Now that there is so much talk about memory – historical memory, re-memorization of old aggressions, memory training, diseases linked to memory loss... – I propose that we distinguish between have memory and remember. Have memory It would be the mental quality that allows us to remember facts that are fairly close to what happened in the past. We say, "Remember that New Year's Eve dinner where we had cheese fondue?" And we respond, "Now that you mention it, yes. Ten or fifteen years ago. What a memory you have!" And having a bad memory would be forgetting facts and names.
On the other hand, remember It would be an act of interpretation that combines, in varying proportions, memories that are either inaccurate or highly precise, forgettings that are either inaccurate or highly intentional, and to which are added the necessary circumstances, whether slightly or highly fanciful, to make everything fit together. Henri Bergson maintained that memory is a repeated act of interpretation. And since our life experience over time is confusing and contradictory, to ensure that this interpretation is consistent and credible—for ourselves and for others—it is necessary to reinvent the past. Memory is also often a trap.
On a personal level, sociologist Peter L. Berger used the term alternation to describe these script changes with which we explain to ourselves throughout life in order to fit the past with the present. In order to give a meaning consistent with what we now think about what fascinated us fifty years ago and to which we enthusiastically surrendered, we may need to believe—and make those who ask us for explanations believe—that it was the result of authoritarian coercion from which we could not escape.
On the collective level, the same thing happens. A Canadian philosopher who studied these processes of reinterpretation that seek to redeem the past, Theodor Plantinga, explained that new stories are built on four principles: anthropomorphism (inventing fictitious intentions); polarization (imagining conflicts that did not exist at the time); and the integration of diverse stories into the history that was in the past. Anachronisms such as those we make when we apply current ethical and moral categories to past events, lived sincerely committed to other definitions of what was considered good and evil.
There is still another condition in the act of remember. And we do this not to recreate the past, but so that our reconstruction of the past makes sense in the present and, above all, fits into our expectations for the future. Yes: we remember the past according to how we imagine the future. If the purpose were to recreate the past, all efforts would be focused on trying to understand it, on knowing how to put ourselves in our previous shoes, or on understanding the social climate of that time. Understanding, but not judging. Now, what they now call memory policies They are usually settling scores with a past that we want to shake off or, directly, we want to blame it on our adversaries.
From this perspective, past personal or institutional responsibility isn't always comparable to intentional guilt. It doesn't make much sense for parents to apologize now for having dedicatedly and conscientiously raised their child according to the criteria of what was considered good parenting in their time. Nor could they have done it any other way. And it seems unfair to me that, to give another example, the attitudes of those textile manufacturers who treated their employees with honest paternalism when it came to meeting their most pressing needs are disparaged. That in the first case, there was a framework of authoritarian parent-child relationship is indisputable. And that in the second, the employer's condescension made the employee's attitude more docile is obvious. But what sense does it make to demand forgiveness for something that wasn't done in bad faith, victims in any case of what we now call structural defects?
To those who are clear that these exercises of forgiveness or public mockery, censure and cancellation are necessary and required – they are the current inquisitorial forms of excommunication, without proof or defense – I would say that since it is difficult to think that we are already at the summit of excellence, or simply different from those of today, they should also be subjected to summary trials for faults that they are not even capable of imagining now. Let us bear in mind that for some apostles of remember, this is their way of inventing and burning heretics!
