History & Memory

"Historical memory allows us to forget about remembering and forget about forgetting, and thus, to remember."


In my opinion, history is a merge of the personal and the universal thats looked at differently by each of us. It goes without saying that when we tell a story, we are narrating what we had experienced out of the evidence we got. In the article, there was this one point when Nora was pointing out the difference between History and Memory, that History is universal and Memory is personal- agreed, but only on a level that doesnt justify what history REALLY is. History and Memory play their roles together but can never be the same.
When you recall or rethink about an event, you are creating a story. Similarly, when a historian "rethinks", he creates a story, he is interpreting transmitted information in a way that the current generation will probably understand. Without memory, the historian or the story teller, will find it difficult to actually locate specific information in order to create a fact.
The past is nothing but the memory of the past, and as such constitutes the very tissue of history. I agree with this comment 'cause in my opinion history doesnt work alone even as just a topic of discussion. Memory has a good amount of past events out of which a large chunk of raw, uncut information is scooped out and edited into history. Be it personal or universal, its all the same. Memory is not constant, it keeps changing over a period of time, thats how people tend to forget about things that might have been important but gradually turned into information thats forgotten and probably wont be revisited again.
When we talk about historical memory, only certain events can be actually remembered 'cause, there is too much to remember for a story thats got to be to the point, and the other reason could be that whatever had happened was not worth remembering. As Gadamer puts it ," Only by forgetting does the mind have the possibility to total renewal, the capacity to see everything with fresh eyes, so that what is long familiar fuses with the new into a many leveled unity." Its almost like telling a new story of the same past in a different way. Just like being creative.

Teleological History

"What is at question is the nature of the event, its relative novelty, the scope and intensity of its impact, and its meaning or what it reveals about the society in which it took place"

Talking about events, not in a superficial, distant something, but as a fact, an occurence, and influential part of everybody lives and everybody's history.
Since everybody agrees on the fact that events, reflect in our identities, influence a large part of our subconscious, our behaviour, as well our judgments, which indeed make us.
For me, events are great indicators of not only individual but a group status or perspectives.
They reveal a lot about the society, lifestyles, cultures, spirit of the people. They form a clear view on how we lived or want to live.
Also narrativising events, only adds culture and context to these.
"What happened in the past to be able to understand the present"
Even now is history just as we finish saying it. Past, the time gone by, tells a lot about the present and what could be the future. We get a referal point for events, facts, experiences and narratives.
Speaking of narratives, apart from talking about historicals as plots and sensationalising them, there are forms of narratives, which are respectful, and add to the richness just as any historical script would. These forms make these historicals "narratable".
Historical research comes in where narratives and myths and folklores need a check on its historicity.
I disagree with the fact that history is not teleological. The nature of writing, reading and understanding history, may be not history itself, is constantly changing.Its evolving with the mentality, intellignce and values of people. With liberalisation of thought
and beliefs, more tolerance has been generated, east meets the west. The understanding and reason which validates history, facts and events will change and has changed. "Modernism" is an example. History like all other studies will keep evolving, becoming meaningful,
but unfortuntaly on the flip side, the logic and reasoning, the scientific way of thinking could confiscate imaginations, with which the rich narratives, folklores and fables were produced.

The Historical Event

‘“History”, in spite of its efforts to become scientific, remains indentured to mythical notions of the cosmos, the kinds of events that occur in it, and the kinds of knowledge we can have of them.’

This, so far has been a year of change for me. Slowly, and systematically, I realized that the few absolutes that I did hold in life deserve to get shot down to the cold, murky and disorienting depths of subjectivity. Oddly, all those “absolutes” I held were all bred from Western modes of thinking. Science? Check. Philosophy? Check. And now, history?

But, it makes sense. For the western world, the method for discovering truth arguably lay in the (deceptively simple and seemingly faultless) empirical methods of scientific thought....so it figures that the body of knowledge which acts a collection of facts, or truths, would be built up from this same foundation, and hence deserves the same critique. But, more surprisingly, and as the quote points out, it turns out that even this system had its flaws, or at least its application was seemingly with abandon. History never served to become this ultimate collection of facts that it made itself out to be, because it could not escape the inherent subjectivity which followed man’s involvement in its creation. Not only did he edit it mercilessly so that it depicted only what he thought was important, he ended up editing it such that, if anything, a largely incorrect view of the past was being passed down, and to an extent that these very scientific processes that underlay history were being undermined.

History has become largely a collection of “significant” events....the significant ones being those that actually stick out among the vast collection of events that made up the past, and enter the collective memory. And which are these? The ones which resulted in large-scale change: conquests, genocides, revolutions, wars, crusades, natural calamities, plagues assassinations.......and so on. To any non-human being visiting our planet, our comparatively short span as a civilized race would seem pretty dramatic. But the problem here is that the past wasn’t just constructed in this way. Catastrophism is the branch of thought that maintains that our human and planetary history was shaped by few, but cataclysmic events, which then were the main factors in shaping how the present has turned out. This mode of thinking seems to have seeped into the creation of history as well...but it arguably should not be so. The purely teleological view of history may work on these principles, but a radical rethinking of history is clearly required, one which understands that there are various interconnections which exist, and no single strands, or plots. It’s true that these “significant” events played a major role in shaping our present, but it in no way means that they alone were instrumental in this process.

The paragraph also makes a distinction between “historical” and “natural” event, saying that natural events do not require these tags, but i personally don’t see why we split these two types of events into separate streams. I feel the two are intimately linked, and this distinction is just a form of over-simplifying, which in turn just furthers this incomplete view of history that we already hold. There should be a unified, interdisciplinary study of the past, so that connections can be more varied and easily drawn. However, this is probably a little idealistic considering our limited human minds, so maybe that’s a thought best left for later.

The Historian and His Facts- E. M Carr

“…Our picture has been pre selected and predetermined for us, not so much by accident as by people who were consciously or unconsciously imbued with a particular view and thought the facts which supported that view worth preserving.”

This passage urges me to revisit my high school history text, and source the origins of the information laid out. Giving myself an idea of the identity of the historian behind the content and further what his influences were during his period. My objective would be to expose any sort of concoctions that took place in the creation and selection of the historical narrative.

It is known that history has largely been written by a minority- those few persons who were privileged with education and had the luxury of being flies-on-the-wall, simply observing human and community behavior over time. But the kind of narratives passed down by them as historical documents (having found their way into school textbooks) had been written with varied intentions and interests.

Many chroniclers (and foreign travelers) are known to have made private inferences in their ‘travelogues’ documenting their observations as relevant historical truth. Example, Domingo Paes (16th cent.) was a Portuguese traveler who visited the Vijayanagara Empire (South Indian Empire based in the Deccan plateau-1336-1646) around the year 1520. His account of Hampi, the capital of the Vijayanagara Empire is of the most detailed of all historic narrations on this ancient city. Similarly, Fernao Nuniz was a Portuguese traveler, chronicler and horse trader who spent three years in Vijayanagar, in the time period 1535 - 1537 CE. Much information about the rule of the king Krishna Deva Raya, his reign and the kingdom itself comes from the accounts of these Portuguese travelers. Now the interests of these travelers are either of a personal kind or of an obligation as explorers for their country. The makers of history could thus be of Portugal origin (in this case) or of Indian origin depending where the travelogues were found. This could explain if our picture has been pre-selected or not.

Alternatively, as mentioned by Carr, our understanding of a dynasty could be shaped by the conscious decision of an Emperor/Ruler to coat his image using the talents of his faithful subjects- artists, poets, writers, etc. This phenomenon has been noticed in Mughal Dynasty.

Referring back to the passage, my questions take a contemporary tangent. Are there present day (2010) historians who select and determine a picture they would like to portray of the present, for our future? Are there individuals today who decide which facts of the year is history worthy, so that those facts surface in the textbooks of our grandchildren?

The passage indicates that communities from the past were concerned with how they were depicted for their future generations. Their reputations weren’t just for their own generation but for their descendants and the legacy of their kingdoms.

However, since kingdoms/civilizations existed in isolation from one another, the concept of having a standard norm for history didn’t exist. Each sect studied their own choice of subject and created their own outline for documentation of their history. Today with phenomenon like globalization bridging the gaps between spaces, standard education and universal laws have come into being. People from all over the world with varied perspectives are writing about everyday incidents documenting our everyday history. It seems like the prime decision maker of present day history, who selects right from wrong and fact from fiction is the ‘Media’. The media is (seemingly) all-powerful and files history in the form of News.                            

But whether this form of writing history excludes pre-selection is highly questionable, (a recently released Hindi movie titled ‘Rann’ deals with politics between media barons in the quest of one truth in the News industry). So is the news controlled by giant Business Corporations- are they the real ‘modern day emperors?’  If historians speculate that exaggeration and pre-selection of events took place in ancient history then modern day critics accused of sensationalizing are simply disguised doing the same.

The ultimate question I’m left with is, does our generation even think of our future the way ancient civilizations did? Do we even care what image we portray? Or do we have enough impressions to worry about between ourselves in this salad bowl world we live in, that whether we are viewed by our successor’s as the generation- who depleted the Earth’s resources, ruined the environment and had economic disparities as never seen before in history- it doesn’t frighten or discomfort us, knowing that these are the facts used to preserve our generation’s story. 

History and Memory....
Memory is creative, reconstructed
A process
Memory is fused with imagination
Physical trace in your mind
Structure that connects one brain cell to another

The ability to create new memories, store them for periods of time, and recall them when they are needed allows us to learn and interact. The study of human memory has been a subject of science, history and philosophy for thousands of years and has become one of the major topics of interest within cognitive psychology. But what exactly is memory? How are memories formed?

Maurice Halbwachs main thesis is that personal memory is always inscribed into, and made possible by, a collective memory. Thus a personal recollection of events is only possible within the common activity of remembering, retrieving, and interpreting past events, which frames the individual recollection. History for Halbwachs is an account of past events that are understood as significant and hence occupy an important place in the memory of people. Thus a historical memory has to be appropriated by an individual memory, which has to be first established within a collective memory.
Halbwachs' primary thesis is that human memory can only function within a collective context. Collective memory, Halbwachs asserts, is always selective; various groups of people have different collective memories, which in turn give rise to different modes of behaviour. Halbwachs shows, for example, how pilgrims to the Holy Land over the centuries evoked very different images of the events of Jesus' life, and how working class constructions of reality differ from those of their middle-class counterparts.
I thus think that collective memory is internal whereas historical memory is external. This is because there is one history and many collective memories, which stays within the limits of a group and is always fragmented, whereas history places itself outside and beyond particular groups. And that collective memory is present not only in texts but much more in oral communication and in shared practises.
On Pierre Nora’s account history is opposed to memory as memory for her is private, spontaneous, represents life and is a phenomenon of the present. History on the contrary is a social science that is a cognitive scheme and comes with a rational reconstruction of the past.
Collingwood also expresses his notion that memory is not history because history is a certain kind of organized or inferential knowledge and memory is not inferential at all. Memory is just a stock of loosely related images that they by themselves do not have much value for history.
I thus want to say that memory is of and about the past. The past is nothing but the memory of the past. It is thus the memory that restates, rethinks and relives the past. Memory is not engraved in stone but is always prone to change, intentionally and non intentionally by a process called forgetting.

Memory is never boring, but it can be painful or traumatic, thus we repress it in Freudian terms. We thus say that the work of memory is similar to the work of imagination. We therefore think it important to abandon to opposition between individual memory and collective memory. This is important to understand because individual memory always works within the framework of collective memory with its practices of remembering things of the past. And it is collective memory only that can be modified and adjusted, thus live off and through individual memory.

Historical Events - natural or manufactured?

“Which means that specifically historical events could not occur before a specifically historical kind of knowledge existed. It would have no ground or context against which to display its newness.” – Hayden White (in 2008)

What does this statement imply? That only as we slowly awaken newer aspects of our ‘being’, we begin to see certain events for what they are? That our knowledge of the world will reveal itself one event at a time? That an event will unfold to those who look? It seems pre-determined almost. But it makes a lot of sense.

Often in classes, an idea or thought troubles my mind for a couple of days before the entire class broaches the very same idea collectively. Then, we talk about how we’ve been thinking about this ‘idea’ for a while now. And it is a momentous occasion in the history of my day/week/life. One of my older journal entries from last year says:

“It’s like we’ve discovered dark matter at a time when we’ve finally come to terms with the idea that there may be things out there that are beyond our sensory perceptions.”

On a macro level, is this what the author is talking about? If so, I can’t help but agree. There is a mysterious way in which we awaken to things simultaneously and start to see ‘events’ that we’d never seen before.

But then again, to challenge this statement, and the allegory to the 911 attacks and how it was unprecedented in an American context, but perceivable and altogether conceivable in an al-Qaeda context: what does that say about the way in which history is recorded? Today in class, we were discussing media, how it is the present-day historian, and how it controls what we know about the world. The companies that own the media houses heavily influence the kinds of subjects that make it into our mainstream media. Subjects that directly oppose the capitalist system are censored off and/or given no importance. A large media house would never choose to address something like the protest happening outside of the G8 summits every year because the idea that people would object to the authority of these super powers is unspeakable. Let alone by the very companies that power these super nations.

So I question: does an event take place only when we’re ready for it or when the media is ready to talk about it?

"past is nothing but the memory of the past"

"Therefore, history begins where tradition and collective memory stops-but then history has to be reintegrated into the personal and collective memory. Historical and collective memory thus have a tendency to converge yet never become identical"

History records, history accentuates and history interprets. The medium is "memory".
Memory becomes History, memory which is transmitted and remembered, finds its relevance in History.
I personally feel, collective memory and Historical converge and become identical. They depend on the collective significance. A collective memory and a historical become prominent because of the cultural, emotional, personal, importance a relatively large amount of people hold with it. The statement the memory might have made or the collective impact on people.
At the same time I feel I cant relate to a lot of important events which may go down in history but i relate to and am emotional about little things I did with my family in my childhood. Memory is subconcious, it could be a fraction of history in time or could be History itself.
So in my conclusion I feel History is seen from a birds eye view, zoomed out into time, reinterpreted and retold through memories.
"The past is nothing but the memory of the past"
Memory is dynamic. Its impossible to retell and transmit without alteration. One reason which i see for this is perspective again. Since memory is dynamic, history on some level becomes dynamic.
Dynamism stems also from the several mediums through which memories are built and retold and thus becomes history. From old manusrcipts and stones to fabula and memories of historical, it all starts playing an important role to preserve, transmit and interpret History.

Dreaming of a Slowness

“...The claim of the loss of collective memory in modernity, which happens with the advent of mass culture and the ‘acceleration of history’...” - Dmitri Nikulin (19??)

I risk taking off on another tangent altogether, but this sentence has tied up with my recent thoughts so well that I just have to share.

In the last book I read, "Slowness" by Milan Kundera, there's a passage that reads:

The way contemporary history is told is like a huge concert where they present all of Beethoven's one hundred thirty-eight opuses one after the other, but actually play just the first eight bars of each. If the same concert were given again in ten years, only the first note of each piece would be played, thus one hundred thirty-eight notes for the whole concert, presented as one continuous melody. And in twenty years, the whole of Beethoven's music would be summed up in a single very long buzzing tone, like the endless sound he heard on the first day of his deafness.

The passage finds itself expanding on the nature of the memory (and thenceforth history) of a certain character in the book. What strikes me about this passage, which is in Kundera’s signature disconnected poetic style, is that I don’t know if I agree with it or not.

We are told to believe that our memories are endless and that we remember, on some level or the other, everything we have experienced. Why then, can't whatever history is made be remembered in its whole by the collective memory? History can get bigger and bigger, richer and richer, instead of the other way around… One may argue that Kundera is talking about how history is told rather than remembered. Still, isn't the telling, and subsequently the hearing, of a history the best way to keep it alive? When I'm thinking with this sort of rationale, I want to believe that Kundera is wrong.

But somewhere, I know that as a child of post-liberation India, I have been less and less in touch with the history of my own land and culture and more and more lost within the maze of the by-products of western ideals. By this I mean that I enjoy the benefits of western struggles and revolutions (modern technology in particular) without knowing what they actually stood for (did my people ever have a modernist period like the west did?). And all the while, I’m hearing snippets of twenty different stories from around the world everyday. I’m living in twenty different histories and my days are speeding on ahead. Even if our memories are endless, life isn’t. Even if the symphonies aren't shortened, I fear that they are played so fast for me that I can't discern them. And that, my friends, is a scary thought.

Of Histories and Historians (reflection from reading 1)

"The relation between the historian and his facts is one of equality, of give-and-take." - E.M. Carr (1963)

I find it apt that Carr chooses to address the question "What is History?" by pronouncing the importance of the historian. Carr helps us identify the relation between "The Historian and His Facts” through a number of conflicts that history itself is faced with. I personally feel that an ideal kind of history - a history that can judge for itself what it must talk about all the while being capable of catering to the varied needs of readers hundreds of years into the future - could work only if the destiny of the world was predetermined (which is probably why we like to think that the "universal histories" of the past have conveniently led up to the present in the most fitting way).

But as I have come to understand it, history cannot be that way because of the nature of humankind. The process of understanding a piece of history is dotted with many human interactions. First, there is the object/occurrence itself, existing freely in what will soon be the past. Then comes the observer of this object/occurrence. Perceiving the object/occurrence through a finite yet unique list of human senses, tensions and moral filters, this observer chooses to record the object/occurrence (which now becomes a subject). Then come a long list of people who study this subject and retell it to hundreds of others like a game of Chinese whispers. Carr also points out how language shapes the interpretation of history, how "the historian is obliged to choose: the use of language forbids him to be neutral".

So it is only natural that history remains ever changing and ever changed. And reading a history without understanding where the historian comes from would be like acquiring half-knowledge. Having said that, it makes sense to me that Carr would write this essay the way he writes it, in 1963, before the Internet came into common existence. If through all the filters of human perception and choice, history is only told by the victor, by the educated caste, by the favoured historian, it can't be fair. In today's world, where personal expression through photographs, videos, sound recordings, blogs, etc. is being encouraged, I see the ground for a freer kind of history-writing. The Internet has changed the way in which we regard the word "publishing". This new kind of history, which is already being written and read (like now, for example), is not a mindless accumulation of facts like the works of pre-philosophic historians. Instead, in these days of "accelerating progress", it helps to capture the vast and unexplained experiences of human existence before they move onto something better, faster and/or eco-friendly (haha). The way I see it, in the new kind of history-making, everyone is given the opportunity, if not audience, to record and share their lives. It means that the purpose of history - to give humans the hope to be remembered - is served.

- Sindhu Thirumalaisamy (FST201)

Memory and History :phenomenon and construct.

“…modern history aims at constructing one unified systematic view of the past and then tends to become normative for the present and prescriptive for the future, whereas historical memory preserves many events as pictures and (re)produces many narratives and stories about the past without attempting to evoke an epimyth”.

Dmitri Nikulin battles with the ideas of memory and history in the eponymous article, and though I find his arguments on the subject convoluted and contradictory in parts, the article touches upon a lot of interesting theories about the past, the nature of analysis and the nature of mind and being. The above quote seems to illustrate my understanding of the two entities – that history is a construct based on careful analysis and conscious judgment while memory is a subconscious phenomenon that is often more emotional than rational and stems from a deeper part of the human psyche.

Maurice Halbwachs explains that “history…. has to be processed within and by a historical memory that is appropriated by an individual memory, which itself has to be first established within a collective memory”. Thus history is presented as a distillation of a layered process which I believe is analogous to Carl Jung’s discourse on the human mind. The collective memory can be viewed as operating from the unconscious mind - what we as a species tend to remember and the categories we tend to place events in come from a collective experience we are often unaware of and which is embedded in our language, cultural imagery and communal practices. It works at a symbolic level, where the symbol always remains more than the sum of all the words that may describe it because it is not concerned with knowledge but with experience. The individual memory may be seen to work at a subconscious level where a person remembers certain things from the past (personal or otherwise) and is often not sure why he remembers that and not something else. This is obviously influenced by the unconscious collective memory but is also dependant on individual subjectivity. The person’s general interests and inclinations subconsciously affect what is remembered and what is forgotten. The historical memory operates at the conscious cognitive level where the individual or historian analyses the past, and memory itself, from an external point of view in order to develop a thesis that is of public relevance and this is where “significant” memories are separated from “insignificant” ones. This distillation that is the historical memory then forms the basis of the discipline of history.

Pierre Nora of the French Memory School says that “history has confiscated memory” and this new school of history centers around what they call memory sites, which may be material or non material but which evoke the past in ways that traditional modern history has ignored. They stress on plurality, since if history is derived from different memory sites they are bound to be varied in purpose and perspective. Hence, they reiterate the postmodernist anthem, that there is no one teleological universal history or narrative that can explain the past as one comprehensive whole, but that instead there are multiple histories which seek to understand and represent the past as best within the limited scope of their specific contexts. However I disagree with Nikulin’s reading that historians such as Halbwachs or Nora are trying to detach memory from history and establish them as mutually exclusive entities. Even Collingwood - where he says “memory is not history, because history is a certain kind of organized inferential knowledge, and memory is not organized, not inferential at all” - is not, I believe, trying to separate history from memory but is merely distinguishing between the two by enunciating certain dissimilarities in the nature of each. More simply I do not perceive the dichotomy between memory and history which Nikulin seems to be battling with and trying to resolve. To me they are distinct from each other, though a large part of each is mutual since they both deal with the past. Memory is obviously embedded in history, but it is also a lot more than history – it deals with the sensory and the emotional in a way that is impossible for history to encapsulate. Similarly history, though initially distilled from memory, is a lot more than just a selection of memories that have been judged significant. History fulfills cognitive and semiotic purposes that are beyond the scope of mere memory, and those characteristics make the study of history valuable.

Another part of the article, which I found interesting, is where Nikulin talks about “what we remember depends on how we remember” and he makes the very important point that “for a history, preserving an imageless name in historical memory is preferable to keeping an anonymous image”, which I believe is one of the cornerstones of the philosophy of archiving. Since words, either spoken or text are the clearest mode of communication we possess, history whose flesh and blood is interpretative narrative depends upon it more than anything else. It brings to my mind an article by Wolfgang Ernst, who argues that in the digital age archiving can be done purely visually based on digital codes, and a textual narrative can be eventually discarded to form a new language of visual information which is less biased and directive. I remember disagreeing at that point and feeling that for any form of knowledge to be accessible the use of textual narrative is imperative. Thus, since history is a system of knowledge, it is invariably based on text – in input or output. Whereas memory is not based on knowledge and certainly not on any system – and so in memory sometimes a nameless image lingers on much after a whole lists of concrete names and dates and facts may be forgotten.

Lest we forget

“There is something profoundly paradoxical about memory in history, because to be in and for a history means to be remembered. Yet, at the same time, to be in history also means to be forgotten in order to be ‘re-remembered,’ i.e., constantly renewed in a historical memory by being told again as the same but each time differently.”

When one thinks of history, it is signified as a replication of the past- an act of unfolding everything that was, with no tapering involved, often told as a linear narrative, with a beginning, middle, and end. Whereas memory clearly does not enclose the same associations, it is more elusive — vivid for some experiences, faint for others- and not necessarily linear. However, both history and memory are selective and changeable; both are expressed in multiple voices and are continually altered.

The reading took a distinctive turn when the idea of ‘forgetting’ was introduced as a significant human procedure in relationship to ‘memory and history’. Just as the quote states, it is profoundly paradoxical. Let me attempt to decipher this by interpreting the word ‘forgotten’ and the context it has been used. To forget implies a loss of retention. The act of forgetting is defined as the apparent loss of information already encoded and stored in an individual's long-term memory. It is a spontaneous or gradual process and is subject to delicately balanced optimization that ensures that relevant memories are recalled. Keeping in mind that the semantics of the meaning can be extended, forgetting, in relation to historical memory, largely seems to have five implications:                         

• An accidental kind of forgetting that erases details that are deemed as unimportant (‘historical memory cannot retain all events of the past first because of the sheer amount to be remembered’).                                                                  
  
• A more selective and imposed form of forgetting due to traumatic experiences, (researchers have often raised questions about recovering traumatic situations such as the Holocaust, the bombing of Hiroshima, the Vietnam war or the fratricidal massacres in Yugoslavia).
• A more intentional form of forgetting where events are left out history to satisfy the desires of the persons framing it, (‘…not everything that has happened is worth remembering. There should be a reason to remember a name, thing or event, the reason to choose the memoranda among the memorabilia.’).  
• A historian’s professional responsibility to forget himself in the process of institutionalizing the course of history to maintain no prejudice or bias.                                                                                            
• And finally, the one that seems to fit into context of the quote is a form of temporary forgetting- the discount/disregard of information. A kind where information and knowledge has been passive and out of focus, left behind and recollected as in when only necessary. Whether this falls under the precise operation of ‘forgetting’ is debatable. But loosely taken, it is a form of oblivion.

The act of forgetting (short or long term) is a part of human brains’ natural processes. It essentially aids in the overall design of memory, helping it function properly. It isn’t spontaneous and as trivial a solution, rather the idea of forgetting is to be considered and incorporated as a useful, meaningful and established mechanism. As Gadamer puts it “Only by forgetting does the mind have the possibility of total renewal, the capacity to see everything with fresh eyes, so that what is log familiar fuses with the new into a many leveled unity. Forgetting brings renewal.”

When are events re-remembered after having been forgotten? Usually when there is circumstantial significance (educational reasons, developmental, political, social). Many incidents in history are forgotten and often tickled into memory when reactions/feelings the memory arouses are significant for the present situation. For instance, as tools of power, memory and forgetting have been used by various governments, both totalitarian and democratic, in order to secure political control over opposing forces.

Having established that history is constantly re-remembered (just as memory is), it is consequently re-told. The content from the historical memory/account/incident that is re-told doesn’t change, it is being ‘told again as the same’. The difference and change lies with whom the receiver of the content is. For example, in theology, the study of Christianity and specifically content of the Bible have remained the same over centuries but each generation that has read this information has related to it with drastic variation. A new individual goes back to the same information yet making different interpretations. The history then cannot be considered only as a reconstructed past but as knowledge that would allow a person to relive an experience and evoke new desires, emotions and recreate his present based on his newly acquired awareness/data.

It is this quality of history- a phenomenon that isn’t stamped and meshed with the past but a magnificent something that transcends time. So no matter for whom it remains oblivious, there will always be those some individuals who are reliving their identities and those of their ancestors.

 

Memory and History

No one ever remembers alone – Ricoeur.

History is a multi layered enterprise. It does not rely on one universal history; instead it embraces a variety of histories. At a micro level – personal memory is private and internal. But as Halbwach says personal history is inscribed into a collective memory. Personal memory feels the need to understand itself within the framework of a more external, in this case, collective memory. Obviously then, collective memory remains broken, relying on oral transmissions and rituals remaining within a group. Historical memory, the macro; picks up these pieces, by drawing this unified picture of the past. This tends to translate into a one-sided, filtered, historian’s view of history. I agree when Nikulin says we must substitute the one unified, yet no one’s history with a whole plurality of fragmented histories. Purists would probably cringe – the thought of having a chaotic, emotional and multi sided view. Isn’t it better having a single integrated one – that doesn’t lend itself to a spectrum of interpretation? Last week’s reading tackled the topic of who decides what is considered as history. This ‘single integrated one’ is only going to be a reflection of what these decision makers believe we need to know. When living in today’s present we are bombarded with a variety of opinions and ‘memories’ by the media and people in authority, and we are left with interpreting it as we like, then why can’t we treat history as being a present, only a few years ago.

Another interesting point was Nikulin’s comparison between memory and imagination. Both are never concerned about the ‘is’. One is about things that have happened, the other is about things that could – that being a distance from the perceived and the thought.

Memory is alive.
Memory, as something in your mind is always prone to change – by forgetting and fabricating. By wanting to believe something, your memory slowly rewrites itself and by wanting to let go of certain details, your memory erases itself. This ensures that memory is never boring and remains novel. Self-interpretation is a constant process of evaluating your memories.

Nikulin also discusses an imageless history versus a nameless one. An image is more open to interpretation than a name. An image needs a narrative – it is external and secondary to the narrative. An image only assists in showing what the name intends to tell. The priority of history is to be told, and not shown.

History and Memory

"what we remember depends on how we remember"

Nikulin tries and connects history and memory, and shows how they co-exist. He talks about how personal memory attaches itself and exists further on, to and as a collective memory. Now memory is an account of the past, but collective memory becomes history, which is essentially becomes the experience for the present to learn or understand their current situation/condition and what led to it. History is selective, so is memory. Historians choose events they think are important and make it history. There are several factors that go into selecting these events. The events might be what brought about a radical change in how things were, or it was something that was considered important by the society the historian belonged to, or quite simply it could perhaps be something the historian had to glorify due to his circumstances. Memory is similar. We choose to remember things/events that affected us. It might be personal, it might involve others. But we basically choose to remember these events because they stood out. Collective memory, in my opinion and from what I figured, is an involvement of others in remembering an event. So, when an event occurs in the presence of a group of people, they form individual memories about. In this case, collective memory is probably all the individual memories combined and filtered to form an account of that event. This is a drop of history. And just like a historian is selective about his data, the collective memory too chooses to omit parts of the event, or chooses to represent it in a certain way. Several collective memories go into a historical account. But the historical account talks about the event from probably the recurring parts of the collective memories involved. So the collective memory, as it belongs to a group, tends to be partial. But as history involves sifting several collective memories, becomes less partial, if not completely. Personally, I think an impartial history is quite unlikely due to, quite simply put; human nature. The historian’s a human after all.

History is constructed in an order the historian chooses. He selects the hierarchy of arranging the data. Memory, on the other hand, is a recollection, which happens at random. It isn’t organized into paragraphs, and the order of recollection tends to be haphazard. The historian arranges the data in a certain order so as to project the actions or happenings with due importance, and what the present can learn or understand from it.

Memory, as mentioned earlier, is biased. Because it is personal, even when it is collective, it is personal to the group. Also, because it never stays the same. We tend to exaggerate or underplay things when we recollect memories. To connect it with the radio show, as the tests show that an amnesiac would be the one with the most original memories, if he/she comes to recollect them. This, they pointed out was because each time we recall a memory, it becomes more made-up. But history is a little more consistent that way. As its written, there isn’t much reconstruction that would be done to it, as the historian tries to base history on/around facts.

I reckon history would be incredibly banal and too comprehensive if it came down to writing completely detached accounts of events. But at the same time, it shouldn’t be something that ostracizes or criticizes something/someone just because the historian’s era had that on public demand, as that would be misleading the future that would read and try to understand that history.

Hari Shankar.

on history and memory

Of memory and history

The author of this article opens an interesting topic of discussion regarding ‘’modern history’’ verses historical memory. In order to discuss this we must look into what is historical and collective memory.
History places itself outside and beyond particular groups; it establishes periods in a clear-cut but artificial and constructed manner. It tends to draw a single and unified picture of the past. It is external and pays attention to differences. Collective memory on the other hand is limited to groups and is always fragmented. It is present much more in oral and folk practices .it is limited in the distinction of periods.
The author points out that modern history confines it self to understanding events in a unified linear line, and thus it undermines the importance of individual points of view. In his argument that history is removed from memory is something I disagree with. History forms the basic factual line of information. When we read history about the by gone eras we get an idea, maybe a clinical one on how or what or when the event happened. This now, like for example a grid system gives us the right or correct coordinates where in to fit in information received from individuals or of reiteration of events. Just the way we put the event into context we then need to understand how memory retains not in a linear manner. We keep events in respect to our own experiences our own understanding and associations from our past. Certain things are more amplified or underplayed depending on the circumstances of the person.
Like for example our nation went through partition in 1946 and then independence in 1947. if one was to completely depend on indusial memory we would within the nation state by state have a different understanding of the time period. The west would have a more emotional hear breaking version where as in the south one would have a vague distance memory unless some one they knew etc was directly affected as that would affect the person more strong but not as strong as if, if they were there and directly affected. Here if we have modern history specifically laying all the facts, the dates the pacts the data on no. of people affected it would be inhuman un-emotional and detached. Making it highly dry cut and undermining the fact that it actually took place and real people were affected. Thus I feel we need to take the analytical data/ information and fill it with the understanding and empathy it deserves.

Memories and history

Nikulin’s understanding of history is that it is a cumulative process. Individual memories together cannot be separated from the collective memory, and the collective historical memory is what forms the basis of history. Yet, he suggests that history as we understand it, usually is given some underlying theme or connection by the historian. In other words, the historian selects and chooses specific facts, and creates a cohesive story out of those facts that he or she has selected. If another historian was to undertake the same task, perhaps we would understand the same events in history differently. In that sense, Nikulin seems to be saying that history is composed both of what we have chosen to remember, and what we have chosen to forget.

I find that Nikulin’s argument that this historical ‘forgetting’ can heal wounds is dangerous. If we have to accept that all persons are bound by a common humanity, then we have to accept that we learn from, and move on from, the mistakes of our past. Forgetting is not healing – forgetting is also denying the past and I believe that the future generations of people have a right to our past. Nikulin seems to say that there are two ways of seeing history – the universal perception, according to which history serves some end, and his version which seems to suggest that we should study history not for what we can learn from it, but for its own sake. I would dispute this idea, because history for its own sake simply becomes a futile act of listing out past dates and events. If we can accept that history is not an accurate story of the past, but is what the historian chooses to make of the past, then we should also accept that the historian when making his choices sometimes chooses them on the basis of a greater purpose. For example, if we were to ‘forget’ the horrors of World War II, it would mean in practical terms, that generations would grow up with no knowledge of the horrors that a fascist government can cause, and nothing would stop us from repeating our errors.

According to me, therefore, the difference between memory and history is important, and should not be blurred as he suggests. Where history has ‘chosen to forget’, because of the historian’s choice of facts, memory will remember. And so, memory plays a larger role in balancing the fact that the historian is selective, and makes choices on the basis of his personal, or philosophical or any other beliefs. If we blur this distinction, we run the risk of simply treating them as one thing. Even if memory is subject to our own personal filters, it still forms a greater narrative, or wider picture, than history does.

Assorted Thoughts

“The past is nothing but the memory of the past”

As a result of struggling to find a single quote in the article which I felt neatly summed up its essence, I picked this as it caught my eye with first its rather poetic appeal, and a rather deceptive simplicity. This statement seems to be a reflection of the fact that, once it has escaped the purview of fleeting moment that is the present, an event becomes relegated to a complete physical non-existence, except for in the mind. All we are referring to when we speak of the past, then, is a collection of fragmented accounts of events which have escaped our immediate sensory experience.

There is a worrying aspect to this definition, however: that there doesn’t seem to be adequate distinction made between the “past”, and history. Here, past is presented as being merely a large collection of memories, or, a highly unrefined history of sorts. I say worrying, because this definition seems very limiting. The past is far more than merely the available, decidedly finite memories of humankind. We traditionally speak of the past as being a hypothetical construct, a collection of all the points in time (and space) which existed before the “present”. But here, the past is merely a small portion of all those occurred events, as it is merely those which have had the fortune of not being lowered to a state of complete (i.e. ,even intellectual) non-existence, which, owing to our incomplete memory, makes up an infinitesimal portion of the whole.

But maybe, in reference to history, a new definition could be helpful. Memory is “of and about the past”, and the past itself is an elaborate memory, placed in the unifying framework of history. The above, larger definition, is all very well on paper, but for historical purposes, there exists no such infinite well called the “past”, from where we can keep drawing our wealth of history. The past that is within our power to identify with, to understand, is what is contained in the collective of all the memories of humanity. The Polish philosopher, Leszek Kolakowski reflects on this point, about how these past events are “recreated by us on the basis of our present experience- and it is only our present experience, our present reconstruction of the past, that is real”.

Another interesting quotation from the article comes in page 84: “Hence, only the (human) thinking that is capable of not-knowing and forgetting is capable of memory and history.” The central idea behind this point is that (as summed up in the next line) is that our memory, and hence our ability to perceive “history”, is a result of our fundamental inability to experience, and reflect on this experience at the same time. This seems to me to be a comment on how we perceive time itself, as it allows us to distinguish between the present (the experience), and the past (the reflection). Our “incompleteness in thinking”, of forgetfulness thus allows there to be a clear distinction between what lies in the past, which is hazy and never fully complete, and what lies in the present. For, if there were no such deficiencies to our thought process, we would have a complete knowledge and remembrance of the past, and hence be able to recreate, and re-experience events in the past with as much clarity as the present itself.

This got me thinking whether the “past”, or history, as it exists now is as complete as it needs to be. What could be the possible effects of a full knowledge of the past (in terms of the history-relevant definition)? There are existing philosophical notions about how a main aspect of how we perceive time is due to our recognition of the distinction between tenses. If this idea were to be extrapolated (perhaps naively) to the much larger picture, what would come of humanity in possession of this wealth of knowledge, this complete history? I might be making an error in drawing parallels between history and past & an individual and humanity. But the question is, once this knowledge is in the hands of the collective human consciousness, what would happen to our notion of time? If past and present can lie on a similar plane, where does the future fit in?

The second question in particular has further-reaching implications. The previous goal of history was to search for “law-like regularities in history”, and perhaps provide an indication of the future. This may have just been just the product of optimistic 19^th century determinism, but if this thought experiment did actually happen to take place, and we were able to look at past and present on a similar plane, would the future be all that unknown to us?

One definite conclusion to this very extreme, unlikely scenario? Astrologers would be a good deal more relevant than historians.

THE HISTORIAN AND HIS FACTS

In art history classes in college, I was shown a painting by Toulouse Lautrec, a nineteenth century French artist and asked what i thought about it, not knowing anything about it but the genre it came from. I commented on the style, the forms and pretty much dismissed it immediately. Others glared in awe. Why? We interpreted the painting by picking up cues. The same painting had about ten different interpretations. It amazes me how there can be such diversity in thought and interests. Then we were briefed on its context and told in detail about the artist himself, his miseries overpowering his success. My opinions about the painting began to change, more out of sympathy. My teacher so passionately talked about the subject, I suddenly started to acknowledge and admire what I was looking at. The others were swooning already.

History means interpretation.

And the first step of interpretation is translation. No two interpretations can be the same as they are the outcome of personal beliefs which differ from one historian to the other and so one may have emphasized a certain fact and interpreted around it while the other may have ignored it completely. The historian is engaged in a continuous process of moulding his facts to his interpretation and his interpretation to his facts. It is essential that one learns about the historian before studying his work. When I look for a translation that a great poet made of another poet, I am not expecting something literally similar to the original, I look for a poetic translation because I already know the original and I want to see how the translator has challenged and emulated his source in his own language. Although I’m left wondering, which should I believe, having had several opinions on the same subject . Still, I feel none in particular is superior to the others. Each is a blend of strengths and weaknesses, due to the difficulty of the task.

There is omission of content with every stage of interpretation/translation from one author to another and even from the author to the reader where the reader may understand it differently from what the author is trying to say. I agree with Acton’s views on how we cannot have ultimate history in this generation. This is where negotiation comes into play, when in order to get something, each party renounces something, and at the end everybody feels satisfied since one cannot have everything. Translation may also be from one language to another. All languages have their own syntax. If we attempt to follow the formal syntax of another language, we reproduce forms which are confusing or abnormal to the target audience. While translating the bible from Greek to Latin, Saint Jerome realized that it was altered to a large extent during translation, so he decided to translate the original text which was in Hebrew. Moses in one language it said to have had rays of light coming from his head when he descended, whereas another made it to be horns! Also, we must be aware of the fact that a given word can signify a number of different things in a number of different contexts. And so it’s better when something is translated not word to word, but sense to sense . The context gives meaning to the content. Martin Luther King’s “letters from prison” are better understood by someone who knows the circumstances under which they were written rather than someone who is oblivious to 20^th century American history. If we know information about the author’s audience, this may also help us to understand the message itself.

I find it hard to agree with Mr. Gradgrind’s statement, ‘facts alone are wanted in life’ and find it easier to agree with ‘the pulpy part on the fruit is more rewarding than the hardcore’. But this is not to say i don’t doubt the ‘pulpy parts’. Yes, our picture has been preselected and predetermined for us by people who believed it and wanted us to believe it. Sometimes, I feel deprived of my own thoughts and opinions when such interpretations are backed up with indisputable facts. I continue to ask, Are these right? Which one should I believe? Who is this person who was given the power to ‘make’ history? ....

The Historian and His Facts

 always thought of history as one of those subjects that we study, it interested me, no more no less. I never really questioned the significance, and how history is written. Im sure thats how most of us have been looking at it.  Now when I actually think about it, a lot of questions come to mind. They are not groundbreaking questions, and I wonder why I haven’t asked them before. But I realise how easily we are just accepting of things, no questions asked, they are the way they are.
The past intrigues us. The past at a global level, but also at a personal level. We hope that by studying the past, we can learn from the successes and the mistakes  made by  people in the past. So we read biographies of famous people, we buy unprecedented numbers of histories of failed regimes and disgraced dictators, we eagerly consume the accounts of national rise and fall, all in the hopes of learning something important about ourselves and our future. Many of us hope that the past can explain our present and foretell our future.
E.H Carr says “ No document can tell us more than what the author of the document thought - what he thought had happened, what he thought ought to happen or would happen, or perhaps only what he wanted others to think he thought, or even only what he thought he thought”
This brings me to the question of what is an absolute truth? In my opinion, there is no absolute truth. Yes de dates that have been recorded, and the names of the kings, the queens, and the revolutionaries might be correct. But those are not the essence of history. To me the essence of history is the events and people from the past that have affected our state of being today in some way or another.  As Carr says: “ The past which an historian studies is not a dead past, but a past which in some sense is still living in the present”  but a past act is a dead act i.e meaningless to the historian, unless he can understand the thought that lay behind it. Hence “All history is the history of thought” When it comes to thought, it is impossible to get factual, (even though I think at times it would be comforting to know that it is) and all we can depend upon is interpretation, ideally correct and objective. But we dont live in a ideal world, and we will rarely be able to see all sides of a story.
If we are willing to learn from our past mistakes I feel that constant re-evaluation should be taking  place on how we study history.  History is constantly evolving and in our era of media and communication the way history will be written in the future will probably be very different. Today we live by the Internet, a created territory opened instantly before us, available for the taking, free and unchallenged in access, undisciplined and wild in its behaviour. The amount of  information that will be available will be vast and expansive, filled with both biased and not so biased articles.  There will be so much available that it will be difficult to see what is truthful and what is not. On the other hand, we will have a large spread of information from different view points available so with a lot of  sifting and interpreting our future historians may be able to create a  more well rounded history.
Im going to end with a quote that describes best what I feel about the history we know today, by the twentieth century Austrian-born philosopher, Karl Popper: "There is no history of mankind, there are only many histories of all kinds of aspects of human life. And one of these is the history of political power. This is elevated into the history of the world." Going into this would be another story altogether so all I am going to say is that I hope, that with the resources available today history will turn out to be more complete and inclusive.

Myrthe Lanting

what is history?

'consciously or unconsciously reflects our own position in time and forms part of our answer to the broader question what view we take of the society which we live'

The moment which just went pass by is history. To me history is an unending process which follows its own pace and time frame. It depends on the time and space where we exist or the time and space when we did not exist. I think its in a way subjective that how you look into facts. The memory of the images of history which I have in my database is completely different from a point of view of a historian.

' The facts are available to the historian in documents, inscriptions and so on, like fish on the fishmonger's slab.The historian collects them, takes them home and cooks and serves them in whatever style appeals to him'.

So we know the fact, acquire a kind of knowledge from it and then interpret in our own way. So the facts are being looked at differently by each one of us with different perspective. And with all the twists and turns it is made up of interwoven words by the historians, its nothing but the language, text, printed pages, stories that have already been told.

What is it which distinguishes the facts of history from other facts about the past?

The facts with great significance and its' contribution to the society is considered to be the facts of history and there are other facts from the past though of great importance are not considered to be history because they are controversial, against the system of the so called government.

For example, the Nandigram issue which took place in the year 2007 in West Bengal. West Bengal government decided that the Salim group of Indonesia would set up a chemical hub under the SEZ policy at Nandigram.

The villagers lost their lands, homes, massive roads to the villages were cut off. People of the village got beaten up, girls got brutally raped and murdered by the ruling party's cadres. So this type of issue would not stay as history after 100 years. These are the suffering of the people which would be erased from the society.

meghma