Anand Atre is an alum of the MLA Program at Johns Hopkins University.
commentary
The Ethical Dilemmas in Collective Remembrance
Anand Atre, Johns Hopkins University
Commentaries are brief opinion pieces that are intended to introduce an idea or identify connections between works which beg for deeper investigation and analysis. Explicitly not an account of a research project or a comprehensive investigative endeavor, a Commentary in Confluence is a snapshot, a single moment from the initial encounter with an idea or connection that suggests possibilities for interrogation toward new understanding. The Commentary is an appeal to think about an idea, to consider a question, and to take up in earnest the possible conversation toward which the Commentary points.
This piece seeks to gain insight into the ethical dilemmas of collective remembrance by critiquing David Rieff’s work, In Praise of Forgetting (2016). While disputing the veracity of Rieff’s suggestion that we’d be better off forgetting, I argue that Rieff’s analysis does reveal flaws in our prevalent paradigms of nationalism and constructs of identity that should nudge us to reevaluate how we formulate and decide to use collective remembrance.
At the core of Rieff’s argument is an attack on George Santayana’s statement, “Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it.”[1] Rieff argues that if this claim is meant to be a generalization, it is “demonstrably false.”[2] Rieff supports his argument by pointing out that the special attention given to humanity and human rights after the Shoah in 1945 did not prevent the genocides in East Pakistan (now Bangladesh), Cambodia, or Rwanda.[3] Rieff contends that this violence occurred because humans are not as rational as we think.[4] In seeking to remember the past, we erroneously equate historical remembrance with historical accuracy.[5] Rieff sees this historical remembrance as nothing more than stories passed down from prior generations, creating a sense of nostalgia. For example, “Irish men and women today do not ‘remember’ the Great Famine of 1847”[6] because they did not experience it. This type of historical remembrance is a form of collective remembrance, which Rieff describes as “At best, …a consolation…while at worst it is a wallowing,”[7] which acts as a “prophylactic against common sense, political or otherwise,”[8] leading to a shared bitterness and collective hatred. Collective remembrance divided by tribal lines merely serves to escalate conflicts. Rieff’s solution is that we’d be better off trying to forget.
While Rieff argues that we do not have the rational capacity to learn lessons from the past, it isn’t demonstrably clear that his claim is accurate. Since 1945, despite having far more sophisticated and technologically advanced ways to kill each other, none of the atrocities committed has been on the scale of The Shoah. Furthermore, several scholars have made compelling arguments that although the period from 1945 has not been perpetual peace, it has nevertheless been the best time for humans to be alive.[9],[10] Accordingly, humans can learn from history; the fact that we don’t always act rationally does not mean that we cannot.
On the other hand, Rieff has made a valid criticism of our collective remembrance being akin to myths that grossly distort historical accuracy. Rieff uses the example of the Catholics in Ireland several times throughout his book. A counterbalancing example comes from the annual marches organized by the Orange Order protestants in Northern Ireland and Scotland to commemorate William of Orange’s victory over King James II in 1688 (aka the Glorious Revolution), which led to the ground-breaking 1688 Toleration Act and the concept of religious toleration. In recent years, these remembrances have evolved into an excuse for numerous participants to indulge in bigotry and hatred,[11] thus misappropriating the original purpose of the Glorious Revolution. As such, reflecting on Rieff’s critique is insightful in pointing out the shortcomings in how we currently order our societies through paradigms of nationalism and socially constructed identities, be they religious, racial, SOGI, political opinion, or any other socially constructed groups that create exclusionary conditions that alienate us from humanity.
Conceptually, the process of formulating historical remembrance resembles the foibles in using inductive reasoning via a myopic lens. David Hume famously pointed out the flaws in inductive reasoning, arguing that there is no rational or logical justification that the regularities we have observed in nature will continue to hold.[12] Nevertheless, inductive reasoning is widely used in scientific research and has proven to be a valuable tool for advancing our understanding of the world. Just as inductive reasoning used in the scientific process is adjusted through cycles of praxis to accommodate the cognitive biases used in our interpretations, there is no apparent reason why we can’t also change the methodology we use to form our collective memories to dislodge prejudicial interpretations of the past.
One proposed idea for such a change suggested by Michael Rothberg is “multi-directional memory,” which emphasizes the interconnectedness and overlapping nature of memories across different groups and events.[13] Recognizing the connections between different memory communities opens the possibility of promoting dialogue between groups and forging solidarities that challenge dominant narratives and unjust power paradigms. Through an existentialist lens, multi-directional memory provides us a path to gradually transcend toward a recognizable collective human facticity by slowly overcoming exclusionary perspectives via praxis.
Assuming Rothberg’s scheme, Rieff’s solution succumbs to the false dilemma fallacy by arguing that we can either have a divisive version of collective remembrance or try to choose to forget. However, analyzing Rothberg’s approach using the Potter Box[14] reveals its problems. Irrespective of the facts, rigid loyalties derived from constructs like nationalism and socially constructed identities hinder us from looking for mutually shared values and principles across humanity. This analysis leads one to question whether these long-established internalized loyalties can be overcome without us radically changing the way we organize societies in the world. If these blinding loyalties cannot be overcome, we must ponder whether large-scale violence and genocides caused by perennial hatred exacerbated by our competitive myths are the price we are prepared to pay to enjoy the benefits of having our different collective identities.
Ultimately, Rieff’s lack of faith in the human capacity for rational thought leads him to his solution of the relative benefits of forgetting over remembering. Rieff’s fatalistic view of humans’ capacity to work toward a better world is contestable. Still, his thought processes to substantiate his premises provide an incisive critique of the collective human condition, which raises thought-provoking questions regarding how we organize ourselves globally. Alienated competitive collective remembrances are like powder kegs ready to explode, leading to continued violence, wars, and potentially a premature end of our species.
For the more optimistic reader who believes in human agency, trying to forget is a defeatist attitude; the real leap must come from recognizing interconnectivity across our species and using that to remember differently, collectively.
Notes
[1] David Rieff, In Praise of Forgetting: Historical Memory and Its Ironies (Yale University Press, 2016), 58.
[2] Ibid., 58.
[3] Ibid., 83.
[4] Ibid., 137.
[5] Ibid., 28.
[6] Ibid., 106.
[7] Ibid., 109.
[8] Ibid., 93.
[9] Yuval Noah Harari, Sapiens: A Brief History of Humankind, Reprint edition (Harper, 2015).
[10] Steven Pinker, Enlightenment Now: The Case for Reason, Science, Humanism, and Progress, Reprint edition (New York: Penguin Books, 2019).
[11] “End the Annual Shame of Orange Order Marches,” The National, July 11, 2018, https://www.thenational.scot/politics/16345692.end-annual-shame-orange-order-marches/.
[12] David Hume, An Enquiry Concerning Human Understanding: With Hume’s Abstract of A Treatise of Human Nature and A Letter from a Gentleman to His Friend in Edinburgh, ed. Eric Steinberg, Second Edition,2 (Indianapolis: Hackett Publishing Company, Inc., 1993).
[13] Michael Rothberg, “1. Introduction: Theorizing Multidirectional Memory in a Transnational Age,” in Multidirectional Memory, by Michael Rothberg (Stanford University Press, 2020), 16, https://doi.org/10.1515/ 9780804783330-003.
[14] David Sturtz, “Defining Best Practices in Community Engagement: The Potter’s Box,” School Construction News 17, no. 1 (February 1, 2014): 23–23.