Silencing Memories (Cultural Amnesia,
Censorship, Denial) and Globalization
of Memory Discourses
Recall: Iconoclasm as a form of suppression of collective memory
•Iconoclasm vs. vandalism : deliberate destruction of images rooted in
religious, political etc. vs. Ignorant behaviour
Example: Destruction of 3rd c. A.D. Buddhas by Taleban in
Afghanistan completed March 12, 2002
Recommended readings
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Trouillot, Michel-Rolph. Silencing the Past.
Power and the Production of History. Boston:
Beacon Press, 1995.
Post, Robert (ed.). Censorship and Silencing.
Practices of Cultural Regulation. Santa Monica:
Getty Research Institute. 1998.
Eyerman, Ron. Cultural Trauma… Cambridge
U. Press 2001.
Gross, David. Lost Time. Boston: U. Mass.
Press 2000.
Historical changes in attitudes
to Memory (Gross)
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Ancient World
– Real or mythical origins
– rituals as commemoration or memory work
– Forgetting as transgression
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Objectives
– Situate self and society with respect to others
– Establish legitimacy through continuity with past
Memory in Medieval European
traditions & Modern World
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Memory was “christianized” in medieval time
– Old traditions and rituals still present but
meanings changed (ex. Christmas replaced
winter festivals)
– But societies still looked to the past
Modernity
– emphasized the “new”
– Focus on rationalism
– Notion of “progress” (every new society or
situation an improvement)
– Industrial revolution– fractured mnemonic
communities
Postmodernism & globalization
of memory discourses
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Heiddiger – forgetting as soon as possible
Awareness of mediation processes that frame
and change depictions of the past
Confusion regarding desirability of
remembering or forgetting
Reframing traumatic memories to change the
present and the future….
Collective Memory and Cultural
Trauma Discourse
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Mental capacity to retrieve information and
performed learned mental operations
Content of recollections
Location of where recollections are stored
Memory in the process of identity-formation
Past becomes present through embodied
discourse & behaviour
Collective memory of trauma as
form of Public commemoration
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Creation of social solidarity
Shared understandings provide cognitive map
to orient individuals
Defines temporal map unifying group in time
and space, distinguising between past,
present and future
Collective representations of
cultural trauma & Identityformation (Eyerman)
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Difference between individual & collective
experiences of trauma
– Not psychological or physical trauma of
individuals but loss of identity & meaning of group
that has some social cohesion
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Uses of remembrance to
– form a new group identity
– Establish solidarity amongst people with different
experiences and feelings
Definitions of cultural trauma
(Smelzer)
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Memory accepted by members of a group
Evokes an event of situation
– Laden with negative affect
– Indelible
– Threatening existence or violating fundamental cultural
presuppoisition of a society
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Trauma links past to present through mediation
processes that negotiate accepted interpretations of
the past & imaginative reconstruction
Mediation processes
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Memories not only through
direct experience
Mediated experience,
involving selective
construction &
representation (ex. Spike
Lee’s When the Levees
Broke)
Mediators as “public
intellectuals” who negotiate
between the cultural &
political spheres articulating
ideas to and for others
Mediation as “translation”
between different groups
Remembrance & Forgetting:
History & Power (Trouillot)
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Power & invisibility “the ultimate mark of
power may be its invisibility”
Distinctions between what happened and
what was said to have happened
Interplay between historical process & our
knowledge of it
Fundamental ambiguity but power of historical
accounts to produce, classify, construct…
Cultural trauma discourse
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What is the purpose of does communicating
about cultural trauma?
– Reconfigure collective identity
– Articulate the foundations for “new identities”
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Political, psychological, social agendas
– Openness to new forms and attempt to leave
other mnemonic conventions behind
– Arrive at consensus about the meaning of
traumatic situations through narrations
Fiction vs. Fact in Collective
Memory Narratives about Cultural
Trauma
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Credibility: cultural differences in attitudes
towards fictional narratives & fact
Realist vs. constructivist approaches to
assessing authenticity
Contextual factors in legitimation of narrator’s
perspective
– structural position of narrator(s)
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socio-cultural, economic, political, ideological etc…
– Role (insider or member vs. outsider or nonmember etc.)
Examples
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African American efforts to rework collective
memory through rethinking remembrance of
slavery
– Slavery traumatic but in retrospect
– Potential to unite African Americans in the US
whether or no they had any knowledge or feeling
for Africa
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Case studies for short reports—
Remembrance & making sure history not
repeated;’: Nanjing massacre, Pearl
Harbour, Salvadorian civil war etc…
Passage from Trouillot—
silencing the past
Censorship & Silencing (Post)
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Post maintians that censorship is everywhere
Different motivations for silencing the past
depending on the case & perspective of the
narrator
Importance of understanding context of
recollection or silencing
Censorship rights of Aboriginal peoples as
challenges to Western liberal thought
Second Short Report
Presentations (continued)
Second Part of Class: More
Discussion of Term
Assignment
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Handout 4
Primary & secondary sources
Class Presentation Dates for Term
Assignment (will be split in two groups)