By Jeffrey C. Goldfarb, February 21st, 2012 Most studies of the politics of collective memory assume a kind of enlightenment prejudice. Confronting the memory of a collective trauma or accomplishment is seen as being the precondition of some sort of progressive action. Examples I have thought about, both as a scholar and a citizen, include: the Jewish and specifically Israeli confrontation with the Holocaust as a political precondition of “never again.” And in a parallel fashion, the German confrontation with the genocide understood as a requirement for a decent democratic society in the shadows of the Nazi regime. The need to “re-remember” the trauma of slavery in the United States, as Toni Morrison put it in her classic novel, Beloved, as a way of addressing the enduring problems of race and racism in America. The need of Poles to remember their history apart from communist ideology as a way of developing an independent democratic movement in the 70s and 80s, contributing to the great events of 1989.
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 50th anniversary of the University in Exile. He is memory worker, although he calls himself a historian. He uses history in . . .
Read more: For and Against Memory: Poland, Israel-Palestine and the United States
By Jeffrey C. Goldfarb, February 7th, 2012 
Monday morning, I took a bit of a break from my plan for the day. I decided my class preparation and work on some overdue papers would wait. After I replied to Corey Robin’s response to a critical passing comment I made about his book, The Reactionary Mind, on Facebook, I put off until later in the week my search for interesting conservative intellectuals. I decided to ignore the Republican madness, and not worry about the ups and downs in the upcoming Presidential race, and didn’t read the reports on the Super Bowl (the annual sports media event that I usually ignore but did tweak my interest this year, New Yorker that I am). Instead, I opened my computer and watched the video of the Flying Seminar meeting with Bill Zimmerman (which I missed because I was at that time at a conference in Sofia). It was a particularly interesting meeting, very nicely captured in the video (thank you Lisa Lipscomb). I entered a different world, beyond the mundane, considering the connection between radical hopes and practical projects.
This is what the Flying Seminar is. Recall, Elzbieta Matynia and I developed the Flying Seminar in response to Occupy Wall Street. OWS reminded us of our days observing and participating in the Solidarity (Solidarność) movement in Poland, and the great independent academic project of Solidarity times, the Flying University of the Polish underground. We started with a meeting with activists in Shiroto no Ran (Amateur Revolt), a counter-cultural anti- nuclear movement which came to take part in the occupation of Zuccotti Park. We then arranged a meeting with Adam Michnik, the outstanding Polish critical intellectual and political activist, who also visited the Park. Our third meeting was with Zimmerman, an old New Leftist (it takes one to know one), author of the recent book, Troublemaker: A Memoir From the Front Lines of the Sixties. Last month, after a technical delay, we posted the video recording of that meeting.
The seminar discussion . . .
Read more: Between Radical Hopes and Practical Projects: Reflections on the Flying Seminar Session with Bill Zimmerman
By Jeffrey C. Goldfarb, October 14th, 2011 
I think that the form of Occupy Wall Street expresses its content, as Scott Beck showed in his earlier post on the occupation. I observe, further, that the way people use social media contributes to this form, as does the setting of the occupation. And I believe deliberating about the movement and connecting the debate to other political, social and cultural activities are keys to the democratic contribution of the movement to broader politics in America and beyond.
Jenny Davis in her post last week makes cogent points about the role of social media in social movements in general and in Occupy Wall Street in particular. Her key observation is very important. Digital activism is not only a means to the end of embodied social action. It also is an end in itself, a new type of politics that can make the previously hidden visible and can contribute to what she calls “the zeitgeist,” what I would prefer calling the prevailing common sense. I would add that it can constitute a space for free action, a public, a point made by Judith Butler in a recent lecture. This is especially telling as David Peppas and Barbara note in the two comments to Davis’s post, because the occupation doesn’t have a simple meaning or political end. The act of protesting, as well as the act of posting, makes the world look differently, and looking at the world differently is what is most needed at this time, to face up to stark social realities that have been ignored and develop the capacity to act on this. It is interesting how the way this happens is structured by social media actions, no longer a monopoly of the mass media, while the power of the movement, is quite material. It’s embedded in a specific geography and its link to political culture.
The place of the occupation in an important way contributes . . .
Read more: In Review: OWS, The Ground Zero Occupation
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