âForgetting the past means being condemned to repeat itâ. This motto has been the inspiration for the widespread development of memory policies since the late 1990s in North America, Europe, and throughout the world. These globalized policies aim to articulate both the good and the bad, and speak them to everyone, in order to enable citizens to learn âthe lessons of the pastâ and to build peaceful societies. They express a belief that memory can help us to build the future. Yet, after more than 20 years of these memory policies, the development of terrorism, populism, and discriminations in contemporary societies forces us to conclude that they have well and truly failed. Instead of the quiet social cohesion and tolerance they hoped for, the countries that invested in these programs have seen the rise of populisms of all kinds. Evaluating the impact of these memory policies is no easy task. Those who attempt it generally end up moralistic or towing a party line.
Up until now, two mains criticisms have been leveled at these memory policies. A large proportion of the existing literature, particularly by historians, condemns some of these policies for taking the wrong direction and for using and abusing the past (MacMillan 2009). A more recent approach from a moral perspective denounces the very principle of these policies and emphasizes the importance of forgetting (Rieff 2011, 2016). This book goes beyond both of these criticisms and the opposition between historians and moralists. It does not seek to evaluate the good and bad uses of history. Instead, it focuses on demonstrating how this debate is framed in the wrong terms and calls for a renewed understanding of what memory can and cannot do.
The field of memory studies is attracting so much attention that the number of books in this area has become inordinately large and diverse, spreading from the subfield of transitional justice and human rights to that of museum studies. This book intends to break with a large portion of the existing literature. It takes a critical perspective on the normative belief in the effects of memory, which is at the heart of so many of the studies dedicated to the presence of the past in contemporary societies. This critical approach is all the more innovative in that it does not begin from a normative standpoint but rather from a close knowledge of the numerous empirical studiesâwhich are themselves responding to the effects of memory and these policiesâemerging around the world.
This book takes a step back to askâwhere do these memory policies come from? What do they actually do? Whom do they serve? Can we make them more effective? And, in light of all this, what lies beyond memory?
Contemporary society is imbued with the presence of memory. This âmemory boomâ has given rise to myriad scientific studies and numerous public debates, in western democracies as well as in authoritarian regimes and countries emerging from conflict. Yet the various participants in these debates, even when they are involved in violent controversies, do not challenge the fact that remembering the past is liable to have an impact on social behavior, both now and in the future.
There are many different terms to evoke the political aspect of the contemporary presence of the past (Olick et al. 2011): âuses of the pastâ (whether their authors label them as âsocialâ or âpoliticalâ), âpolicies of the pastâ, or âmemory policiesâ. This book is not the appropriate place for a discussion of these terms because this debate, although fundamental, has already been conducted in other places. However, because we must name these phenomena and condense them into an analytic object that can only partially describe the social world, we will use the term âmemory policyâ. We define the latter as actions that mobilize references to the past in order to impact on society and its members and transform them. In the remainder of the book we will focus more broadly on all arrangements that mobilize references to the violent past, particularly in order to prevent violence and intolerance. Because nothing allows us to assume that there is a difference in nature between similar arrangements mobilized in established democracies or post-conflict situations (which happen to be our two areas of expertise), we will use comparative analysis to examine the broadest possible palette of memory policies. Although the latter can be defined by their objective to modify or preserve the memory of violent events from the past (whether glorious or shameful) with the goal of influencing contemporary society, there is no justification for limiting our analysis to examples we are familiar with. These places of memory may be specialist museums, classrooms, courtrooms, or even football fieldsâfor example, when an international non governmental organization (NGO) ONG organizes a game between mixed teams in a country where civil war has separated ethnic or religious groups in the past.
The development of memory policy has raised many questions. Are we commemorating the ârightâ past? Should we limit ourselves to condemning perpetrators? Should we prevent victims from taking advantage of their new recognition? Should we defend âsubalternâ memories over âdominantâ ones and thus remember those âforgotten by historyâ, such as the legitimate victims of colonial conflicts? Should we prioritize history or memory? Should we welcome a certain degree of âforgettingâ rather than encouraging an excessive presence of the past?
Although these political and moral questions are interesting, they do not provide insight into what we would actually do if we had to make a firm decision one way or the other. This book breaks with the existing literature in that it pursues a genuine understanding of what is actually at work in these contemporary reminders of the violent past. We therefore set out to consider the ways in which memory policy could be more effective in reaching the goals that are ordinarily assigned to it, or how its objectives could be re-conceptualized.
To do so, the following pages bring together studies conducted in a wide variety of disciplinesâfrom social psychology, history, sociology, anthropology, political science, and economics. Although the French context and the canonical case of the memory of the Holocaust will be given particular attention, this discussion relies on an integrative approach to memory policies in different parts of the world, in western democracies, such as the United States and France, as well as in countries emerging from conflict in South America , the Great Lakes region of Africa, and the former Eastern Bloc.
This book therefore provides an unusual perspective on the widely shared belief that memory policies are effective tools in building peaceful societies, whether in stable democracies or in the wake of violent political conflicts. A better understanding of what these politics actually constitute and what they do will enable usâperhapsâto envisage reforming them, and to explore new ways of thinking about what can prevent collective violence, if that is indeed possible.
Letâs start with an observation: our lives are peppered with reminders of the past. This is nothing newâstates are very good at shaping memory. All those in positions of political power have forged traditions that combine âofficial historiesâ, glorification of great deeds, invention of legends, and ostracism of the vanquished. However, the First World War marked a break from this, leading to the democratization of state references to the past. Policy was progressively negotiated more explicitly, firstly with veterans and their families and local government. Then, from the 1970s onward, minorities and victimsâ representatives began to challenge the official narratives and have their versions of events heard. This was the time of ânegativeâ memory (Rousso 2016), which exhumed the wrongdoing of the nation in the name of human rights. But although the perpetrators of these crimes are brought to light, they are rarely punished. Governments today rarely impose sanctions for historic crimes, and when they do, it is seldom with the ferocity of the âvictorâs justiceâ. Criminal justice seems to be less a concern here than the denunciation of âhate speechâ or the encouragement of âcitizensâ vigilanceâ. The state is no longer interventionist, yet it paradoxically increases the number of initiatives in this area, sometimes inspired by other countries. Although there is a global âcrusadeâ against âforgettingâ that pushes reluctant states to account for the violence of their pasts, policies tend to focus on the victims...