Memory and the future of Europe

Rupture and integration in the wake of total war

Peter J. Verovšek

• Publisher: Manchester University Press
• Year: 2020
• ISBN:
  9781526143129
• Edition: 1
• Topic: History
• Subtopic: European History
• Index: History

Memory and the future of Europe examines the role of collective memory in the origins and development of the European Union. It traces Europe's political, economic and financial crisis to the loss of the remembrance of the rupture of 1945. As the generations with personal memories of the two world wars pass away, economic welfare has become the EU's sole raison d'être. If it is to survive its future challenges, the EU will have to create a new historical imaginary that relies not only on the lessons of the past but also builds on Europe's ability to protect its citizens against the power of global market forces. Framing its argument through the critical theory of the Frankfurt School, this volume will attract readers interested in political and social philosophy, collective memory studies, European studies, international relations and contemporary politics.

Chapter 1

Collective memory as a resource for political change

The dreams of the future move in the temporal dimension of past life, fed by memory … out of which all wishes and hopes are deduced.

Reinhart Koselleck, Terror and Dream (2004)

Critical theory and collective memory¹

Over the course of the second half of the twentieth century, collective memory has become a central concept in the humanities and the social sciences.² Its surge in scholarly importance coincides with a number of broader social movements, most notably the student revolts of 1968, when the first generation that came of age in the postwar era sought to uncover the complicity of their parents and grandparents in the sufferings and atrocities of totalitarianism. The growing interest in collective remembrance that accompanied the fall of the dictatorships in Spain, Portugal, and Greece in the 1970s and 1980s was given further impetus by the events of 1989 and ‘the resurfacing of suppressed national concerns among subjugated European peoples on both sides of the Iron Curtain,’ which allowed issues of collective memory that had been repressed by the bipolar narrative of the Cold War to re-emerge.³

From its most pioneering early studies – such as Paul Fussell’s pathbreaking work on the cultural impact of the Great War, to Henry Rousso’s examination of Vichy France, and Annette Insdorf’s study of cinematic representations of the Holocaust, to name just a few of the most prominent examples – collective memory studies, as well as the various social movements it has generated and responded to, has centred on the events that occurred between 1914 and 1945.⁴ The increasing importance of remembrance to social and political life, combined with this relatively narrow temporal focus, shows how powerfully Europe’s experience of total war ‘retains its grip on memory and myth.’ 1945 has become a crucial turning point, a Stunde Null (zero hour) that has replaced national dates and markers across the continent as the ‘key to what lies both upstream and downstream.’⁵ Given the prominence of the Holocaust in the origins and development of the broader interest in collective remembrance, Germany is a central focus of collective memory studies as a research paradigm.⁶

Drawing on Friedrich Nietzsche’s Untimely Meditations (1876) on the ‘Use and Abuse of History,’ the existing scholarship stresses how the past acts as a ‘space’ or ‘site of contestation’ and on the ‘conflictual and divisive processes that memory mobilisation triggers.’⁷ This emphasis has led to a focus on the ‘sins of memory’ that tie individuals and communities to the past through deterministic chains of cause and effect. On this dominant reading of the politics of remembrance, memory and history are obstacles to conflict resolution at best; at worst they drive ‘cycles of hatred’ by passing historical grievances to subsequent generations.⁸ Despite its influence, I argue this understanding of collective memory is based on a one-sided reading of Nietzsche. Looking beyond the Untimely Meditations to the Genealogy of Morals (1887), Nietzsche himself acknowledges that neither individual identities nor the broader social order can exist without an awareness of the past. He concludes that humanity is faced with the ‘paradoxical task’ of having to remember, while not being trapped by the past.⁹

In contrast to this usual ‘negative’ reading of collective memory, I draw on the thinkers associated with the Institute for Social Research in Frankfurt to develop a critical theory of remembrance as a ‘positive,’ constructive resource for social and political transformation in the aftermath of broad historical ruptures.¹⁰ In this sense, my work is part of a broader attempt to understand not only the problems and far-reaching consequences involved in historical injustice, but also the historical and contemporary responsibilities that it generates.¹¹ While collective memory can reduce the autonomy of both individuals and communities in the present, the writings of the Frankfurt School show that these experiences can also be important resources for change in the aftermath of events that delegitimise existing narratives and make existing interpretations of the past untenable. Despite their differences and internal disagreements, Theodor Adorno, Max Horkheimer, Herbert Marcuse, Walter Benjamin, Jürgen Habermas, and the other critics associated with this intellectual tradition share an understanding of Europe’s age of total war as a historical caesura, i.e. as a narrative break whose experience necessitates a fundamental rethinking of the meaning of the past.

Generalising from these insights, I argue that memory provides individuals and communities with important cognitive, motivational, and justificatory resources to rethink the meaning of the past in the aftermath of broad historical ruptures. During normal politics narratives of collective memory serve established interests, as existing institutions, rules, habits, and traditions create forward-looking narratives that flow logically from previously established plotlines. In the course of everyday life, public understandings of the past therefore play a stabilising, conservative role.

In reflecting on their experience of Europe’s bloody twentieth century, the members of the Frankfurt Circle realised that moments of crisis make paradigm shifts possible by breaking down existing causal chains. Harrowing events, particularly when they follow one upon the other, create a rupture in existing historical imaginaries, forcing individuals and communities to question received wisdom and rethink the meaning of the past. While historical events usually limit the range of possible plotlines, during ‘Benjaminian moments’ of crisis collective memory can also provide the resources necessary to think politics anew.¹²

By framing my theoretical contribution in this way, I both build on and depart from the small but increasingly important existing body of work on European integration and collective remembrance. Although I am interested in the EU’s attempts to create shared understanding of the past and ‘the wider question of whether or not it is possible to develop a European memory framework,’ unlike Aline Sierp I do not focus on the development of the EU as a supranational arena ‘where diverging memories can find their expression and be dealt with in a new way.’ Similarly, while I also explore ‘how participants in the European founding dealt with their historical memories of war, invasion and mutual exploitation,’ in contrast to Catherine Guisan, who focuses on how the EU’s approach the memory can serve as a model of peace and reconciliation, I do so in order to reflect on how collective memory can open space for new political thinking and new forms of political community in the aftermath of experiences that shatter existing narrative frameworks.¹³

The critical theory of rupture and collective memory that I present in this chapter is an exercise in theoretical development, not in hermeneutical interpretation. I therefore treat the thinkers of the Frankfurt School as part of a unified tradition that seeks to transmit ‘a relatively coherent body of political thought and practice from one generation to the next.’ This move is not meant to deny their disagreements. Despite their differences and internal squabbles, I argue that the members of the Frankfurt School all ‘adopted some form of collective label and clearly believed that they were engaged in a common enterprise.’¹⁴

This is particularly true of their attempts to understand their experience of the rupture of 1945 as part of a broader diagnosis of the times (Zeitdiagnose). I use their insights to better understand the role of collective memory as a constructive resource for social innovation following events that break apart existing communal understandings of the past. Even though my conclusions diverge from the explicit positions held by certain members of the Frankfurt Circle, my project shares the basic theoretical orientation and emancipatory goals of the tradition of critical theory.

For example, in reconstructing the concept of rupture I draw heavily on a Benjaminian reading of history that Horkheimer opposed. In his early writings on history and memory, Benjamin argues that the past has to remain open and incomplete so that the survivors can – potentially at least – satisfy their moral debt to victims in the present. In a letter from March 1937 Horkheimer disagrees vehemently with this approach, arguing that Benjamin’s ideas are an affront to the sufferings of the victims of atrocity: ‘Past injustice has occurred and is completed. The slain are really slain.’ Responding to this critique, Benjamin writes, ‘The corrective to this line of thinking may be found in the consideration that history is not simply a science but also and not least a form of remembrance <Eingedenken>. What science has “determined,” remembrance can modify.’¹⁵ Despite Horkheimer’s explicit objections, I argue that by preserving the force of memory’s critical content for the present, Benjamin’s perspective on history better exemplifies the emancipatory mission of critical theory than the position Horkheimer outlines in his letter.¹⁶

This theoretical chapter starts by defining collective memory and clarifying the connection between the personal recollections of individuals and collective remembrance. I then turn to the thinkers associated with the Frankfurt School to show how crises create a break in the narrative fabric of the past, allowing collective memory to be redeployed as a form of social criticism. The section after that considers the differences between the narrative breaks that occur in the private lives of individuals and the communal caesurae that count as broad historical ruptures for the generations that share an experience of them. This is followed by an explication of my critical theory of memory, which shows how remembrance can function as a cognitive, motivational, and justificatory resource in the aftermath of historical ruptures. The chapter concludes by examining the important role political leaders play in interpreting collective narratives of the past. In so doing, I also tie these theoretical insights back to European integration.

History, memory, and narrative

On a conceptual level, memory and history can be differentiated in a number of ways. Whereas history is defined by the study of external data, especially archival texts, memory is experienced as something that comes from within. It is an affective connection, ‘a felt knowledge of recent events’ created by formative experiences in the life of the individual or community. In contrast to history, remembrance is not defined by the chronology of linear time. Instead, memory ‘makes the past “reappear” and live again in the present,’ refusing ‘to keep the past in the past, to draw the line, as it were, that is constitutive of the modern enterprise of historiography.’¹⁷

The concept of collective memory (mémoire collective) originates in the work of the French sociologist Maurice Halbwachs. While h...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Dedication
• Contents
• Acknowledgements
• List of abbreviations
• Introduction
• Chapter 1 Collective memory as a resource for political change
• Part I Origins and crisis diagnosis
• Part II Memory and the future of Europe
• Select bibliography
• Index