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.