My class in historiography introduced me to a relatively new historiographical concept, “memory.” A group of people, usually a country, shapes a memory of its past that reorders the facts of history into a narrative. Historians explore such memories and how they came about. It’s fascinating, but it makes me uneasy.
David W. Blight is a leading historian of memory. His brilliant book Race and Reunion: The Civil War in American Memory epitomizes the best use of the concept. [1] In brief, he explains that after the most devastating war in American history the reunified nation had to come to grips with what had happened. Americans created a memory of the war—its goals and its results.
That memory creation could have taken one of two directions, he says. Americans could have viewed the war as achieving, at long last, the promises of equality stated in the Declaration of Independence. The nation could have gloried in the freedom of the slaves and made emancipation a joyous reflection of the nation’s humanity and hope. As Frederick Douglass said in a speech about the war, “It was a war of ideas, a battle of principles . . . a war between the old and the new, slavery and freedom, barbarism and civilization.”[2]
But that view of the war was overridden by another. Instead, politicians, writers, orators, and artists focused sympathy on the defeated whites of the South. Through speeches, writings, and statues, they molded the memory of the war into the Lost Cause: Southern whites had fought and died for something they believed to be right, and they had lost; as a result, Americans owed them respect and sympathy. The freed slaves had to take second place, even slip off the history pages. That choice affected the relationship of blacks and whites, Northerners and Southerners, for decades to come, even till today.
In a parallel way, Serbians have a memory of their history that goes back to a kingdom in the Middle Ages, even though Serbia spent centuries under Turkish rule and became a modern nation only in 1882. And French people have struggled to create a memory that reconciles them to their behavior under the Nazi occupation and the Vichy regime in World War II.
These memories are worth studying, but I am uncomfortable with this approach for two reasons. One is that it assumes a “collective memory,” yet people are individuals, and not everyone adopts the same story; most African-Americans probably did not accept the Lost Cause memory.
Second, I fear that the facts of history will be subordinated to the distorted memory of those facts. I fear that history will experience (or may be experiencing) something like the transformation of English literature during the past 40 years. During that period, the reader was elevated above the author. As a textbook by Donald H. Hall says, critics of literature “refocused attention on readers, their belief systems, and their active role in creating meaning.” They shifted their analysis “away from the text as an autonomous entity and onto the many ways in which readers interact with texts.” [3] This loss of the concrete text has been disastrous for English departments, because the texts themselves—literature—become unimportant.
“Memory” poses a kindred danger because it places those who remember above those who acted. It worries me.
Notes
[1] David W. Blight, Race and Reunion: The Civil War in American Memory (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 2001).
[2] Blight, 93.
[3] Donald E. Hall, Literary and Cultural History: From Basic Principles to Advanced Applications (Boston: Heinle, Cengage Learning, 2001), 44.
Reply to Troubled Memory: I don’t think Donald Hall is right.
You do?
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I just assumed he was right, about English, that the problem with English literature these days is the emphasis on the reader who is interpreting, not the author and his or her intentions. That has a ring of similarity with historians’ focus on “memory”–more interest in the person who remembers than in what actually happened.
Hasn’t every culture from which we have even the simplest collection of artifacts relied on a collective memory? This new history as memory seems a new way of acknowledging that every culture creates myths to embody its values, fears, hopes, cultural norms–in short, its character.
Since history and all its players and vectors is far too complex to be a single coherent story–history–it must be filtered. Similarly the brain every minute of consciousness filters the incoming sensory data to focus on what is usable and necessary.
When the brain filters in a way that leads to a car crash or when it reconstructs data as an illusion, the filter can cause damage. Take the case of a young Utah man who tended my coastal cabin in his first ever trip to a coast. He was out in my kayak and called me in panic, saying he was in real trouble. Where was he? On the bay. Had he turned over? No. So? He was surrounded by sea monsters. Problem solved when I explained that the local seals were examining him. And, of course, some filters produce illusions. And therein lies the danger of creating collective historical memory, connecting the dots in ways that endanger or disadvantage the innocent or unfairly elevate one group over another.
We see this all the time with the idea that pre-Europeans were peaceful nature stewards and still have a reverence for nature that gives them rights others do not deserve. During the pipeline controversy, for example, the white protestors as well as Sioux were often talking about how whites had illegally taken the land, how it was sacred to the Sioux (their tribal memory). In fact, only a few centuries ago the Sioux, having obtained horses after the Spaniards introduced those animals, burned and pillaged settled earthlodge communities of the Mandan and Arikara to seize the lands that the government later acquired from them. The controversy was largely fueled by competing memories that ignored inconvenient historical facts.
I agree with much of what you say, Jay (below). Regarding literature, there was a scholarly school called the “New Critics,” very much in vogue while I was in college, whose writers contended that every work of art (poem, play, novel) could stand on its own. It should communicate to the reader without reference to the time or place of its writing or, I suppose, of its reading. Context meant almost nothing, and, indeed, we learned little about the context. That’s another reason why my history knowledge is weak! (Defenders of the New Critics are invited to comment.)
Isn’t the new criticism, the text and only the text, a bit like insisting the contemporary context of the Constitution cannot be referenced? Of course, most people, left and right, ignore that. Conservatives refer to the founders and their beliefs to inform and enrich the meaning of the words. Liberals find penumbras and say that if past context is relevant, so is present context.
As an English major, then professor of English, and as a writer, I found the new criticism far too restrictive. Can one read Yeats without knowing anything about the Irish rebellion? Can one read Shakespeare without knowing anything about the humors of the body?
And since words change meaning over time, often 180 degrees, relying solely on text is nonsense.
Wallace, I agree that my education in English literature was parched by so much reliance on the New Criticism. I did read Yeats with virtually no background. It’s kind of crazy in retrospect, although I suppose the New Critics felt that too much emphasis on the context obscured the art. As for the Constitution, obviously some context has changed, but interpretation is difficult. The First Amendment didn’t prevent the federal government from controlling radio and TV; I would consider that a misreading of the intent of the Constitution, distinguishing radio and TV from “the press” and ignoring the free speech issue. But there was probably lots of justification at the time the FCC was created.
Thanks for such an interesting post! I already knew of the idea that history is written by the victors, but your post is my introduction to this concept. (All the more reason to keep going!)
The idea of “memory” (I dislike the term, but apparently it is the term of art) seems more plausible to me than it does to you. I can see how peoples’ beliefs would tend to coalesce around an elegantly presented argument about what happened and why, especially if they already subscribe to the author’s writings.
I may have to pick up Blight’s book. I usually eschew Civil War books, but I have always wondered about how the Lost Cause romanticism came about.
Craig: I have the book and will give it to you.
“Second, I fear that the facts of history will be subordinated to the distorted memory of those facts.”
I agree and share your concerns, Jane. That’s why I prefer contemporaneous histories (like Thucydides).
Lately it has become fashionable to deny the moral basis for the the Civil War (slavery) in favor of economic factors. My ancestors fought on both sides, and some of their books have come down to me. I have two Civil War histories published in . . . 1865. And both conclude with mentions of God and the abolition of slavery. I’ll take those over any 20th Century historian’s opinion and interpretation.
It would be interesting to compare those histories with modern ones about the Civil War. The concept of the “Lost Cause” has, of course, been replaced by something else today. I don’t know what it is, but certainly the issues surrounding Confederate statues show that the memory is changing again. (By the way, I wish I knew more about Thucydides.)
First, although the shared memory concept has dangerous potential, it really can’t be dispensed with entirely. Without something to tie people together, if we are purely atomized individuals, we become susceptible to the “quest for community” problem identified by Nisbet. A desire for community–to have a shared culture, shared traditions, and yes, shared memories–is somewhat inherent in mankind (some more than others). Nisbet noticed that, as community and cultural ties, of which a common memory is one, start to diminish, the isolated individuals seek community ties in ideologies. That defines most of today’s social justice warriors to a T–their cause is their community. They derive their identity and end their isolation by participation in that cause.
Furthermore, shared memory goes deeper than recent major historical events. It is deeply embedded in our language and culture. While establishing a Volksreich may be a bit much (okay, a lot too much), to dismiss the concept entirely is just as dangerous, leading to cultural and social disintegration.
As for your concern for the effects of postmodernism’s effect on literature, it may be that you have missed the role shared memory plays in imparting meaning in the traditional sense. A writer in a specific culture depends on shared memory to impart meaning–that is, the specific meaning he or she intends. Think how much more meaning there is in the word “Christmas” to somebody raised in a devout family in a Christian society than to somebody raised in another culture. The postmoderns reject that there is any such meaning in the text that is specific and unchangeable–or even that the meaning can be shared in the way the writer intended.