Overkoepelende teksten
Aleida Assman, ‘Memory, Individual and Collective’ (2006)
Vanaf de jaren 1980 ontwikkeld een nieuwe en acute interesse in herinnering en het
verleden, mogelijke verklaringen hiervoor zijn:
- Afbraak van de ‘grand-narratives’ en verandering van politieke kader met einde van
de Koude Oorlog (bijv. toegang tot archieven van ex-communistische landen)
- Postkoloniale situatie waarin mensen hun geschiedenis en cultuur willen terughalen
- Posttraumatische situaties na Holocaust en WOII door geweld etc.
- Afname van generaties die deze traumatische gebeurtenissen hebben meegemaakt,
wordt nu vertaald in mediaformaten
- Nieuwe digitale revolutie in communicatietechnologieën die informatiestromen
versimpelen.
Assmann stelt dat alleen individuele en collectieve herinnering te simplistisch gedacht is. Zij
zegt dat er vier levels/formats van herinnering zijn:
1. Individuele herinnering = the dynamic medium for processing subjective (individual)
experience and building up a social identity, interpersonal relations and the sense of
responsibility
- Psychologen hebben verschillende herinneringssystemen ontdekt in het
menselijk brein:
● ‘Procedural memory’ = slaat gewoontes op van bewegingen
● ‘Semantic memory’ = stores the fund of knowledge that is acquired
mentally through conscious learning
● ‘Episodic memory’ = processes autobiographical experiences
2. Sociale herinnering = our personal memories are generated in a milieu of social
proximity, regular interaction, common forms of life, and shared experiences. A
completely isolated individual could not establish any memory at all.
- But, we share our memory not only with family and friends, also with
contemporaries that we may have never met
- (Vb) Generational memory = tacit knowledge in a generation that can never
be made fully explicit to members of another generation
3. Politieke herinnering = zij berust op materiële media, symbolen en praktijken die in
de harten en geesten van de mensen moeten worden verankerd. De mate waarin dat
gebeurd hangt af van de effectiviteit van politieke pedagogie en patriottische/etnische
hartstocht
- Politieke herinneringen zijn sterke in etnisch homogene groepen en naties
(zoals Israël) in vergelijking met multiculturele naties (zoals VS)
- Waar individuele en sociale herinneringen in interactie belichaamd zijn, zijn
culturele en politieke herinneringen bemiddeld
- Er zijn manieren om kortstondige sociale herinneringen te transformeren in
langetermijn collectieve herinneringen = bijv. monumenten (p.8)
- (Vb) National memory = is receptive to historical moments of triumph and
defeat, provided they can be integrated into the semantics of a heroic or
martyriological narrative
, 4. Culturele herinnering = de culturele functie van het verzamelen en opslaan van
uitgebreide informatie/herinneringen in bibliotheken, musea, monumenten en
archieven die ver buiten de capaciteiten van menselijke herinneringen liggen.
- Culturele herinneringen is niet zoals de andere bipolair maar drievoudig = het
combineert herinneren en vergeten
Conclusie
- Debat over het bestaan van een collectief geheugen is zinloos, vervang ‘collectief
geheugen’ met specifieke termen als ‘sociaal’, ‘politiek’ en ‘cultureel geheugen’. Met
deze conceptuele instrumenten kan men empirisch onderzoeken hoe herinneringen
op het niveau van individuen en groepen worden gegenereerd, hoe ze door de media
worden getransformeerd en achteraf worden gereconstrueerd volgens de huidige
normen, doelstellingen, visies en projecten.
- Voorstellingen van het verleden in de publieke aandacht en verplichting stellen (bijv.
literatuur, films, monumenten, musea, etc.) kan ervoor zorgen dat respectieve
groepen ze niet alleen als historische kennis, maar ook als een "herinnering" aan het
verleden in hun zelfbeeld en identiteit opnemen.
- Mensen leven niet in de ‘ik’-persoon maar in meerdere ‘ik’-voorstellingen in
verschillende ‘wij’-groepen, elk met verschillende grenzen, principes, etc.
,Lynn Hunt, ‘History, why it matters’ (2018, H1 ‘Now More Than Ever’)
We leven in een geschiedenis-geobsedeerde periode, maar ook in angst over historische
waarheden. Dit werk geeft antwoorden op vragen zoals: wat is het doel van geschiedenis
studeren? Zijn historische monumenten opgezet om te provoceren/troosten/afleiden?
Lying
- Holocaust denial has become the model for those who want to lie about history
- The WWW has enabled historical lies to flourish
- Historians are rarely subject to for example death threats, but they often found
themselves at the center of controversy
Monuments
- Sometimes monument destruction is viewed as vandalism, or iconoclasm (see Urban
fallism text)
- Monuments commemorate, but the monuments issue can never be definitively
resolved. The (political) question is always: what should be preserved? Every case
has to be decided on its own merits, and historical research provides the context
Textbook Controversies
- History textbooks are always being revised, but that makes them more ‘omstreden’
- Throughout the 1800s/1900s most textbooks talked about triumphs, rarely about
tragedies (only exception is West Germany after 1945). That changed, due to
historians who digged into archives and produced new perspectives
- From 1950s on = more women, non-whites, etc. in higher education, which meant
more of ‘their’ histories in textbooks
Memory Wars
- Truth commissions (since 1980s) = history hearing set up to tell the truth about past
murders, imprisonments, tortures, and discrimination. They must be told if the nation
is to move forward (bijv. African TRC p.21-24)
- The recovery of history is important in every instance of transition in regimes
- History is always liable to erupt (=uitbarsten)
Public History and Collective Memory
- Public interest in history is skyrocketing, partly due to multimedia devices and
techniques such as VR and 3D/5D
- Whether of traumatic events or national triumphs, collective memories do the most
useful and enduring work of shaping identities when they are based on truthful
accounts of the past. The public deserves the most accurate possible presentations
of historical events and developments.
Beste quote uit de tekst = ‘The past is the context for the present, but it does not, by that
token, generate direct instructions.’ (p.195)
, Ludmilla Jordanova, ‘History in Practice’ (2019, H7 ‘Public History’)
This chapter examines the forms of history that reach beyond academic settings and the
diverse groups involved in creating a sense of the past
Public history is … :
- A popular history = it is seen and read by large numbers of people
- ‘History’ in many senses = for example the academic discipline, the dissemination
and display of its findings using all available media; a diffused awareness of the past
that varies from person to person, group to group
- An umbrella term
- Clearly found in museums, which have a lot of influence and knowledge. Museums
are always ‘historical’. How publics understand the past is central to political, social
and economic issues
- Diverse = especially in the media. ‘It is worth remembering that the past’s perennial
usefulness in the present underpins these phenomena; its uses encompass learning,
fun, commerce, political and emotional manipulation. Past and present are in a
perpetual dialogue.’ (p.173)
Furthermore:
- Usable past = memorials and cemeteries are complex = ‘Memorials must be seen as
representations arising in specific circumstances. It is hardly possible to be critical of
those who are commemorated’ (p.177)
- Historical genres = ‘a type of representation, whether in the form of words, displays,
pictures or film, that is governed by recognised literary, artistic or institutional
conventions, such as the novel, the monograph or local history lecture.’
● Nations exist in part by virtue of a shared, publicly available history
● Jordanova has 4 principal issues in discussing ‘public history’ = non-academic
audiences for history; general uses of the past; specific history related
displays and products’ the critical analysis of these things
- Public history and politics = ‘There is a related if looser sense in which public history
is political in that it weaves moral discourses around forms of display and accounts of
the past, which are charged with assumptions about power’. (p.182)
● The political nature of history for the public becomes clear when there are
controversies (the Troubles in Northern Ireland, bombing of Hiroshima)
● Politically involved institutions in public history = governments; museums;
industries that sell versions of the past (retro clothes, jewelry, furniture);
commissioning of books by commercial enterprises
- Biographies = to write a convincing biography the author needs sympathy with that
person. All historical account, including biographies, contain moral judgements, either
implicit or explicit
- Who owns the past? = the past is in the public domain and can be owned
● Jews should write Jewish history, and so on. But thats risky when misplaced
● All historians have ethical obligations (to be humane, accurate, self-aware,
judicious) and do not depend on those aspects of the historian’s person,
which they have little control over.
● ‘Arguably the best historians excel precisely because they can understand
conditions that are not part of their own immediate experience.’ (p.189)
- Moral judgements = public history has two facets that are pertinent (=relevant) here:
(1) it can reach mass audiences; (2) it is ‘moral’ and engages audiences’ emotions
and imaginations
