Identity and trauma: Two forms of the will to memory

History and Memory

Volumn 16, Issue 1, 2004, Pages 5-36

  Eyal, Gil ^a  

^a Howard Hughes Medical Institute   (United States)

Author keywords

[No Author keywords available]

Indexed keywords

EID: 61149431454     PISSN: 0935560X     EISSN: 15271994     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: 10.1353/ham.2004.0002     Document Type: Review

References (132)

1. Claus Offe, "Ethnic Politics in East European Transitions," Zentrum für Europäische Rechtspolitik, Diskussionpapier, 1/93 (Bremen, 1993), 22-23.
2. Both diagnoses-of too little or too much memory-have been made so many times that it is impossible to provide an exhaustive list of references. Examples of the first view are John Borneman, Settling Accounts: Violence, Justice, and Accountability in Postsocialist Europe (Princeton, 1997);
3. Tina Rosenberg, The Haunted Land: Facing Europe's Ghosts after Communism (New York, 1996).
4. Examples of the second view are Jerzy Jedlicki, "Historical Memory as a Source of Conflicts in Eastern Europe," Communist and Post-Communist Studies 32, no. 3 (1999): 225-32;
5. Tony Judt, "The Past Is Another Country: Myth and Memory in Postwar Europe," Daedalus 21, no. 4 (fall 1992): 99.
6. Pierre Nora, "Between Memory and History: Les Lieux de Mémoire," Representations, no. 26 (spring 1989): 7;
7. Judt, "The Past," 99. To do justice to Nora's complex argument, his is truly a middle position between too little and too much memory. While the "milieus of memory" are no more, the "sites of memory" are fast multiplying in the contemporary period. They are hybrid creatures between history and memory, depending at once on a "will to remember" and on history's dislocation of memory.
8. Natalie Zemon Davis and Randolph Starn, "Introduction," Representations, no. 26 (spring 1989): 1-6.
9. See also, Andreas Huyssen, Twilight Memories: Marking Time in a Culture of Amnesia (New York, 1995), 5.
10. I owe this observation, and many other insights that are at the core of this paper, to Ian Hacking's superb Rewriting the Soul: Multiple Personality and the Sciences of Memory (Princeton, 1995).
11. This is indeed the premise of Maurice Halbwachs, The Collective Memory, trans. Francis J. Ditter, Jr., and Vida Yazdi Ditter (New York, 1980).
12. I cannot enter here into the question of why Czech and Slovak intellectuals espoused these different visions of the social role of intellectuals. I addressed this question elsewhere, by analyzing the struggles over the social role of the intellectuals prompted by the demise of the Prague Spring in 1968. My argument was that in the course of these struggles two different coalitions of intellectuals and technocrats were forged within the two federal republics, each carrying a distinctive vision of the social role of intellectuals. For more details, see Gil Eyal, The Origins of Postcommunist Elites: From the Prague Spring to the Breakup of Czechoslovakia (Minneapolis, 2003).
13. Halbwachs, The Collective Memory, 78-80;
14. Nora, "Between Memory and History," 7-8;
15. Rubie S. Watson, "Introduction," in idem, ed., Memory, History, and Opposition under State Socialism (Santa Fe, NM, 1994), 8;
16. Jeffrey K. Olick and Joyce Robbins, "Social Memory Studies: From 'Collective Memory' to Historical Sociology of Mnemonic Practices," Annual Review of Sociology 24 (1998): 108, 111.
17. Patrick H. Hutton, History as an Art of Memory (Hanover, VT, 1993).
18. The point that the concept of "collective memory" is an added interpretation superimposed over the earlier concepts of myth, tradition and folklore is made by Noa Gedi and Yigal Elam, "Collective Memory-What Is It?" History & Memory 8, no. 1 (spring/summer 1996): 30-50.
19. Friedrich Nietzsche, On the Genealogy of Morals (New York, 1969), 77.
20. This framework is inspired by a similar one used by Foucault to analyze ethical programs. Michel Foucault, The Use of Pleasure (London, 1984), 25-28.
21. For a similar attempt to provide a conceptual framework for the analysis of memory, see Iwona Irwin-Zarecka, Frames of Remembrance: The Dynamics of Collective Memory (New Brunswick, NJ, 1994).
22. This last interpretation is common among the scholars of collective memory, of whom Pierre Nora and Anthony Smith are the most prominent. See Nora, "Between Memory and History," 7, 9, 13;
23. Anthony D. Smith, Nations and Nationalism in a Global Era (Cambridge, 1995). Thus, to the extent that they relabel as "collective memory" what earlier was called "tradition," "myth" or "folklore," and to the extent that they present memory as a bulwark against the forgetting brought about by modernity, they should be seen as themselves adding an injunction to remember to their subject matter, and as articulating a particular form of the will to memory.
24. Yosef Hayim Yerushalmi, Zakhor: Jewish History and Jewish Memory (Seattle, 1982), 5, 9, 24;
25. Amos Funkenstein, Perceptions of Jewish History (Berkeley, 1993), 11, 50-52. Funkenstein's concept of "historical consciousness" is, in many respects, analogous to my idea of a "will to memory." Funkenstein defines historical consciousness as "the degree of creative freedom in the use of interpretation of the contents of collective memory. This degree differs at different times in the same culture or at different social environments at any given time within the same culture" (ibid., 10). This concept, explains Funkenstein, mediates and overcomes the oppositions between collective memory and individual acts of remembrance, and between history and memory. It is, in short, a form of discourse (ibid., 4-10).
26. Yerushalmi, Zakhor, 34.
27. As Funkenstein notes, Yerushalmi's strict distinction here between secular historiography and religious memory is unwarranted. The Halakhah (Jewish religious law) contains a well-developed historical consciousness, while professional historians are never quite capable of separating themselves from the conventions of collective memory. Funkenstein, Perceptions, 10-11, 15-21. I chose to keep Yerushalmi's distinctions here merely for heuristic purposes, since they are simple and easy to grasp.
28. Yerushalmi, Zakhor, 10-11, 21-24. As Funkenstein shows, however, Yerushalmi was wrong to attribute such indifference to events and historical details to "Jewish memory" in general, or even to the author/s of the scriptures. This is why I preferred to focus strictly on the Haggadah, the ritual text of Passover, as an illustration of an injunction to remember coupled with indifference to historical events.
29. Hacking, Rewriting the Soul, 183-97.
30. For my purposes here, I would like to bracket questions about whether trauma and its effects are "real." I follow Nietzsche, who said that the idea of trauma, or of psychological pain, was "not a fact, but only an interpretation-a causal interpretation-of facts that have hitherto defied exact formulation-too vague to be scientifically serious-a fat word replacing a very thin question mark." Nietzsche, On the Genealogy of Morals, 129.
31. Hutton, History as an Art of Memory, 19, 26.
32. Yerushalmi, Zakhor, 44;
33. Funkenstein, Perceptions, 55.
34. Halbwachs, The Collective Memory, 83-86;
35. Nora, "Between Memory and History," 7-8;
36. Anthony D. Smith, "Memory and Modernity: Reflections on Ernest Gellner's Theory of Nationalism," Nations and Nationalism 2, no. 3 (1996): 383.
37. See also Jan Assmann, "Collective Memory and Cultural Identity," New German Critique, no. 65 (spring-summer 1995): 125-34: "The concept of cultural memory comprises that body of reusable texts, images and rituals specific to each society in each epoch, whose cultivation serves to stabilize and convey that society's self-image. Upon such collective knowledge ... of the past, each group bases its awareness of unity and particularity" (132).
38. Even an otherwise trenchant critique of the concept of "collective memory" affirms this function of providing identity and integration, but claims that memory can only perform this function for very small groups of people who share indeed similar experiences. See Duncan S. A. Bell, "Mythscapes: Memory, Mythology and National Identity," British Journal of Sociology 54, no. 1 (March 2003): 72-73, 79 n.3.
39. Nora, "Between Memory and History," 8;
40. Anthony D. Smith, National Identity (London, 1991), 33-37.
41. See n. 12 above.
42. Here I must part ways with Yerushalmi, who in somewhat qualified terms ascribes to memory the role of aiding in the survival of the Jewish people in their condition of "global dispersion." Yerushalmi, Zakhor, 5.
43. See the much more subtle discussion in Funkenstein, Perceptions, 10-13, 15-21.
44. Borneman, Settling Accounts, 23-25.
45. For more details about this group, see Eyal, The Origins of Postcommunist Elites, 120-31.
46. Vladimír Mináč, "Introduction," in Pavol Števček, ed., Slovaks and Magyars: Slovak-Magyar Relations in Central Europe (Bratislava, 1995), 7-10.
47. Dušan Slobodník, "Some Aspects of Recent Slovak-Magyar Relations," in Števček, Slovaks and Magyars, 101-12.
48. Vincent Sedlák, "The Ancient Slovak Settlement Area and Its Management until the End of the Middle Ages
49. Dusən Čaplovič, "Historical and Habitational Development in the Carpathian Basin in the Second Half of the First Millennium in the Optics of the Archeological Sources," in Števček, Slovaks and Magyars, 11-40;
50. Vincent Sedlák, "Staroslovenský sídlený priestor a dielo Profesora Rapanta" (The position of an old-Slavic settlement and the work of Professor Rapant), in Richard Marsina, ed., Historik Daniel Rapant: Život a dielo (1897-1988-1997) (Historian Daniel Rapant: Life and works) (Martin, 1998), 34-47;
51. Richard Marsina et al., Slovenské dejiny (Slovak history) (Martin, 1992), 23. For my own part, not being an expert on ancient and medieval history, I would not presume to pronounce judgment on either the truth or falsity of this claim and of those detailed below. Suffice it to say that none of these claims have been unanimously accepted by other scholars, be they Hungarian, Czech, German or American. They remain hotly contested, and at times even ridiculed.
52. Matúš Kučera, Postavy vel'komoravskej histórie (Personalities of Great Moravian history) (Martin, 1986), 36-44, 50;
53. Čaplovič, "Historical and Habitational Development," 33;
54. Sedlák, "The Ancient Slovak Settlement Area," 11.
55. Marsina et al., Slovenské dejiny, 33;
56. Čaplovič, "Historical and Habitational Development," 35-37;
57. Sedlák, "The Ancient Slovak Settlement Area," 21-24;
58. Jan Dekan, Začiatky slovenských dejín a říša vel'komoravská (The beginning of Slovak history and the Great Moravian empire) (Bratislava, 1951);
59. idem, "Vel'ká Morava a problem staromoravskej narodnosti" (Great Moravia and the problem of old Moravian nationality), Historický Časopis 20, no. 2 (1972): 173-85;
60. Matúš Kučera, "Vel'ká Morava a začiatky našich národných dejín" (Great Moravia and the beginning of our national history), Historický Časopis 33, no. 2 (1985), 163-200;
61. idem, "Vel'ká Morava a slovenské dejiny" (Great Moravia and Slovak history) in J. Poulík, Bohuslav Chropovský a Kolektiv, eds., Vel'ká Morava a počátky československé státnosti (Great Moravia and the beginning of Czechoslovak statehood) (Prague and Bratislava, 1985);
62. Stanislav Kirschbaum, A History of Slovakia: The Struggle for Survival (New York, 1995), 20.
63. Kučera, Postavy vel'komoravskej histórie, 263.
64. Čaplovič, "Historical and Habitational Development," 36-37;
65. Sedlák, "The Ancient Slovak Settlement Area," 13-18, 21-22;
66. Ján Dekan, Vel'ká Morava: Doba a uminie (Great Moravia: Period and arts) (Bratislava, 1976);
67. Matúš Kučera, "Problémy vzniku a vývoja feudalizmu na Slovensku" (Problems of the rise and development of feudalism in Slovakia), Historický Časopis 22, no. 4 (1974), 541-64;
68. Kirschbaum, A History of Slovakia, 35.
69. Kučera, Postavy vel'komoravskej histórie, 265.
70. Matúš Kučera, Slovensko po páde Vel'kej Moravy (Študie z hospodárskych a sociálnych dejín) (Slovakia after the fall of Great Moravia: Studies in economic and social history) (Bratislava, 1974);
71. Kirschbaum, A History of Slovakia, 37.
72. Kučera, Postavy vel'komoravskej histórie, 5.
73. Sedlák, "The Ancient Slovak Settlement Area," 22.
74. The localization of Great Moravia remains, indeed, a matter of grave dispute. See, for example, Henrik Birnbaum, "Was Medieval Moravia in the Hungarian Basin?" www.c3.hu/scripta/ books/96/04/04birn.htm (last accessed 16 Feb. 2004).
75. Kirschbaum, A History of Slovakia, 35-36;
76. Marsina et al., Slovenské dejiny, 33.
77. On the Slovak struggle for federalization and in its defense, see Carol Skalnik Leff, National Conflict in Czechoslovakia (Princeton, 1988).
78. It is quite telling that while Marxist Czech historians affiliated with the regime tended to hew close to the official line about "the first common state of Czechs and Slovaks," dissident Czech historians such as Dušan Třeštík tended to ridicule it. See Dušan Třeštík, "Vel'ká Morava-zemu stuhovavá" (Great Moravia-the migratory land), Lidové Noviny, 20 Dec. 1995, 8. Thus, for completely opposite reasons, the Slovak nationalist historians and the Czech dissident historians were united in opposition to the official line, a precarious unity that unraveled immediately with the fall of the regime.
79. For works that engage in rehabilitating the Tiso regime, or which seek to present the Slovaks as essentially antifascist, see, for example, Kirschbaum, A History of Slovakia, 205-23;
80. Anton Hrnko, Politicky vyvin a protifasisticky odboj na slovensku, 1939-1941 (Political developments and antifascist resistance in Slovakia, 1939-1941) (Bratislava, 1988).
81. For the history of the debate, see Dušan Kovač, "The Uprising: More Than a Tale of Long Ago," Parlamentni Kourier, nos. 7-8 (1994): 99-102.
82. For the Czech accusations, see for example the interview given by Havel's spokesman, Michal Žantovský, to Mlada Fronta, 3 Nov. 1991;
83. Milan Zitny, "Meciar's Questionable Supremacy," East European Reporter 5, no. 1 (Jan. 1992): 68.
84. Matúš Kučera, "F. V. Sasinek-Founder of Modern Slovak Historiography," Studia Historica Slovaca 13 (Bratislava, 1984), 207.
85. Jozef Jablonickí, "Boj za pravdu o povstani" (Struggle over the truth about the uprising), Parlamentni Kourier, nos. 7-8 (1994): 4-6.
86. For more details about this group, see Eyal, The Origins of Postcommunist Elites, 59-78.
87. Milan Kundera, The Book of Laughter and Forgetting (New York, 1980), 3.
88. Milan Šimečka, "Black Holes: Concerning the Metamorphoses of Historical Memory," Kosmas 3-4, nos. 1-2 (winter 1984): 23-28;
89. Richard S. Esbenshade, "Remembering to Forget: Memory, History, National Identity in Postwar East- Central Europe," Representations, no. 49 (winter 1995): 74-75, 90-91, n. 15.
90. Kundera, The Book of Laughter and Forgetting, 4.
91. On "living within the truth," see Václav Havel, "The Power of the Powerless," in John Keane, ed., The Power of the Powerless (London, 1985), 23-96.
92. Bradley F. Abrams, "Morality, Wisdom and Revision: The Czech Opposition in the 1970s and the Expulsion of the Sudeten Germans," East European Politics and Societies 9, no. 2 (spring 1995): pp. 234-55.
93. While the discussion of the expulsions was key to the dissident memory campaign, it was by no means the only "black hole" in Czechoslovak history they sought to bring to light. From 1978 to 1989 the dissident historians published 26 volumes of a samizdat journal- Historické studie (Historical Studies)-in which they researched many issues considered taboo by the party: the influence of the Catholic Church on Czech national consciousness; religious history more generally; Masaryk's social philosophy; Czech collaboration with the Nazis; Czech anti-Semitism. See Jan Křen, "Czech Historiography at a Turning Point," East European Politics and Societies 6, no. 2 (spring 1992): 152-69;
94. H. Gordon Skilling, "Czech and Slovak Independent Historical Writing, 1982-1984," Kosmas 5, no. 1 (summer 1986), 157-61;
95. idem, "Czech and Slovak Independent Historical Writing, 1985-1987," Kosmas 7, nos. 1-2 (summer/winter 1988): 213-18;
96. Šimečka, "Black Holes
97. Historian Ján Mlynárik, quoted in Abrams, "Morality, Wisdom and Revision," 251.
98. On "living within a lie," see Havel, "The Power of the Powerless
99. Hacking, Rewriting the Soul, 183-97.
100. The concept of dissimulation was brilliantly elaborated by Oleg Kharkhordin, "The Soviet Individual: Genealogy of a Dissimulating Animal," in Mike Featherstone, Scott Lash and Roland Robertson, eds., Global Modernities (London, 1995), 209-26.
101. But the canonical analysis was provided by Havel's famous "greengrocer" fable. The greengrocer hangs a sign in his shop window: "workers of the world unite!" He doesn't really believe in what the sign says, but simply uses it to signal that he is a good citizen. In this way, however, he forfeits responsibility for the truth of his public words and deeds. See Havel, "The Power of the Powerless," 31.
102. This analysis was then repeated in many of his other pamphlets and in various variations by many of his dissident colleagues. See Václav Havel, "Politics and Conscience," in Ján Vladislav, ed., Václav Havel or Living in Truth (London, 1986), 136-57;
103. Petr Fidelius (pseudonym for Karel Palek), "The Mirror of Communist Discourse," in Marketa Goetz-Stankiewicz, ed., Good-Bye, Samizdat: Twenty Years of Czechoslovak Underground Writing (Evanston, IL, 1992), 193-204;
104. Miroslav Kusý, "Chartism and Real Socialism," in Keane, ed., The Power of the Powerless, 152-77;
105. Watson, "Introduction," 15-16.
106. "The representatives of this movement consider it vital to prevent a situation emerging in which citizens, out of fear of the future, would attempt to bring back some aspects of the old regime." Jiří Dientsbier and Pavel Rychetský, leaders of the Civic Movement, quoted in Lidové Noviny, 2 March 1991.
107. Rosenberg, The Haunted Land, xviii.
108. Hacking, Rewriting the Soul, 5-6, 113-27.
109. Borneman, Settling Accounts, 6-8, 23-25;
110. Vojtěch Cepl, "The Transformation of Hearts and Minds in Eastern Europe," Cato Journal 17, no. 2 (fall 1997): 229-34;
111. Václav Benda, "These are not Normal Times: Interview with Václav Benda," East European Reporter 5, no. 2 (Feb. 1992): 42-43.
112. I put "conservative" in quotation marks, because in the volatile political situation after the fall of communism, the division between "conservatives" and "liberals" was up for grabs, and in many respects was determined in the course of the struggle over memory. For more about this dynamic, see Eyal, The Origins of Postcommunist Elites, 154-60.
113. Václav Klaus, quoted in Respekt, no. 13 (1-12 June 1990).
114. On lustration, see John P. Moran, "The Communist Torturers of Eastern Europe: Prosecute and Punish or Forgive and Forget?" Communist and Post-Communist Studies 27, no. 1 (March 1994): 95-109;
115. Carol Skalnik Leff, The Czech and Slovak Republics: Nation versus State (Boulder, CO, 1997), 87.
116. Jiřina Šiklova, "Lustration, or the Czech Way of Screening," East European Constitutional Review 5, no. 1 (winter 1996): 57-62.
117. The term "lustration" was adopted from the Latin. It referred to the Roman ritual, performed by the censors, of bringing sacrifice every 5 years to appease the Gods. Lumir Klimeš, Slovnik cizich slov (Dictionary of foreign words) (Prague, 1992).
118. Rosenberg, The Haunted Land, 34-35, 39-42, 71-72, 92-96;
119. Ben Webb, "The Prague Spring Takes a Fall," New Statesman, 27 Aug. 1993, 18-20.
120. Interview with Zdeněk Kessler in Martin Komárek, GEN-100 Čech°u dneška (GEN-100 Czech days) (Prague, 1994-1995);
121. Pavel Dostal, "Are they Color- Blind?" East European Reporter 5, no. 2 (Feb. 1992): 43;
122. Rosenberg, The Haunted Land, 367-73.
123. Or see, for example, the debate caused by the publication in Poland of Jan Gross's book about the pogrom in Jedwabne, and Adam Michnik's call for individual Poles to assume responsibility, not for the event, but for its memory: Adam Michnik, "Poles and the Jews: How Deep the Guilt?" New York Times, 17 March 2001, A15-A16.
124. Jiřina Šiklova, "Dilemmas of Transition: A View from Prague," Peace Review 4, no. 4 (winter 1992): 24-28.
125. Tamar Lewin, "For Nations Traumatized by the Past, New Remedies," New York Times, 29 July 2001, 4.
126. Steven M. Weine, "Much Too Much History to Bear: Is Memory Possible or Helpful in the Aftermath of Ethnic Cleansing?" Transitions-on-Line, http:// archive.tol.cz/transitions/muchtoo1.html (last accessed 17 Feb. 2004).
127. On Memorial, see John Varoli, "Russia Prefers to Forget," Transitions-on- Line, http://archive.tol.cz/transitions/ruspref1.html (last accessed 17 Feb. 2004).
128. Ilan Pappé, "Parashat Katz ve-Tantura: Historiyah, historiografiyah, mishpat ve-akademiyah" (The Katz and Tantura affair: History, historiography, law and the academy), Teoriyah u-Vikoret, no. 20 (spring 2002): 191-217.
129. Rosenberg, The Haunted Land, 117-18.
130. Quoted in Varoli, "Russia Prefers to Forget
131. Michnik, "Poles and the Jews," A16.
132. Zygmunt Bauman, Legislators and Interpreters: On Modernity, Post- Modernity and Intellectuals (Cambridge, 1987).