In praise of forgetting

Historical Memory and Its Ironies

Bibliographic Data

ID4037889
AuthorsCaleb Lauer
Year2017
Volume93
Issue3
Pages727-728
Publication date2017-05-01
Peer ReviewedYes
Open AccessNo
TypeARTICLE
VenueInternational Affairs (JOURNAL)
Journal identifiersISSN: 0020-5850 • E-ISSN: 1468-2346
PublisherOxford University Press (OUP) (PUBLISHER)
DOI10.1093/ia/iiw015
OpenAlexW2610215866
LanguageEN
Citations received64

David Rieff argues that memory, particularly ‘collective memory’ and ‘political remembrance’, may be less beneficial to societies than conventional moral wisdom insists. Of those who argue that collective memories are the necessary moral basis of cohesive social identities; who say the memory of ‘radical evil’ can protect us from future incarnations of such evil; who claim we have a moral imperative to remember, commemorate and memorialize past atrocities, state crimes, and the dead and victimized of mass political violence—not least, for example, so ‘victims are not killed twice’; Rieff helpfully asks: what if all that is wrong? As Rieff sees it, too much of the wrong sort of collective memory can stand in the way of a modus vivendi obtaining between civilizations and within societies. Perhaps it is better not to remember too much. In making this argument, Rieff essentially renders a sophisticated unpacking of Northern Irish critic Edna Longley's suggestion for how the Irish might treat their history—that is, to raise a monument to Amnesia, and forget where it had been put

Aesthetics · Amnesia · Argument (complex analysis · Collective memory · Epistemology · Forgetting · Irish · Political science · Politics · Praise · Sociology · State (computer science · Irish and British Studies · Memory, Trauma, and Commemoration · Psychology · History · Law · Philosophy · Social Psychology

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