MC: Stefan Peters: Dealing with the Past

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Dealing with the past: Current Debates regarding remembrance and forgetting

We live in the age of memory. The much-cited phrase “Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it” seems to be common sense. It works as a tranquilizer for both academics and politicians. Whereas the first can point out the political relevance of their work, the bon mot is presented by politicians as a vaccine against violence. Nevertheless, during the last years the consensus on the relevance of remembrance has been questioned increasingly by academics (David Rieff, Christian Meier) and politicians alike. The talk will present the main arguments raised by the critiques of memory and the advocates of forgetting and discuss them critically. More precisely, the talk will deal with the reasons for oblivion and it will take into account the importance of inequalities (social, political, cultural, and epistemological) for understanding the power relations related to the claims for forgetting the past.

Suggested Readings:

Assmann, Aleida (2012): To Remember or to Forget: Which Way Out of a Shared

History of Violence?, in: Assmann, Aleida / Linda Shortt (Eds.): Memory and Political Change, London: Palgrave Macmillan, 53-71.

Rieff, David (2016): In Praise of Forgetting: Historical Memories and its Ironies, New Haven: Yale University Press.

Mannergren Selimbergovic, Johanna (2020): Gendered silences in post-conflict societies: a typology. In: Peacebuilding, Vol. 8 (1), 1-15.

Peters, Stefan (2020): Zwischen Erinnern und Vergessen: Aktuelle Kontroversen zur Bearbeitung der Vergangenheit. In: ibid. (Ed.): Gewalt und Konfliktbearbeitung in Lateinamerika. Baden-Baden: Nomos, 183-210. (In Translation).

// Prof. Dr. Stefan Peters