Scholars and philosophers have long dealt in depth with the conundrum of memories: what is memory – both individual and collective; what affects the formation and continuation of memory; and how it affects our perspective on reality in the past, present and future. From Frederick C. Corney’s point of view, collective memory, as well as individual memory, is formed, shaped, constructed, and created through the process of reinterpretation of the past event from the light of contemporary interest. He even questions the possibility of “real” memory, asserting that any effort to construct memories is not an attempt to “restore” real ones, but to “build” using different tools, e.g. certain narratives and languages, institutional structures, and historical precedents. In a similar vein, Simonetta Falasca Zamponi takes a step even further in arguing that not just memory, but “history is a selective representation of the past, a narrativized interpretation of events.”[1]
There seems, however, to be tension between such instrumentalist view on the malleability of the memory in light of the present, and essentialist approach on memory of the past. Lyn Spillman elaborates this very tension by raising the point that some memories are passed on generation to generation while others are not. She argues that either approach alone cannot explain such different fate of memories about the past, and that “intrinsic properties of the meaning of some past objects and events” in conjunction with “[o]ngoing construction and reconstruction of collective memory” are at work in making certain events in history unforgettable.[2] Her point on the “intrinsic properties of the meaning of … past” is particularly interesting in that she is not referring to the idea that certain past is inherently more important than others; rather, what makes them persistent depends on how much room a given past offers for “later critique,”[3] which she lays out as following:
… the multivalence of historical moments encourages their persistence: the more they can be interpreted in different ways to transcend criticism, the longer they will last.[4]
Although Spillman’s approach is more balanced in trying to combine instrumentalist and essentialist theories on memory, her general position should be considered to lie closer to the constructivist pole – which sees memory as constructed by the current interest – in that her point on memory constraint presupposes the chances of reinterpretation.
If Corney, Zamponi, and Spillman have laid out theoretical ground for memory and its formation, Gretchen Schafft provides us with a great framework in understanding why memorials – especially those commemorating shameful history – only show partial narratives of the history that each memorial represent. Different mechanisms of “civic denial” – e.g. alteration of meaning, misattribution, and omission of crucial information just to name a few – are indeed observed in many memorials.[5]
[1] Simonetta Falasca Zamponi, “Of Story Tellers and Master Narratives,” in States of Memory, ed. Jeffrey K. Olick (Duke University Press, 2003), 50.
[2] Lyn Spillman, “When Do Collective Memories Last?” in States of Memory, ed. Jeffrey K. Olick (Duke University Press, 2003), 168.
[3] Ibid.
[4] Spillman, 181.
[5] Gretchen Schafft, “Civic Denial and the Memory of War,” Journal of the American Academy of Psychoanalysis vol. 26, no. 2 (1998): 269.
