. Executive power is exercised by the governments, both local and federal...
because of the need to garner at least 5% of the votes to get state support for the next elections and grow further). In this regard, such moments as the first official "Day of Commemoration for Victims of National Socialism", on January 20, 1996, led to the Bundesprasident
Bundespräsident
Bundespräsident is the German language title for:* The President of Austria * The President of Germany...
Roman Herzog
Roman Herzog
Roman Herzog is a German politician as a member of the Christian Democratic Union, and served as President of Germany from 1994 to 1999...
remarking in his address to the German Parliament that "Remembrance gives us strength, since it helps to keep us from going astray." The politics of memory (Geschichtspolitik) has occupied a central place in its self-understanding. In similar, but somewhat opposing measure, Schroeder sought to move beyond this in saying the generation that committed such deeds has passed, and a new generation does not have the same fault because they simply weren't there to be responsible. In like measure, an attempt to build an holocaust memorial as a national monument to victims of such past conflicts and beyond was met with protests. The site for the monument was a former World War II prison and a monument during the Nazi era. A statue portraying a mother grieving over a dead son was resurrected with an inscription reading "To the Victims of War and Tyranny". This, however, met criticism, with critics saying the site was inappropriate, and that the statue fails to portray the horror that Germans inflicted on their fellow citizens and on foreigners, while the inscription failed to differentiate between victims and perpetrators, a consequence of the aforementioned identity crisis
Identity crisis
Identity crisis is an internal conflict of and search for identity.Identity crisis may also refer to:In comics:* Identity Crisis , DC Comics seven-issue limited series...
. This was also met with another exhibition on the Germans forced to migrate following the war. Consequently it led to something of a diplomatic conflict between Germany and its eastern neighbours—especially Poland—since the exhibition organisers called on Poland to pay compensation to former German owners of Polish property, while even opposing Poland's accession to the EU. The historical conflict between Germany and Poland, and the reasons behind the paradigm shift from culprit to victim in the German view of its history conflicted with the enduring and very different memory in Poland of the German occupation.
Another effect of the politics of memory in Germany was to alter the citizenship laws from an jus sanguinis
Jus sanguinis
Ius sanguinis is a social policy by which citizenship is not determined by place of birth, but by having a parent who are citizens of the nation...
to an ius soli philosophy in recognition of the new dynamics in Germany. Such results of an open immigration policy in stark contrast to Hitler's principles pertaining to "Aryan first."
This also resulted in a reluctance to expand Germany's military from a purely defensive measure to one of peace keeping even, though not to mention the use of the military for aggressive or preemptive
Preemptive war
A preemptive war is a war that is commenced in an attempt to repel or defeat a perceived inevitable offensive or invasion, or to gain a strategic advantage in an impending war before that threat materializes. It is a war which preemptively 'breaks the peace'. The term: 'preemptive war' is...
measures.
Soviet bloc: politics of history
Although this has not received considerably coverage there have been studies to saying that the Soviet Bloc's repressions and the consequent "traumatic repercussions" deserve the same mention as that of post-World War II, which has been insititutionalized.Efficacy and moral relativity
While the German example's moral relativismMoral relativism
Moral relativism may be any of several descriptive, meta-ethical, or normative positions. Each of them is concerned with the differences in moral judgments across different people and cultures:...
has led to a lesser political fascism
Fascism
Fascism is a radical authoritarian nationalist political ideology. Fascists seek to rejuvenate their nation based on commitment to the national community as an organic entity, in which individuals are bound together in national identity by suprapersonal connections of ancestry, culture, and blood...
, others have questioned where the politics of memory is a good thing. Is it that "Those who cannot remember the past, are doomed to repeat it
George Santayana
George Santayana was a philosopher, essayist, poet, and novelist. A lifelong Spanish citizen, Santayana was raised and educated in the United States and identified himself as an American. He wrote in English and is generally considered an American man of letters...
?" In other words, it has been asked if the politics of memory is a good thing. Literature in the past has largely ascertained that it is so. Looking at truth commissions and at efforts by ravaged societies to "come to terms" with the past has caused various writers, human rights
Human rights
Human rights are "commonly understood as inalienable fundamental rights to which a person is inherently entitled simply because she or he is a human being." Human rights are thus conceived as universal and egalitarian . These rights may exist as natural rights or as legal rights, in both national...
activists, lawyers, political theorists, psychoanalysts, journalists, historians, and philosophers to argue that "forgetfulness equals impunity, [while] impunity is both morally outrageous and politically dangerous." It was also argued that forgetfulness is bad, however, it is still different than proving that memory is good. It was said that memory, like everything else, could be clumsily or unintelligently used, or even used for false purposes or in bad faith. W. G. Sebald
W. G. Sebald
W. G. Maximilian Sebald was a German writer and academic. At the time of his death at the age of 57, he was being cited by many literary critics as one of the greatest living authors and had been tipped as a possible future winner of the Nobel Prize in Literature...
sees the opposite end of the convention determination in showing that German amnesia surrounding the Allied carpet bombing
Carpet bombing
Carpet bombing is a large aerial bombing done in a progressive manner to inflict damage in every part of a selected area of land. The phrase invokes the image of explosions completely covering an area, in the same way that a carpet covers a floor. Carpet bombing is usually achieved by dropping many...
s of 131 German cities and towns turned many German cities into vast necropolis
Necropolis
A necropolis is a large cemetery or burial ground, usually including structural tombs. The word comes from the Greek νεκρόπολις - nekropolis, literally meaning "city of the dead"...
es, and resulted in an estimated 600,000 (primarily civilian) deaths (less than the deaths in the Holocaust, of course), with millions of internal refugees. It was also said, however, that the politics of memory could contribute to the formation of strategies for achieving reconciliation in post-conflict situations. Ic an be used by activists, equity workers, policy analysts and academics to address existing paradigms in order to achieve some semblance of justice and reconciliation in the aftermath of deep internal conflict.
In literature
Milan KunderaMilan Kundera
Milan Kundera , born 1 April 1929, is a writer of Czech origin who has lived in exile in France since 1975, where he became a naturalized citizen in 1981. He is best known as the author of The Unbearable Lightness of Being, The Book of Laughter and Forgetting, and The Joke. Kundera has written in...
's opening story in the Book of Laughter and Forgetting is about a German official posing with other officials for a photograph in winter. The man gives his fur
Fur
Fur is a synonym for hair, used more in reference to non-human animals, usually mammals; particularly those with extensives body hair coverage. The term is sometimes used to refer to the body hair of an animal as a complete coat, also known as the "pelage". Fur is also used to refer to animal...
hat to cover his superior's bald head and the photo is taken. Later, when he falls out of favor and is denounced and removed from official records and documents, he is even air-brushed out of photographs. All that remains of him is his fur hat.
Winston Churchill said, "History is written by the victors." The accuracy and significance of this statement is still debated.
See also
- Politics of identity
- NationalismNationalismNationalism is a political ideology that involves a strong identification of a group of individuals with a political entity defined in national terms, i.e. a nation. In the 'modernist' image of the nation, it is nationalism that creates national identity. There are various definitions for what...
- Official historyOfficial historyAn official history is a work of history which is sponsored, authorised, or endorsed by its subject. The term is most commonly used for histories which are produced at a government's behest....
- CensorshipCensorshipthumb|[[Book burning]] following the [[1973 Chilean coup d'état|1973 coup]] that installed the [[Military government of Chile |Pinochet regime]] in Chile...
- Social amnesiaSocial amnesiaSocial amnesia is a collective forgetting by a group of people. The concept is often cited in relation to Russell Jacoby's scholarship from the 1970s. Social amnesia can be a result of "forcible repression" of memories, ignorance, changing circumstances, or the forgetting that comes from changing...
- Damnatio memoriaeDamnatio memoriaeDamnatio memoriae is the Latin phrase literally meaning "condemnation of memory" in the sense of a judgment that a person must not be remembered. It was a form of dishonor that could be passed by the Roman Senate upon traitors or others who brought discredit to the Roman State...