[AFT Fall ’21] An Age of Commemoration
What kind of ancestors will we be?
By P. Yang
We are in an age of commemoration in which virtually every nation, every social and ethnic group, seems to have taken part in and contributed to a collective “memorialist trend” that has emerged in various forms: an ever-growing interest in historical and genealogical research, demands for war crime tribunals and truth commission, enthusiasm for commemorative events, museums, and artworks, and criticism of official history, and much more. All these efforts aim for a general education — or enlightenment — directed to the public about what has happened in the past. At the same time, this ardent backward-looking gaze raises important questions about the power relations of politics of memory that intervene in, if not manipulate, how nations work through their past (Vergangenheitsbewältigung): Who decides what, when and for whom to remember? Why and in what ways are we expected to address the past? What characterizes the problematic, constantly-evolving relations between the past and present, and between individual memory and public/social memory? And ultimately, how much memory is necessary?
Jorge Luis Borges’ short story “Funes the Memorious” offers a curious observation on memory, and in particular, on the tricky (and largely unanswerable) question of “how much memory is necessary?” In the story, Señor Funes is able to “recall everything exhaustively” but cannot offer the slightest explanation or understanding of anything, and can only “remember… by saying ‘this is already past.’”
It is a dismal imagination of the future. Simply being able to recognize and recall the past offers no practical solution to the past (nor to the present or the future). Future ancestors are those who share a collective yet diverse imagination of the past and those who are able to produce meaningful narratives of memories. Future ancestors are those who are willing/curious to answer the question: Why do we look back to the past, in the first place?
Vladimir JankéIévitch, the French philosopher who first coined the terms “irrevocable” and “irreversible” time of history, defines historical time, on the one hand, as a stubborn past that endures in such a way that it “blurs the strict delineation between past and present and thereby questions the existence of these temporal dimensions as separate entities. The irreversible time of history, on the other hand, refers to “a transient or a fleeting past” in which there is a clear distinction between present and past, or the “dead.” To a great extent, identifying these two distinct temporal dimensions of history points to an overarching attempt to recognize the temporal relation, if there really is any, among history, memory, and justice: Is it possible to ever break free from the past, given the massive edifice of historical memory that each generation is bestowed with? If so, how can one justify forgetfulness — individually or collectively, passively or actively — of a certain event when historical truths demand a justification? If not, does history, and in particular the act of remembering it — or that of refusing to forget it — burden one with responsibility or does it release one from guilt, imposed or otherwise? These questions, I think, are left for future ancestors to answer.
P. Yang currently studies at the Harvard Graduate School of Education.
