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.