If National Socialism and Communism are remembered primarily through the prism of trauma, pre-communist days or certain aspects of communism are increasingly remembered through the warm haze of nostalgia. Recalling the past through the eyes of traumatized victimhood runs the risk of projecting individual psychology onto collectivities such as nations or people. Museums that depict history though the eyes of victimhood remove historical events from time in order to focus on traumatic moments of suffering. Likewise, monuments to national suffering, while representing key moments, tend to reduce the complexity of historical events into clear visual images that appeal to primal emotions. Recent areas of memory studies that are devoted to the importance of trauma tend to divide the world into two groups: perpetrators and victims. However, what cannot be discussed in a traumatic reading of history are the gray areas of collaboration or passivity. What happens if individuals were neither perpetrators nor victims?

Nostalgia is even more attractive than trauma because it softens time by offering a beautiful image of the past. Inscribed in heritage sites and national folklore, nostalgia offers a simple and powerful image of the nation through the eyes of culture. Clearly there are problems in reading history through the eyes of trauma, because one receives a distorted understanding of the past solely from the perspective of the victim. In a similar way, nostalgia forgets the difficulties of the past by recalling only what was pleasant and what often coincides with the youth of the one remembering.

Both trauma and nostalgia engage in what Tony Judt would call a “mis-memory.” A mis-memory is not necessarily forgetfulness, nor is it an outright lie. However, a mis-memory borders dangerously on mythology by dividing the world into occupying forces and victims, good and evil. Both trauma and nostalgia are mis-memories because they fixate on particular aspects of the past and reject anything that threatens their singular definition.

Thus, those in eastern Europe, who see the past solely through the eyes of national victimhood might view the Holocaust as a threat to a pristine understanding of their national suffering as the central trauma. Likewise, those who cling to a nostalgic view of the interwar years before Soviet occupation also engage in mis-memory because those good old years are remembered through the misty haze of nostalgia. Both trauma and nostalgia offer true, but limited readings of the past. Both fixate on myths of the past that are frozen and removed from critical analysis and the passing of time. Moreover, they are incapable of addressing the difficult moral choices that individuals had to make during National Socialism and Communism. Such moral choices do not and cannot fit into the black and white framework of traumatic victimhood or a nostalgic golden age.

Perhaps the question can be phrased in a different way: Is there a collective responsibility to remember both the crimes of communism and the Holocaust as part of a common European past? It was Hannah Arendt who first raised the question of what collective responsibility meant in her essay entitled “Collective Responsibility” published in 1968. Unlike Karl Jaspers, who argued that there are four types of guilt after National Socialism, Arendt was careful to distinguish between guilt and responsibility. As she wrote, one cannot feel guilt for something that one has not done. “There is such a thing as responsibility for things one has not done; one can be held liable for them.” (Arendt 2003: 147) Originally written after the Eichmann trial and during the student demonstrations in West Germany and the civil rights movement in the United States, Arendt’s argument for collective responsibility is relevant for the question of a common European past. As she famously wrote: “Where all are guilty, nobody is.” Guilt is personal and linked to an individual. If law and morality begin from the individual, collective responsibility is political and connected with a group. According to Arendt, if we do not want to be held collectively responsible for something, we must leave the group. But, since every person belongs to a community of some sort – national, religious, ethnic and finally the world – he will always be part of a community. In the end, the community that we cannot separate ourselves from is the world that we share. The world is far larger than a single nation or a continent – the world is everything that we share. “This vicarious responsibility for things we have not done, this taking upon ourselves the consequences for things we are entirely innocent of, is the price we pay for the fact that we live our lives not by ourselves but among our fellow men…”

Europe is a collective body that people belong to. Given the different war and postwar experiences throughout the continent, it becomes more important to pay attention to the nuances as well as the common points of history. Attempts to read the past through the eyes of trauma or nostalgia risk flattening the complexity of history into simplistic grand narratives. Likewise, although only half of the continent shares a communist past, most of Europe shares some experience with the Holocaust. Thus, the tendency to view the Holocaust solely as a German or Jewish problem has moral, as well historical consequences. Judt’s lecture on Europe that he gave in 1995 seems just as relevant now, as it was then: “Discussion today of the prospects for Europe tends to oscillate rather loosely between Pangloss and Cassandra, between bland assurance and dire prophecy.” (Judt 2011: 12) Questions of how to present a more balanced European history that includes both the Holocaust and the crimes of communism are not only necessary from the point of historical knowledge and collective responsibility, but will also have consequences for what kind of a European future we can imagine: an open community that is hospitable to strangers and based on a broader understanding of citizenship or a provincial fortress that can only see history through the eyes of national suffering or nostalgia for a bygone age. So far Judt seems to be right. We do seem to be somewhere “rather loosely (sic) between Pangloss and Cassandra.”

A few years ago, I had a couple of opportunities to present publicly my thoughts on collective memory: at the annual memory conference at The New School and at an interdisciplinary conference on resistance and creativity in Cerisy, France. Collective memory was then an emergent major concern internationally, and it has been a long term interest of mine, starting with my analysis of the way collective memory served as a base for independent public expression and action in Communist societies (published in my one and only piece in the premier sociology journal, The American Journal of Sociology). There was a kind of vindication for me in these developments.

While collective memory is now hot, I have long been interested in a topic (by the way informed by the work I did with Edward Shils, which indicates how I have learned from a conservative thinker as I have suggested in earlier posts). Yet, I am ambivalent about this development. I have become increasingly uncomfortable with the memory’s emergent academic and public popularity, concerning two problems. I see a disturbing trend, people turning to memory as they lose political imagination (this shows that I am not a conservative). Also, a too simple identification of memory with enlightenment concerns me (a conservative concern perhaps). By underscoring the importance not only of memory, but also of forgetting, I wanted to highlight these issues in my talks in 2008. And I am posting a version of the talks here today because I think the problems remain, though many academics including some of my students and colleagues are now addressing them. In a couple of weeks, I am off to Berlin to take part in a discussion on the topic of memory and civil society, where I hope these issues will be discussed.

I should add that at that time I was composing my presentation on memory, I was working with two students, Irit Dekel and Yifat Gutman, who were addressing the problems of memory in creative ways. I was learning a lot about the promise and problems of memory studies from them. Dekel’s strikingly sober and anti-sentimental ethnography of a memory site, the Memorial for the Murdered Jews of Europe in Berlin, was revealing the unsteadiness of memory as a series of discreet social activities in the present, creating understandings and misunderstandings, and Gutman was showing how memory activists in Israel, particularly concerned with Israeli Palestinian relations, were creating domains of contemporary political conflict, making them more complex and unsettled, constituting spaces of contemporary possibility. She was moving from memory to the study of social movements and global politics and publics. Learning from one’s students is one of the great pleasures of the academic profession. This was the case in the work I did with Yifat and Irit and quite a few others students studying the topic of memory, Rafael Narvaez, Amy Sodaro, Lindsey Freeman, working with my colleague Vera Zolberg and me. I still am learning from them in their work. Indeed, the discussion I will have in Berlin about memory and civil society is being organized and coordinated by Dekel.

My presentation on memory and forgetting is a critical response to an idea formulated by Adam Michnik at the moment of radical transformation in Poland, “amnesty without amnesia.” His was a wise political judgment presented at a critical moment in the struggle to constitute a democratic polity in Poland. Don’t engage in revolutionary justice, but also don’t forget the horrors of the recent past. This is a topic that is quite relevant today in North Africa and the Middle East. Indeed, the problem lingers in Poland and among its neighbors as reported in The New York Times today. Mine is an appreciation of Michnik’s political position, the subtleties of which are missing in the Times report. I think he makes crucial distinctions. Yet, I also think that careful  sociological analysis highlights the empirical difficulties of of realizing Michnik’s key proposition.  I seek to show in the presentation posted here that at critical moments of social change, creative political action works to erase memories of the relevant past, while “re-remembering” (to use Toni Morrison’s formulation). Three cases will be compared, Michnik’s, after the fall of the communist regime in East Central Europe, and cases drawn from the Palestinian-Israeli conflict, and the American presidential campaign of 2008.

I am posting the paper I presented in Cerisy because I think it is still relevant. This is the first time it is being published in English. Keep in mind, the piece was written in the Spring of 2008. Therefore, the report on the American campaign was written before the outcome of the election was decided. I think the reader will note that the issues raised are as important now as they were then and have been underscored by the way memories of race and racism have played a persistent role in the elections and during the first term of the Obama presidency.

To read the full In-Depth Analysis of “For and Against Memory: Poland, Israel-Palestine and the United States” click here.

An example of a memory project left undone: I remember talking to a visiting scholar from China. He was studying the Cultural Revolution with the American journalist and student of recent Chinese history, Judith Shapiro. He admired the Jewish memory work on the Holocaust and wondered why there was no similar work being done in China, confronting the atrocities of the Great Leap Forward and the Cultural Revolution. He asked me once: was there something about the Jewish and the Chinese political culture, or, at least, their distinctive collective experiences that explained these different approaches to collective trauma? The supposition was that to remember was to set one free.

Poland

Then there is Adam Michnik, Poland’s leading intellectual opposition leader in the 70s and 80s, and later after the changes of ’89, the editor of Poland’s major newspaper, Gazeta Wyborcza.  And also importantly for me a personal friend and a friend and colleague of many at my university, the New School for Social Research, a frequent visitor since he received an honorary degree from us at the 50^th anniversary of the University in Exile. He is memory worker, although he calls himself a historian. He uses history in special ways. He reminds his readers of something in the past and proposes it as a guide for future action, thinking between past and future, as Hannah Arendt would put it. Thus, in his classic essay “The New Evolutionism,” he remembers the so called Polish positivists of the 19^th century who proposed pragmatic reform over romantic revolt, and he remembers those who joined the communist system from Catholic parties and made small differences in the post Stalinist period. He presents such memories to his readers as he proposed in 1976 a new course of resistance to the communist system, remembering the failures of 1956 in Budapest and of 1968 in Prague. He proposes not revolution from below or reform from above, but reform from below for social change. He proposed a vision of change that anticipated, even guided, the action that became Solidarność and contributed in a significant way to the democratic postscript of the Communist experience.

And I also am very much involved in what I have called the enlightenment prejudice. In my work on the relative autonomy of culture as one of the definitive structures of modernity, I have posited a positive connection between collective memory and creative independence. I studied artists who remembered the past, a variety of artistic traditions, to establish their distinctive work apart from the orthodoxies of the old regime of previously existing socialism.  Solzhenitsyn used the officially available works of Tolstoy to create a new literary alternative to socialist realism (the post-Stalinist Lukacs not withstanding). Grotowski used Stanislavsky.  My beloved Polish student theaters drew upon the literary and theatrical imaginations of Witkiewicz and Gombrowicz. The inherited socialist and nationalist cultural traditions available because of official support for a dominant interpretation, the officially supported collective memory of the cultural past, provided the grounds for critical creative innovation.  One of my favorite quotes comes from Milan Kundera. It comes from his The Art of the Novel. He asserts “The novelist needs answer to no one but Cervantes.” (Kundera, 1988, p.144) His is an argument for a specialized collective memory as the basis for artistic creation. When this is enacted a significant support for cultural freedom is constituted. I have worked with this insight repeatedly in my comparative studies in the sociology of the culture.

With such observations in mind, why then the full title of this presentation, why am I presenting a paper not only for but also against memory, when collective memory is so important for human achievements that I deeply admire and have dedicated much of my career to studying? I now turn to some details, some small things, to explain.

It has to do with a complexity of the sociology of collective memory, much examined by specialists on the topic. I am just looking at this complexity from a different point of view, not only asking how we work to remember but also how we work to forget, understanding, as has been often been observed, that memory and forgetting are two sides of the same coin.

In order to remember together, we must forget together, pay attention to some things that happened by ignoring others. And sometimes, we need, or at least want, to change what is to be remembered and what is to be forgotten. This is what Michnik was trying to work on when he came up with his politically wise counsel: “amnesty without amnesia. It is also what happens in the various memory battles over controversial exhibits that reveal hitherto unexamined aspects of the past, as for example, Vera Zolberg has studied in the case of the controversies over Enola Gay exhibit at the Smithsonian. Or, as Robin Wagner Pacifici and Barry Schwartz, analyzed in their brilliant analysis of Maya Lin’s Vietnam Veterans Memorial. People go to the memorial calling a truce in a cultural war, forgetting their differences on the War, at least situationally. They remember together a shared, though differently understood, collective experience.

In the idea of amnesty without amnesia, Michnik wanted to pretend that it is possible to have it both ways: to both remember the injustices and suffering of Polish society under communist rule, and to avoid the problems of revolutionary justice. He wanted to forgive, but not forget.  There was a real practical problem with this. Poland is a complex modern differentiated society, meaning many different people, doing different things at different times. It is because of these differences that Michnik’s idea could not succeed.  It required concerted forgetting that he didn’t work on. Michnik, standing in a very privileged position in society, could come up with his subtle idea, and his informed reading public, both at home and abroad (including me), were persuaded. But when he acted following his idea and was seen by a broader, differently positioned public, the meaning of his actions was understood in very different ways. He presented his subtle position, but in his actions he appeared to the less informed, the less well connected, to just forget what happened, or worse, he seemed to want people to forget what happened because he was somehow implicated in the crimes of the past.  Beyond the political class, when he had his weekly meetings with his former jailers and publicly treated them with respect and deference, he appeared as one who didn’t remember and who was complicit in the injustices of the communist regime.

In a sense that was Michnik’s point. He wanted to act as if the wrongs of the past were forgotten so that the pressing problems of the present and the near future could be acted upon. Being too involved with the past would not allow for sensible action. Because he didn’t convince the broad public to willfully forget together in their actions, while they remembered what happened in the stories they told each other about theirs past, the problems of “lustration,” of purging those complicit in the communist regime, has haunted Poland ever since. Thankfully the party that was building its future around this theme of retribution has not too long ago lost in Poland’s parliamentary elections, and the progressive collective project of forgetting is again on the agenda.

Of course, I am being ironic using the phrase “progressive forgetting,” but only a bit. Looking closely at politics, looking at what I call the politics of small things, I have become very impressed by the importance of forgetting in developing a free politics. The politics of small things is a concept drawn from the political theory of Hannah Arendt and the sociology of Erving Goffman. When people meet and speak in each other’s presence, and develop a capacity to act together on the basis of shared commitments, principles or ideals, they develop political power. This power is constituted in social interaction. It has its basis in the definition of the situation, the power of people to define their social reality. In the power of definition, there is the power of constituting alternatives to the existing order of things. When this power involves the meeting of equals, respectful of factual truth and open to alternative interpretations of the problems they face, it has profound democratic capacity. As Hannah Arendt has theorized, it constitutes political power as the opposite of coercion.

Israel – Palestine

But each element of this conceptualization of micropolitics has to be worked on. It is in fact much harder than my simple formulation makes it seem. Meeting and speaking to each other, developing a capacity to act in concert is no easy matter for Israelis and Palestinians. There are the physical mechanics of occupation, which are meant to separate people, and, less apparent though no less significant, there are memory problems.

Consider scenes from Encounter Point a moving film about The Parents Circle, a Palestinian Israeli organization of bereaved families for peace. The film depicts the extraordinary side of rather ordinary people on both sides of the conflict. These are people who have lost love ones in the conflict, victims of wars, military raids, suicide bombings, terror of the state apparatus and of resistance organizations. The group members are dedicated to not having their loss used to justify a politics of retribution. It started in Tel Aviv, among a group of Israeli parents. It now has both Palestinian and Israeli branches, with the Palestinian group slightly outnumbering the Israeli one. The groups operate independently and also work jointly.  Getting together, a crucial part of their endeavors, though, is not easy. Travel restrictions make Palestinian movements within Israel proper difficult if not impossible. And Israeli citizens also are restricted in their movements in the occupied territories. In the film we see a group meeting in Jerusalem. What we don’t see are the obstacles and checkpoints that had to be surmounted for the Palestinians to take part. We are shown an attempt by the Israeli group to meet a group in the West Bank, and though they finally do get through, their difficulties are clearly depicted. It includes a postscript of the Palestinian host of the gathering being arrested as a terrorist, but released from prison thanks to his Parents Circle Israeli colleagues. Road blocks, checkpoints, official regulations and fear are the group’s immediate obstacles. But memory is a more profound one.

In the report of the Jerusalem meeting we see a discussion between two families who lost their daughters to the conflict, in an anti terrorist military operation in Bethlehem and in a suicide bombing in Tel Aviv. It is a quick empathetic conversation, casual, seemingly not of profound significance. But we see more outside the meeting. We learn that the family from Bethlehem had the bad luck of driving their late model car on a shopping trip on the same day a group of suspected terrorists were driving the same model. And when their car came into view of the Israeli army, they were attacked and their daughter was killed. We see the funeral, a full martyr’s ceremony, with aggressive nationalist, almost militaristic, rhetoric and with the father actively taking part. And we see the father, later, now a member of Parents Circle, as deputy major of the city. This is a moving sequence of events. The family, of course, has not forgotten the loss of their daughter, but in their actions, they are undermining a dominant way of remembering, trying to create another way, apparently with some success. Their Israeli counterparts do the same thing. We see the father who lost his daughter to the suicide bombing go to school groups and argue not only for peace and reconciliation, but also against the linking of memory and retribution. He may not convince, but he is, at least, opening up new possibilities. Both fathers know that as they work in their own communities, they make it possible to work together, and in doing so, they are creating new political alternatives to the logic of the central authorities, by redefining their situation and acting together based on that redefinition.  As I work on such politics of small things in Israel Palestine, formally named as an SSRC project “Micropolitics: Spaces of Possibility?” I am struck by the fact that working against memory, or, at least, “re-remembering,” collectively remembering in a different way, is a first act of establishing a space of possibility. This is the case in the many examples of alternative practices in the region, which I would be happy to discuss with you in the question and answer period. Representative of these in a highly dramatic way is a movement that Yifat Gutman is studying: an Israeli Jewish group that is working to remember, in Hebrew, the Nakba, the disaster, as the moment of Israeli independence is commemorated among Palestinians. As they describe themselves on their website: “Zochrot [“Remembering”] is a group of Israeli citizens working to raise awareness of the Nakba, the Palestinian catastrophe of 1948.” They go on to describe their goal: “We hope that by bringing the Nakba into Hebrew, the language spoken by the Jewish majority in Israel, we can make a qualitative change in the political discourse of this region. Acknowledging the past is the first step in taking responsibility for its consequences. This must include equal rights for all the peoples of this land, including the right of Palestinians to return to their homes.” Note how their project of coming together is pitted against memory. It is about remembering in a different way, re-remembering. It’s not a Jewish memory of the Jewish state, but a memory for an Israel for all its people.

The United States

“Re–remembering,” a notion Toni Morrison presented in her masterpiece, Beloved. She challenged the collective memory of slavery in America. When I read the book, it helped me to find my position on the ethical question of the relationship between poetry and atrocity, first opened by Adorno. I think Morrison revealed that necessity of poetry, the necessity of artistic imagination after horror. It makes an ethical political life possible.  More specifically for this presentation, Morrison has helped me understand how memory works, and how working against memory is so important. Her idea about re-remembering is exactly my point in this paper. So I will conclude with how what I have said thus far applies to the American experience, and specifically how it relates to the American dilemma, race in America.

We are living through extraordinary times in the United States, markedly more hopeful than our most recent past: a Presidential election campaign in which the likely victor will be either an African American or a woman. As I wrote these words, and as I now utter them, I am revealing the problems I wish to raise. Perhaps I should have said “an African American man or a white woman?” The former coupling, “African American or woman,” assumes the normality of the white man, the latter, “African American man or white woman,” seems to emphasize the masculinity of Obama and, it is my sense, especially, the whiteness of Clinton.  There is a dilemma here even revealed at the moment that the issue is raised. The politicians, the media and the public are struggling with the problem of memory and with the problem of forgetting. That is my point, and part of the struggle is to work not only on collective remembering, but also on collective forgetting, not only for, but also against memory.

How do we remember gender and racial injustices and also overcome them? This re- remembering, this for and also against memory involves tough work, work that occurs in and through interaction. When we remember the significance of race and gender, we are perpetuating their continued salience. But if we don’t pay attention, if we imagine that the significance of Obama’s and Clinton’s candidacies as being about two able people who “happen to be” a black and a woman, we don’t do any better. Clearly the moment that either of them becomes President will be of great significance beyond their personal qualities. I personally think that Clinton’s case is more complicated in that she is Bill’s wife, and for me less compelling (as many know about me). So let me discuss the issues involved more closely in the case of Obama and race.

(Written on January 23, 2008) Obama has faced a dilemma, he is running to be President of the United States, not the first black President. He needs to make appeals to the public that don’t draw attention first to race and our memories of what race means in America. His candidacy is reported in the press most often without reference to race. His opponents engage him in debate, also most often as if race were not central. All are working against memory, but it is not easy. Race matters in America and although acting as if it did not, does have situational effect, the effect does not last, because we remember.

After his surprising victory in Iowa, blacks came to realize that it just might be possible that white America might elect an African American, and started moving in his direction. Whites realized the same thing, and then suddenly the problem presented itself to the fore. It was collectively remembered. Nothing crassly racist, but Clinton, the former President, called the black candidate a kid. Clinton, the candidate, said odd things about the relationship between Martin Luther King Jr. and Lyndon Baynes Johnson. What these things meant, whether they were subtle attempts to use racial attitudes to diminish Obama’s legitimacy as a serious politician, is in the eyes of the partisan beholder, much debated in the media and by the public. In the rabid Obama camp that is my family, I (the author of The Cynical Society) am the only one that thinks that this may not have been an intentional political calculation.  I actually don’t know whom this helped, perhaps Obama in the short run in South Carolina, perhaps Clinton, in the long run, on Super Tuesday. But I am here not as a talking head, not as a race track handicapper.  Rather, I want to show how working against memory is an important part of political action — note how difficult it has been to work against the memory of race and racism in the campaign.

In South Carolina, the former President attacked the press, noting that his wife may lose this primary because of the African American vote and complaining that the press is being fed a line about the Clintons injecting race into the campaign. As the New York Times observed:

Mr. Clinton also suggested in public remarks that his wife might lose here because of race. Referring to her and Mr. Obama, he said, ‘They are getting votes, to be sure, because of their race or gender, and that’s why people tell me that Hillary doesn’t have a chance to win here.’

And a little further down in the same article:

Mr. Clinton said no one in the audience in Charleston had asked him about how race was being used in the campaign. ‘They [the Obama campaign] are feeding you [the press] this because they know this is what you want to cover,’ he said. ‘What you care about is this. And the Obama people know that. So they just spin you up on this and you happily go along.’

And after this, Clinton, Bill that is, made infamous comparisons between Jesse Jackson and Obama.

Yet, I still do not think that the Clintons are rabid racists, using the race card to prevail. And Obama is not a cunning advocate of black power. But as they compete in their little gestures and sound bites, in employing political tactics as usual, they reveal how race still matters, racism still exists, perhaps because, more likely it seems to me, despite, their own intentions. It matters as they appear, as they present themselves in a highly mediated social situation, and re-produce the collective memory of race in America. It is a memory worth fighting against.

To conclude with a general observation: there is power when people come together and speak and act in each other’s presence, developing a capacity to act in concert. How we manage to actually come together, recognizing each other as equals involves the difficult challenges of social interaction, working on a common definition of a situation, which often involves a re-definition. When the definition is drawn from the inherited collective memory, which is usually the case, (Erving Goffman structured his “frame analysis” around this), it is the dynamic force that constitutes memory, for better and for worse. Redefining in our actions makes re-remembering in creative ways a possibility. It makes it possible to overcome the looming repressive implications of memory. But this is a difficult political project that requires much more than Michnik’s beautiful formulation: “amnesty without amnesia,” whether this is on the European killing fields, in the lands of Israel and Palestine, or on the American campaign trail.

P.S. This project of re-remembering plays a key role in the re-invention of political culture, something which I developed in greater detail in my most recent book, Reinventing Political Culture: The Power of Culture versus the Culture of Power.

Memory and development often seem to be in tension in Latin America. The left speaks of the need to remember the past, particularly the human rights abuses committed by dictatorships during the cold war; the right, on the other hand, is concerned that an obsession with memory will forestall economic growth.  A few weeks ago, Gerardo Bleier published, via Facebook, a piece that made the old-guard of the Uruguayan left quite uncomfortable.  In the post, he presented a strong and provocative argument concerning collective memory and economic development. A leftist in distinguished standing, Bleier argues that in order to achieve justice concerning human rights violations during the recent Uruguayan dictatorship, Uruguayans must focus on social and economic development. Development, he argues, ought to be seen as an instrument of justice.  He has thus rejected the common sense positions of the left and the right and maps out a significant alternative.

Bleier has been a noted Uruguayan journalist since the 1980s. During the first government of the Frente Amplio (Broad Front, the left of center coalition), led by socialist Tabaré Vázquez (2005-2010), Bleier served as a high level consultant; and currently, he publishes weekly reflections about the vicissitudes encountered by the present Frente Amplio.

Importantly, he is the son of Eduardo Bleier, who was a high ranking cadre in the Communist Party. Without ever having held a gun, Eduardo was one of the many activists who disappeared, was tortured, and murdered during Uruguay’s “dirty war” of the 1960s and 1970s.  He probably died the first week of July, 1976, though no one knows for sure. After being tortured in the most savage way, he was thrown into a small wooden box and buried alive. The family never saw his remains. It is rumored that he was buried in a clandestine cemetery located within an army compound assigned to Battalion 13 of the Infantry Division. At some point between October 1984 and March 1985, as democracy was being reestablished, Bleier’s body was unearthed and transferred to a different military compound. Later, his body was unearthed yet again, together with the bodies of several military officers. This time his remains were incinerated and thrown into the Río de la Plata, according to some versions, or into a nearby creek, according to others.

The son’s political judgment is of course shaped and informed by his father’s fate. In his recent post, Eduardo Bleier provided a personal and poignant reflection about the meaning of memory and justice in Uruguay. He writes:

It is obvious that this [growth] should not prevent us from weaving and reconstructing the collective memories pertaining to the civil war and to the terrorism that was perpetrated by the state. We cannot stop reminding ourselves of the scale of this state-sponsored terrorism, which many have tried to hide, and the systematic violation of human rights, which occurred during the dictatorship. We can’t stop trying to find avenues that would lead us to the missing truths. We can’t stop debunking the politics of silence and protection of criminals. Yet, these themes cannot occupy the central stage in Uruguayan politics, as Uruguayans essentially understand.

I agree with Bleier’s most provocative point: addressing the problems of the past should not distract us from the need for development. Uruguay has to address its problematic past, but it cannot be careless about issues of poverty and institutional life in the future. We have to remember, but we also have to develop. After all, Uruguay was, for 70 years, on the forefront of education, and yet today it experiences a grotesque decline of its educational system; a decline that coincides with a previous collapse of the economy and the subsequent process of polarization which led to 12 years of dictatorship.

Bleier also wrote this in his Facebook account:

[I]t is also true that the overwhelming majority of Uruguayans, particularly the youth, need a collective memory that is not marked by the traumas of the past, but by the challenges of the future.

His post generated strong responses, in favor and against, among readers who are mostly intellectuals and activists with bright futures. The debate took place just as the Administration of President José Mujica –a former militant of the guerrilla group Tupamaros— lost a battle, failing to pass legislation that would allow the judiciary to prosecute members of the military who, during the civil war, committed crimes against humanity. The legislation was designed to reverse the amnesty law that was approved in 1985, shortly after democracy was reestablished in Uruguay. This amnesty law had allowed for a peaceful transition from 12 years of military rule to a democratic form of governance.  In essence, this law was a form of extortion, whereby the dictatorship protected its members from being judged for crimes against humanity.

Mujica’s predecesor, Tabaré Vázquez, had begun the legislative process intended to reopen cases of human rights violations that involved members of the dictatorship. As a result of Vázquez’ initiative, 28 police officers and members of the military who worked for the dictatorship have been jailed in a military detention center. Among them are lower-level functionaries, intelligence service operators, some police officers, a former Chancellor, Juan Carlos Blanco, and two former presidents, Juan Maria Bordaberry (under house arrest), and Lieutenant General Gregorio Alvarez.

Yet, of course, these people were not the only ones who were responsible for disappearances, torture and murders. According to the Freedom and Concord Forum (Foro Libertad y Concordia), an association that allegedly represents retired military, more than 400 military officers and soldiers are needed to serve as witnesses, in case Mujica’s government prosecutes the 88 members of the military whose cases have been pending. The spokesman of the association, retired Colonel Juan Perez de Azziz expects that dozens of these witnesses have a chance of ending up in jail themselves.

Today Uruguayans are confronted precisely with the question of whether or not to proceed with this amnesty law, of whether to focus on their past or to focus on their future.

After all these years, Gerardo Bleier knows that those responsible for his father’s torture and death are not just the politically alienated and the ultra-nationalist members of the military; the small cadre that operated during the cold war. He knows that political groups and people with economic interests also added fuel to the terror, people whose names can fill countless pages, even tomes that may never be part of our history. The government of the United States, to begin with, was the main facilitator of this crisis, having financed, since 1968, our Homeland Security Program, under which Uruguayan officers were trained by CIA operatives.

Ever since, many historical events have met their expiration date. And Bleier, the survivor, knows well that each passing day truth flees yet again. But he also knows that there will be no truth and no justice if Uruguay doesn’t consolidate its future. And he knows that this future and these truths will not be possible if we don’t take care today of our current, important, urgent demands: educate the young, address the problems of gross inequality, develop the economy.  These are not tasks that turn away from remembering the past. They are preconditions for it.

Memories are not simply about the past. They define the present and shape the future: collective memory making, as Maurice Halbwachs’ influential work demonstrates, personal memories, and iterative interchanges between and among personal, interpersonal, and collected memories. I have been thinking about this on the occasion of the anniversary of a parade in Chicago.

I recently received from someone on a Vietnam War listserv comments and links to Chicago Tribune articles discussing the “Chicago 25^th Anniversary Welcome Home Parade” for Vietnam War veterans. Held originally on June 13^th, 1986 over a decade after the last Americans had left South Vietnam, the Chicago Welcome Home Parade provided for Vietnam Vets the recognition they felt they were denied upon their return from an unpopular war. The 25^th anniversary of the parade was held last weekend, on June 17, 18 and 19, as its original participants are fading away, many no longer able to march.

It is estimated that about 200,000 veterans marched and another 300,000 spectators cheered them on in 1986, a surprisingly large number. In 1985, New York City had a ticker-tape parade in which about 25,000 Vietnam veterans participated. Prior to 1982, when the Vietnam Veterans Memorial was dedicated, Vietnam Veterans received very little recognition and many rarely talked about the war. The memorials and parades changed attitudes towards Vietnam Veterans and how they felt about themselves.

The Chicago Tribune’s multimedia links capture objectified personal and collected memories, providing insights into interpersonal and collective memories. This year’s anniversary celebration afforded numerous associational opportunities for the participants including a banquet, the display of the Moving Wall, a half-sized replica of the Vietnam Veterans Memorial, a ceremony which honored soldiers who have returned from the Iraq and Afghanistan wars, and an interfaith service held at Chicago’s Vietnam Veterans Memorial. The organizers believe that no soldier should have to wait a decade or more for a homecoming welcome. Memories of the past and associational activities are reshaping the present and future treatment of veterans.

As Halbwachs suggests, the associational aspects are diminishing as organizers and participants have continued to be lost to age-related issues, illnesses and death. One organizer died of pancreatic cancer last year and another continues the effort despite a continuing fight with hepatitis C, which he contracted during transfusions associated with a limb lost during the war.

Some of the remembrances, real and imagined, raise sensitive issues and are part of a battle for Vietnam War meanings and memories. For instance, Jack Shiffler, chairman of the Welcome Home 2011 anniversary event, shared his recollection of his homecoming in December 1967. He contends that although military officials cautioned returning Vietnam Veterans against wearing their uniforms while traveling because of war protests, he chose to wear his. He reports that as he was walking through an airline terminal in Los Angeles, he was approached by an attractive young woman dressed in the attire of someone belonging to a Hari Krishna group. She asked if he was a Marine back from Vietnam. He acknowledged that he was, and then Shiffler says that she spit in his face and verbally abused him. He didn’t talk about the war for years. Shiffler contrasts this with the love and affection that he was given during the 1986 celebration,remembering seeing a sign, “Honor the warrior, not the war.”

Spitting in the face is part of contested Vietnam War remembrances. Although it is recalled in many narratives of the war, it is contested by sociologist Jerry Lembcke in his book The Spitting Image, Myth, Memory, and the Legacy of Vietnam. Lembcke contends that the spitting in the face narrative is a myth, and sees it as his role to help write an alternative history, constructed from other memories to help establish other identities. His work is highly controversial among Vietnam War Veterans.

Few people wanted to talk to me about the war upon my return from Vietnam. I was welcomed home by family and a small group of friends. The 25^th anniversary celebration links helped me recall them. I also recall being virtually shunned by two editors who took my place on my college newspaper when I visited them. On the other hand, I probably was given my first job out of the Army by a company which was very supportive of veterans. My recollections are part of the memory making process.

One of the 1986 articles on the Chicago Tribune website was by Anne Keegan, a very influential journalist in Chicago. On a visit to Vietnam, years after the first Chicago parade, Keegan brought home four Vietnam War Zippo lighters. She was able to return one to its owner. Keegan shared in the Captain’s memories, and they influenced her and her readers. In one of her stories, Keegan noted “The three things a soldier treasured besides mail were the picture of his girl, his toothbrush and his Zippo lighter because the rest belonged to Uncle Sam.” Keegan passed away in May 2011. She helped break the gender glass ceiling in reporting and went to places and reported on stories traditionally off-limits to women journalists. I became aware of Keegan through my dissertation research on the Vietnam War Zippo lighter and meaning and memory making.

While, the 25^th anniversary celebration may be a small thing, going unnoticed by the media generally, it illuminates how we actively connect the past, present and future.

Visiting the exhibition Hitler and the Germans:  National Community and Crime at the German Historical Museum, I found very little new about Hitler and even less about “the Germans.”

I did find interesting the display and discussion of the national community as connected to perpetration. However, the presentation of crime, or perpetration, lacked individuals and their daily choices and was instead filled with examples of the masses looking for security and stability. The exhibition was celebrated in the local German press as revolutionary simply for showing so much of Hitler, and for connecting his rule to the German people.

It is not a small thing, this act of naming, and the exhibition does that, but then compiles exhibits: posters, photos, Hitler’s aquarelles, busts and books and Nazi advertising in materials that were mostly used for propaganda.

There was a fear expressed in the press around the opening of the exhibition that right wing extremists and Neo- Nazis would come and admire it, now in the open. Those worries were dismissed as the curators assured the prospective visitors that Hitler is not presented spectacularly, and so those loathed groups, which also “probably do not go to museums,” would not come.

Here is the first time where presumption about class, education, racism and origins from the former east could be easily detected but not explicitly discussed.

The mix of thinking about what is presented in the exhibition together with how it will be consumed was at the center of the exhibition’s review in the German press (see, in German, a review in the Spiegel). The curators Prof. Dr. Hans-Ulrich Thamer, Dr. Simone Erpel, Klaus-Jürgen Sembach  made sure that whenever a photo of Hitler is shown with his gaze directed at the camera, the affect of dimming light and photos of Nazi crimes will flicker in the background, so that the visitor is always reminded of the crimes together with whatever else they might feel or think of 1933-1945.

An interview for the center-left weekly Die Zeit focused on the historical relations between the national community and perpetrators. The November 4th issue of Die Zeit has a cover article about how the fourth generation family members relate to the deeds of their great-grandparents. As opposed to the third generation, who generally refused to admit that their grandparents were perpetrators (see Welzer Opa war kein Nazi), the fourth generation (14-19 years old were interviewed) would admit that their families were involved with the Nazi crimes, but ask time and again, “what does it have to do with me.”

The teachers seem as confused in trying to answer this simple question, a confusion I see well in my current study of educational programs at the Holocaust Memorial in Berlin. What most educators and teachers worry about is that the pupils show no affect. I can attest: not only are they not moved, they are encouraged to perform a repetition of horrible historical facts as well as reflect emotionally on the exhibit’s materials when asked: “Which photo or room moved you the most?”

Each memorial is supposed to raise different feelings: in the Holocaust memorial one is to feel lost; in the Topography of Terror: angry. What should one feel in the Hitler exhibit?

In looking at people in the exhibition (it was full, we waited in line for about 30 minutes to get in) I saw that it was important to project, or perform, seriousness. The curators seeded in the exhibition a few parts of Chaplin’s “the great dictator” as well as other comedians and cartoonists work on Hitler. However, they were situated in close proximity to very sad documents and photos, so most visitors did not laugh.

The three very visible right wing extremists I encountered observed Hitler’s busts with awe, as well as the beer glasses, Nazi toys and other memorabilia of that time.  They were walking there alone. German parents came with teenage children; tourists speaking many languages came to see the event, too.

The Sueddeutsche Zeitung criticized the exhibition for not showing the growing loyalty of the people as they were awarded the new jobs, apartment and capital of Jews as the war progressed. I went to the exhibition with a colleague and a friend, Victoria Bishop-Kendzia, who is writing an ethnography on school classes visiting the Jewish museum in Berlin.  She summed it up: “there is no perpetrators’ narrative.”

Not because the crimes are not named, but because there are little, scattered, opportunities to become empathetic, or to understand how it was for Germans then, without an immediate repudiation.

A few reviews commented on the timely opening of the exhibition around Sarrazin’s  book publication on the German race (and other less fortunate races like “the Muslims”) in late October and when Merkel gave an interview in Potsdam in which she announced “the failure of multiculturalism” and lamented the fact they, the immigrants, do not try hard enough to become Germans.

If such an exhibition, besides its ritualized “newness” quality, could illuminate, or help see differently how certain concepts, which are not the same as the Nazi’s used, can be limiting or hurting, we could say that its goal is well achieved. But I am afraid that its stays on a safer, familiar level of fascination with the exhibits and their piling-on, in a dimly lit, very old-new German Historical Museum.