This substantial study investigates oblivion as the foundation of social cohesion and makes a case for the productivity of forgetting. Its rehabilitating stance on gaps, holes and voids in collective memory aligns this study with approaches that posit a productive function of those cultural phenomena which are not typically perceived as catalysts of positive action, such as grief and mourning. Judith Butler, for instance, in her Precarious Life: The Powers of Mourning and Violence, argues: “If we are interested in arresting cycles of violence to produce less violent outcomes, it is no doubt important to ask what, politically, might be made of grief besides a cry for war.” [1] What, politically, socially, and culturally, might be made of oblivion is the central concern of this volume. The twelve chapters it contains move away from considering the process of oblivion per se to address the question of forgetting (voluntary and involuntary) as a precondition for innovation (14). In their genuinely multiperspectival and multidimensional approach, the editors have gathered together in a coherent volume many diverse reflections, including philosophical, psychological, sociological, historical, political, and literary. Equally diverse are the times, cultures and societies addressed, demonstrating that when it comes to studying collective forgetting, “the notion of time is necessarily plural, particular, linked to multiple individual and collective contexts” (353).
Karen G. Langer’s and Julien Bogousslavsky’s contribution claims to offer a neurological insight into memory loss, but it is much broader than that, going back in time as far as Plato, Aristotle, and Galen. It offers a survey of theories, approaches, and perspectives, both ancient and modern, in an attempt to introduce the readers to the topic of memory disruption or loss. It traces the development of memory studies from its earliest days to most recent times, covering a wealth of critical discoveries, most of them of neurological nature, related to preserving and losing memory (Freud, Ribot, and Korsakoff are only a few of the names mentioned). It also makes important distinctions between a number of crucial concepts, including pathological forgetting as manifested in memory disorders such as amnesia, and non-pathological, “everyday” or “routine” forgetting (18), between sensation, memory, and recollection (19), between retention and retrieval (19), between amnesia and hypermnesia (20), between memory and memories (23), between short-term memory, long-term memory, and “working memory” (23), between free (or spontaneous) recall, cued recall, and recognition (23), as well as between declarative (episodic and semantic) memory functions and non-declarative (implicit) functions (24). While not all of these distinctions are given careful consideration, they are important for problematizing the domain and scope of memory studies. The chapter concludes with what Langer and Bogousslavsky refer to as a “poignant case” of memory loss, suffered by a patient known as H.M., as well as with some further thoughts about memory and forgetting which create a sense of curious anticipation for the chapters to come.
Muriel Katz, Manon Bourguignon, and Alice Dermitzel move beyond general considerations of memory loss to consider particular cases of “forced forgetting” as imposed by dictatorial systems in Latin American countries in the 1970s (Chile, Argentina, Bolivia, Brazil, Paraguay, and Uruguay). Based on the metapsychology of social groups as constructed by René Kaës, the study introduces the concept of “psychological catastrophe of social origin” (40) to explore what happens when meta-social and metapsychic guarantors can no longer ensure their protective function, when human ties disintegrate, society becomes polarized, and individuals are exposed to physical violence and its psychological repercussions. The authors look into the mechanisms of power sustaining authoritarian regimes, on the one hand, and on the mechanisms of survival developed by the victims and their relatives, on the other. Using the concept of the “negative pact,” they show how the policy of “not remembering,” aimed at erasing both the traces of political crimes and the memory of the victims, contributes to the emergence of “prevented memory,” that is memory that rises to the surface every time the voice of their descendants is heard. It is the poignant voices of the twenty-nine descendants, including Isabel, Julian, José, Diana, Diego, and Paco, that reverberate most strongly in this chapter as they mourn the “disappearance”
of their relatives, making the bodies of the deceased “grievable” and covering them in a symbolic shroud. [2] This powerful testimony shows that while the mechanisms of annihilating the past and falsifying the present may be common to many authoritarian regimes, memory is produced and preserved by individuals.
Dietmar J. Wetzel looks into “Contested Memories” (Umkämpfte Gedächtnisse), showing that the study of memory is prone to competing interpretations related to its social-theoretical foundations. Addressing the question of the (alleged) end of the collective memory, Wetzel argues that recent social changes, including unprecedented mass migration, encourage us to reassess the idea of collectivity and think across (Lat. trans) boundaries to formulate a trans-collective theory of memory.
Gerald Schwedler looks into the tools for analyzing concepts which have caused a stir in academic discussions in recent years, such as “cancel culture,” “framing,” “fake news,” “trigger warning,” and “alternative facts.” He outlines strategies for deforming knowledge and the past, including (1) erasure (concealing or destroying information) that creates gaps or blind spots in historical consciousness; (2) iconoclasms (the destruction or desecration of monuments, statues, images and symbols); (3) recoding (an attribution of a new meaning through a work of redefinition); (4) graphoclasms, biblioclasms, and rescissio actorum (annulment of legal acts, documents and the administrative structures which produced them); (5) rewriting and transformation, which happens as a result of political rather than aesthetic or purely linguistic factors; (6) gaps in history and “negative inventio” (the “will to omit” or the “will not to write”); (7) a consensual forgetting (i.e., one which agreed by contract, especially in the context of peace efforts and amnesty clauses); (8) innovation and forgetting progress; (8+1) forgetting history (rejecting history in favor of a world which is detached from the weight of the past).
Lukas Clemens looks into the processes of oblivion in the former northern Alpine provinces of the Imperium Romanum to show how during the high and later Middle Ages the Roman buildings gradually disappeared from collective consciousness. Ancient structures, fortifications, and settlements fell prey not only to the ravages of time and climate, but also of the human hands. Clemens describes what he refers to as “the cascade-like process of oblivion” (112), which affected many ancient structures, including amphitheaters, baths, aqueducts, and others, gradually reducing them to no more than field names. Among reasons provided for the loss of Roman monuments and knowledge related to them, there is the increasing settlement density and the need to obtain building material from the ancient structures, together with a decreasing interest in the ancient past and a growing inability to read and understand Latin inscriptions. What is left is “the deplorable remains which we admire today as the architectural Roman inheritance” and the newer architectural styles which have replaced the earlier style (116).
Nicolas Reveyron examines how the process of forgetting, fading or erasing from memory, which represents “one of those rare unknowable realities, experienced without being thought about,” is conceptualized in language (120). Going back in time to Greco-Roman culture, Reveyron shows that while in mythology forgetfulness was construed as a factor external to an individual, in Christian culture it became a moral fault, a psychological weakness internal to an individual. A lot of attention is devoted to the etymology of expressions capturing the loss of memory, such as “the fields of oblivion,” “the herb of forgetfulness,” “the shroud of oblivion” and others. While the bulk of examples are derived from poetry (including both classical and later literature), as well as from spiritual and philosophical traditions, references are also made to other specialized fields of enquiry and to politics (cf. the erasure of popular memory by totalitarian regimes as captured in the term “hole of oblivion”).
In his exploration of royal testaments, Hans-Joachim Schmidt focuses on the role of memory in generating institutional continuity. He describes how the transfer of power from the ruler to his descendants was recorded in testaments and how the validity of the testaments was challenged when they served conflicting interests. This was the case in medieval Sicily, where the interests of the kings clashed with those of the Pope, who regarded the kingdom as a papal fief. The discussion revolves around Henry VI’s testament and the question of whether the monarch’s wish to make concessions to the Roman Curia represented a genuine wish to return Sicily to direct papal control or whether it only aimed at granting the pope an assurance of security (178). Schmidt shows how oblivion can become a political instrument serving the interests of those who disregard the deceased monarch’s last will in the name of ensuring institutional continuity.
Isabella Lazzarini looks into the practice of erasing documentary memory in late medieval and early modern Italy. She distinguishes three methods of condemning records to oblivion, beginning with (1) slow, unintentional cancellation of memory, which happens as a result of neglecting records until they are regarded as obsolete, through (2) manipulating memory in order to respond to a new ideological and political reality by reexamining and rearranging political and diplomatic records, and concluding with (3) deliberate and collective destruction of political, administrative, and fiscal records as a result of political unrest or social conflicts. The evidence presented demonstrates how the documentary landscape of European politics was shaped by forces which effected a breakdown of the original logic by which the archives were produced, creating what Lazzarini refers to as “ambiguous” or “elusive” oblivion (195).
Olivier Ribordy’s research situates oblivion in the context of intellectual endeavor and important discoveries, including those concerning the rotation of the Earth. The main question posed is: “To what extent does a ‘collective forgetting’ allow us to support a new project, to foster an intellectual renewal?” (205). The answer is based on insights into the Jesuit tradition of cultivating the mind and caring for the soul, on the one hand, and Cartesian philosophy, on the other. Ribordy shows how “methodological forgetting” was promoted in the Jesuit manual for teachers (the Ratio studiorum), especially with reference to the materialistic interpretations of the human soul and other theories which may have “unfortunate theological consequences” (248), and how it was addressed by Descartes, himself a graduate of the Jesuit College of La Fleche. Another interesting point of contact between the Jesuits and Descartes that Ribordy mentions is that both Ignatius of Loyola, the founder of the order, and Descartes would have preferred to consign to oblivion the writings they have been associated with: the Spiritual Exercises and the reflections on Galilean science, respectively.
Antonella Ballardini’s study of forgetting looks into the history of the famous St Peter’s Basilica in Vatican. Applying Horst Bredekamp’s concept of “productive destruction,” Ballardini examines the chapel of Sixtus IV, known as the chapel of the choir of the canons, and shows how the demolition of the Constantine basilica in 1605 led to a discovery of “a forgotten model that has unexpectedly brought to the surface other lost memories” (251). What was brought to the surface was Pope Sixtus’s original intention in designing the funerary chapel, which was not merely to ensure the preservation of his memory, but to entrust his soul to the Virgin Mary in the face of death. In this respect, the function of the chapel was more “eschatological than memorial” (293).
Andreas Rehberg looks into the visual aspect of memorial culture, examining heraldry as an important aspect of identity formation from the thirteenth century onwards and underlining the various functions (social, legal, and political) that the coats of arms played in Rome. Rehberg’s main focus in on those antiquaries who contributed to preserving the heraldic sources, including Onofrio Panvinio (1530-1568) and his Epitome pontificum romanorum, containing portraits of popes and papal coats of arms; Alonso Chacón (1530-1599) and his heraldic “encyclopaedia” called Vitae et gesta summorum Pontificum (1601); as well as Alfonso Ceccarelli (1532-1583) and his three-volume work titled La serenissima nobiltà dell’alma città di Roma. Addressing the question of the reliability of genealogical knowledge for the study of society, Rehberg makes a case for distinguishing between the perspective of a historian and that of an expert in heraldry and for compiling a comprehensive repertory of arms pertaining to Roman families, not yet accomplished.
Martial Staub’s contribution examines memory in the context of medieval civil life and the rights of the poor. Relating the concepts of memory as social life and oblivion as social death to the Christian idea of dutiful remembrance of the dead, Staub observes that it was the poor, themselves prone to be forgotten, that played an instrumental role in promoting remembrance as a core activity of medieval associations: “The poor were hardly visible. God was even less so, yet He must not be forgotten. The poor reminded their fellow Christians of their duty to remember God,” he says (328-329). Referring to Foucault’s ideas on the care of the self, Staub shows how poverty became a way of life for the good Christian, as seen in Franciscan thought. He approaches the question of “civism” through George Simmel’s sociological perspective and Jean Gerson’s theory of universal rights based on poverty, navigating between modern and medieval theories and ideas, before concluding with (both modern and medieval) considerations of the question of civic responsibility.
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Notes:
1. Judith Butler, Precarious Life: The Powers of Mourning and Violence. London; New York: Verso, 2004, p. xii.
2. On the idea of “grievable” lives, see Judith Butler, Precarious Life: The Powers of Mourning and Violence. London; New York: Verso, 2004, pp. xiv-xv.