Week 13 Notes

Week 13: 4/12-4/14

Monday 4/12

Reminders:

David Rieff and Historical Memory
  • David Rieff has published several books, including his critique of historical memory, In Praise of Forgetting 
  • History vs. Memory: the past vs. how we use the past
  • Argues against the popular sentiment that memory is the moral option
  • The moral characterization of remembering is misguided and can often lead to political violence
    • Example: Bosnian Wars and its connections to the fall of Constantinople in 1453.
    • William Wallace in Scotland
    • Joan of Arc in France
    • The crusades being interpreted as a conflict of religion in only the nineteenth and twentieth centuries
  • Collective memory uses the past to serve present needs
  • The dangers of historical memory: distortion, exclusion, the continuation of conflicts
  • Looks to the “pact of forgetting” in Spain as a positive example
  • Another example of a toxic use of collective memory: Slobodan Milosevic
    • a former communist in Yugoslavia
    • became a Serbian nationalist and cited a long and ancient history of Serbia
    • used the fall of medieval Serbia in 1389 to rally support, which led to the Yugoslav Wars
    • this same date was used to justify the assassination of Archduke Ferdinand in 1914.
  • Questions discussed:
    • Do you agree with Rieff’s argument here?
    • Do you agree that forgetting is, as he calls it, the “safer option?”
    • What examples from class would you bring in to either support or refute Rieff’s analysis?
    • What does justice look like in a society when it comes to memory (revenge, restorative justice, or forgiveness?)
    • Will history get us to restoration? What are the limits of history?
      • It may never give us all the answers
      • It can’t help us predict the future – things will always take experts by surprise
      • de-centering ourselves as the culmination or the end of history
      • historical fact vs. drawing values and guiding principles from history
    • Teleology – the idea that history has an end
      • declensionist- things are getting worse
      • ameliorate- things are getting better
      • both of these are wrong – all of history doesn’t have a simple logical structure
    • What are the key takeaways?
      • forgetting shouldn’t always be demonized, but neither should historical memory
      • history is deeply complex and it is possible to have multiple valid perspectives
      • it is always important to think about who benefits and who is hurt by memory or forgetting – what are the power dynamics of memory?
      • memory never goes in one direction – as time goes on it goes in many different routes of interpretations of the past
      • the final part of Rieff’s article – “life goes on, even at Guernica”
      • power dynamics and the politicization of memory
      • we have to be keenly aware of the misuses of history and the importance of ethical memory

Informal discussion of final projects

Wednesday 4/14 

General Announcements:

  • History Spring gathering – [insert date]
  • IS Symposium

Takeaways from Rieff:

  • What are the ironies of historical memory?
  • “Those who forget history are doomed to repeat it” – is this complete? Is it not possible for those who are fueled by history to repeat it inadvertently?
  • examples: Civil War in the South, Spain’s “Pact of forgetting”, Joan of Arc, William Wallace, and other mythologized historical figures, Fall of Constantinople
  • most recently: Howard Lowry and his impact on the College of Wooster
  • How does a political community recognize the dark elements of the past but also celebrate the positive?
  •  What impact does memorialization have on historical memory?
  • While the public is not good at dealing with complexity, but that is the central job of historians

House of European Memory:

  • How does it try to build a common European memory?
  • Why a house of history- makes it seem more inviting, finding a home where all Europeans can relate
  • A popular and triumphed memory of Europe
  • Trying to be optimistic in the face of a crumbling European Union
  • Addresses the questions that Europeans commonly have to face, is an act of European community building
  • What does the House of European memory do well?
  • It downplays the differences between European nations and highlights the commonalities between the European nations
  • Posits the creation of the EU as the mythic descendent of Europa
  • However, how are we supposed to know what the audience thinks of this memory?
  • We can look to the rise of nationalist parties to say that the transnational European identity is falling to nationalist identities
  • This can be viewed as an example of public history- speaking to the largest audience as possible
  • What is the job of a museum? how much of history are they responsible for representing?
  • How did the museum address the worst points of European history – colonialism, the Holocaust, the slave trade, etc.?
  • What are the ethics of museums in Europe keeping artifacts from former colonialized countries? Is colonialism even being properly remembered if museums are hoarding artifacts from other countries?
  • Does the House of Memory fully do justice to the horrors of these violent events? What would happen if they were?

Final Project Discussions

See course schedule for order of presentations

Some advice:

  • keep your time constraint in mind: 10-12 minutes.
  • rehearse your presentation!
  • dress professionally!
  • utilize a visual aid – but don’t make it too wordy
  • give us some context for the period that you are studying – who, what, where, when?
  • refer to a few works – a book, a set of articles – that help to guide your paper
  • refer to the main primary sources that you are studying – give us an example whether that be a clip, an image, or an excerpt
  • and a thank you slide! 🙂