Collective memory and narratives of the self

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Collective memory and narratives of the self

• 31/01/07

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Readings

• Ash, Timothy Garton 2004. Trials, Purges and
  History Lessons Treating a Difficult Past in
  Post-Communist Europe. In J.-W. Müller (ed.)
  Memory, and Power in Post-War Europe. Cambridge
  Cambridge University Press.
• Berdahl, Daphne 1999. '(N)Ostalgie' for the
  Present Memory, Longing, and East German Things.
  Ethnos, Vol. 642.
• Skultans, Vieda 2001. Arguing with the KGB
  Archives. Archival and Narrative Memory in
  Post-Soviet Latvia. Ethnos, Vol. 663.

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Discussion topics

• Anthropology of memory in general
• Politics of memory under communism
• Resistance and amnesia
• Politics of memory under post-communism
• Recovery, rewriting and nostalgia

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Anthropology of memory

• Memory
• short-term or working memory
• long-term memory
• Interest for anthropologists
• Study of memory
• Psychology
• How people remember?
• Anthropology
• What people remember?
• What determines what people remember?

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Anthropology of memory

• Anthropology of non-literate societies
• Myth, ritual, material objects containers of
  memory
• Broader social scientific interest in memory
• Holocaust
• Fall of communism
• Multiculturalism and globalisation
• minority vs national narratives of the past
• Collective vs individual memory?
• the term only justified on a metpahorical level

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Anthropology of memory

• Memory is selective
• Remembering ? forgetting
• structural amnesia (Barnes 1947)
• censorship of memory
• Narratives of the past are constructed
• culturally
• socially
• politically
• gt memory vs history
• gt narratives of the past are multiple

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Memory vs history

• Memory is socially constructed
• Society controls / manipulates individuals
  memories
• Halbwachs La Memoire Collective (1950)
• History is a battleground for rival attachments
• social frameworks on memory
• there is no such thing as individual memory
• the act of remembering is always social

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Memory vs history

• Memory is culturally constructed
• Remembering ? culture
• Culture filters what is remembered
• Bartlett Remembering A Study of Experimental
  and Social Psychology (1932)
• remembering of a story influenced by way of
  seeing things
• i.e. culture

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Memory vs history

• Past is culturally produced
• Hobsbawm and Ranger Invention of Tradition
  (1983)
• true cultural heritage often invented
• to maintain the feeling of continuity between
  past and present
• Eg. Scottish kilt

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Memory vs history

• Memory is politically contructed
• Means of legitimation
• to validate the status quo
• to maintain social and politcal power
• Means of resistance
• to contest the present
• a weapon in social struggle

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Memory vs history

• Memory is politically contructed
• Collective willed amnesia
• Memories are constantly revised to suit current
  identities
• Eg. restyling of Austria after WWII under
  Waldheim
• Eg. suppression of memories of Holocaust in East
  Germany
• Narratives of victimhood
• Milosevics Kosovo Polye speech in 1987

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Memory vs history

• Memory is politically contructed
• gt Past is subject to multiple interpretations
• Archaeological findings
• German archaeologists in 1940-42 in W-Poland
• Estonian / Russian archaeologists in SE-Estonia
• gt Official vs unofficial history
• Official history written by the victors
• Unofficial history counter-history
• James Scott Weapons of the Weak (1985)
• onstage and offstage behaviour
• public vs hidden transcripts

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Politics of memory under communism

• Future vs past
• Future planned
• Past problematic
• Khruschev Historians are dangerous, they have
  to be watched carefully.
• gt Offical history
• Amnesia, suppression, reinterpretation
• Past read from the present
• Soviet Encyclopedia syndrome

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Politics of memory under communism

• Alternative histories
• Oral histories individual life-histories
• memories of the first republic in 1918-40
• Soviet occupation in 1940
• WWII
• mass deportations into Siberia in 1941 and 1949
• Pamyat (1976), Solzhenitsyns The Gulag
  Archipelago
• Counter-histories
• Samizdat
• RFE, VoA

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Politics of memory under communism

• Cultural practices as reservoirs of collective
  memory
• Eg. Estonian song festivals
• nationalist in form, socialist in content
  (Brezhnev)
• Rituals ? memory
• Commemorative ceremonies (Connerton 1989)
• Repetitive
• gt reassertion of collective identity and
  solidarity
• collective effervescence (Durkheim 1912)

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Politics of memory under postcommunism

• Multiple forms of memory work
• Recovery
• Reinterpretation
• Forgetting
• Invention
• Nostalgia
• Overcoming
• gt New narratives about the past
• National differences
• Eg. Poland vs Eastern Germany
• gruba linia vs opening of the Stasi files

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Politics of memory under postcommunism

• Recovery
• Eg. Re-burial
• Verdery The Political Lives of Dead Bodies
  (1999)
• Forgetting
• Burning passports
• Tearing down statues and monuments
• Occupation museum (Tallinn)
• Statue Park (Szoborpark, Budapest)

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Politics of memory under postcommunism

• Reinterpretation
• Eg. Estonian history (Ahonen)
• The Swedes in the the 17th c
• Robber conquerors gt Founders of Tartu University
• Estonian independence 1918-1940
• Counter-revolution gt Nation state
• Arrival of Soviet troops in 1940
• An extension of happy family of Soviet peoples
  gt Soviet occupation
• Deportation of Estonians 1941 and 1949
• Blank spot gt Stalins rule of terror

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Politics of memory under postcommunism

• Overcoming the past
• Past as a ghost
• bad for nations / individuals to suppress
  memories
• (Eastern) Germany particular case
• Vergangenheitsbewältigung overcoming the past
• Geshichtsaufarbeitung working over the past
• Guilt
• Karl Jaspers The Question of German Guilt (1946)
• Eg. Vichy Syndrome, Vietnam complex

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Politics of memory under postcommunism

• Nostalgia (Berdahl)
• commodification of communism
• commercialization of memories
• indicator of socioeconomic inequality
• Renegotiation / invention
• Eg. Belarus (1991-95)

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Politics of memory under postcommunism

• Ash
• Whether, when, who, and how?
• How
• Trials
• Eg. Ceaucescu vs Honecker/Zhivkov
• Purges (lustration)
• Eg. Plats puhtaks! (Estonia)
• History lessons
• Opening of KGB, Stasi files
• Eg. Gauck Authority (Germany)

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Politics of memory under postcommunism

• Problems of memory work
• Trials, purges
• Presumption of guilt
• Judicial problems (not crimes in the past)
• Opening of police files
• Danger to national security (Bulgaria)
• Truth (and reconciliation) commissions
• perceived as victors justice
• Eg. Serbs gt International Criminal Tribunal for
  the Former Yugoslavia (ICTFY)

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Politics of memory under postcommunism

• Problems of memory work
• New master narratives
• Overlook the multiperspectivity (Ahonen)
• Contesting interpretations of events inevitable
• Ethnic, generational divisions
• Eg. Estonia
• WWII
• Tallinn liberation in 1944