Politik und Gesellschaft
Online International Politics and Society 2/2001 |
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Agnes HellerCultural Memory, Identity
and Civil Society
The
question of collective memory, first raised by Halbwachs, became
just recently one of the centerpoints of interest, mainly in
the wake of the works of Pierre Nora, Chaim Yerushalmi and Jan
Assman. In this article I apply their conceptual tools. When
speaking on cultural memory I have not in mind traces of the
past stored in a kind of collective consciousness ready for
recall or hidden in a collective unconscious buried under the
ruins of forgetting which could be retrieved only by systematic
work if at all. Cultural memory is rather embodied in objectivations
which store meanings in a concentrated manner, meanings shared
by a group of people who take them of granted. These can be
texts, such as sacred scrolls, historical chronicles, lyric
or epic poetry. They can also be monuments, such as buildings
or statues, shared material signs, signals, symbols and allegories
as storages of experience, memorabilia erected as reminders.
Furtheron, cultural memory is embodied in regularly repeated
and repeatable practices, such as festivals, ceremonies, rites.
Finally, cultural memory just like individual memory is linked
to places. To places where something significant an unique event
has taken place, or to places where a significant event is regularly
replayed. For example, in Europe many villages have a Calvary
hill, where at every Good Friday Christ’s passion is replayed.
Cultural memory is identity constructing and identity maintaining.
As long as a group of people maintains and cultivates a common
cultural memory, this group of people exists. Chaim Yerushalmi
analyses how Jewish people were consciously cultivating their
identity through remembrance. The frequency of the injunction
“zachor!” remember!, which appears 169 times in the Jewish Bible
alone, is a case in point. Whenever
cultural memory enters into oblivion, a group of people disappear,
irrespective of the circumstance whether they will or will not
be recorded in the books of history. The Chinese communist government
was well aware of this when it commanded its troupes after the
occupation of Tibet to destroy all the buildings and statues
erected at the places of memory of Tibetian Buddhism. Presence
or absences, life or decay of a people does not depend on biological
survival of an ethnic group, but on the survival of shared cultural
memory. Strong
and complex cultural building have represented the ascending
high cultures during the axiological age. It suffices to refer
to Homer, whose Iliad and Odyssey remained the basic text and
living memory for all Hellens, or to the first versions of the
first five books of the Jewish Bible, or to all the holy sites
where the festivals of the turn of seasons were fused with myths
and histories of cultural memory maintenance. Religions were
the greatest cultural identity builders, and so were ethnic
groups and city dwelling people together with their political
institutions, which were on their part imbued by religious practises.
In cultural memory the places of memory must remain, concrete
and distinct irrespective of the circumstance, whether they
are mythological or historical reminders. Sometimes the distinction
is blurred. We know that Caesar was not murdered on the Capitolium,
but when we visit the Capitolium in Rome we – readers of Plutarch
and of Shakespeare – will visit the place were Caesar was murdered.
This is certainly cultural memory of the second order. Now I
will discuss only cultural memory of the first order, that is
the identity constituting cultural memory, when in the performance
of ceremonies, rites, at exact date in an exact place the past
is constantly becoming present. At every Passover Jews are liberated
from the Egyptian yoke, at every Good Friday Christ is crucified.
Every generation experiences the past as their present. The
centrality of cultural memory in identity building was known
and thus cultural memory has been cultivated in all cultures
known to us when we say “since times immemorial” we do not mean
times without cultural memory, but times the cultural memory
of disappeared without traces. As it was also known, that if
one changes identity one has also to change cultural memory,
e. g. Augustine began to hammer into the Roman heads that their/our
fathers are Abraham and Moses, whereas until then their/our
ancestors had been Romulus and Remus. The holy dust stemming
from Jerusalem was called in his time memoriae. Soon there were
no Romans left, and not because of the Vizigoths but because
the Roman cultural identity became a historical subject matter
and ceased to be an identity-constituting cultural memory. We
know that Mussolini wanted to resurrect Roman cultural identity
but without success. In
modern times and particularly since the end of 18 century, political
bodies, first and foremost the then emerging nation state, became
also the carrier of cultural memory. Religion served at the
model for a conscious and novel cultural creation. The French
Republic celebrated itself at first on the Field of Mars by
performing a ceremony in honor of the Supreme Being. Yet soon,
the states enhanced their cultural identity also with secular
festivals and celebrations. Like Quatorze Juillet in France,
July 4 in USA became the memorial days of the creation of the
Republic. Celebrations of these memorial days take place every
year with marches, the display of military strength, with fireworks,
speeches and so on. In my opinion, no state could establish
such a forceful cultural memory as religions did. But if nation,
ethnicity and religion - or any of them - reinforces the cultural
memory of the state, it can also serve as a forceful weapon.
Ideology then replaces mythology. In
the process of the division of the spheres, that is in the process
where civil society achieved its relative autonomy from the
state which became modern, the work of cultural memory building
and preserving became
first and foremost the responsibility of the state, or the governments.
States - or rather governments – do normally enlist for this
work the so-called intellectuals, more precisely teachers, poets,
painters etc. I may remind you on the Mexican mural painters
who almost on their own created a national myth/ideology which
since continues to work. I do
not evaluate the modern story of cultural identity creation.
The mythological/ideological content of the stories varies from
state to state, from epoch to epoch. Identity creation works
on old cultural memories, selecting among them, reinterpreting
them, extending them, enlarging them, fusing into them new contents
and experiences. Although after a political change cultural
memory is newly shaped - while political oppositions shape them
in their fashion - there are steady items also in modern cultural
memory which will not be dropped from memory by any government
with any political interest of inclination, they will just be
inserted into another picture. Yet even non-nationalistic interpretations
will present an autostereotype for an outstanding identity,
for the uniqueness of fate, enhancing pride and putting the
emphasis frequently – although not necessarily and not always
– on the exclusion of the others. My
question is now structural-functional and not evaluative. At
the present moment I do not want to discuss whether having a
cultural memory is a good or a bad thing. For the time being
I want to make a more modest proposal. I want to show that in
modern times – that is since it came into being – civil society
or “Bürgerliche Gesellschaft” as such has no cultural memory.
But in saying this I have already stated something more and
else. Namely I pointed at the problematic character of the concept
of civil society itself. If civil society has no cultural memory
then it has no identity either. When
different people or scholars talk about civil society they talk
about entirely different institutions or practises. It is not
the difference what is important here, not even heterogeneity.
In the modern world there is difference and heterogeneity everywhere.
But civil society as a concept has a multiplicity of referents
with little or no connection, thus different theorists choose
one or the other among them, and do not simply forget, yet also
exclude the rest. All the concepts of civil society together
include everything what the state is not, or what the state
– at a given moment in time – is no more and not yet. Market
belongs to civil society, so do at least all non state owned
and governed institutions e. g. institutions of education or
health, so do trade unions, all civil associations, the mafia,
all corporations. Single-issue political movements which might
function as pressure groups are also termed civil society, furthermore
movements of organised or semi-organised rebellions against
tyrannical governments or states. In addition ethnic groups,
groups for foreigners and of the stateless, who also put pressure
on the state. Family also belongs to civil as religions and
religious institutions are located here. So are representative
memory-conserving institutions such as museums - irrespectively
of whether they are private, state owned or metropolitan. Thus
civil society cannot have a cultural memory. For within civil
society there are institutions and activities which are unable
and unwilling to create cultural memory, for they are not in
need of a cultural identity creation. Yet there are other segments
or institutions within civil society which carry further, although
selectively, inherited junks of cultural memory and create a
cultural memory of their own. Civil society consists thus of
a mosaic of identities and non-identities, of a mosaic of groups
of cultural memory formation and other groups without any. Let
me briefly speak of the market or of any kind of economic activity.
Marx only said that interest has no memory for it is occupied
only with itself. Certainly also interest need short-term memory,
yet not a long-term one, and particularly not a cultural memory.
Self-regulating market rather requires the abolishment, the
destruction of cultural memory. The frequently heard complaint
that market destroys local traditions is in fact correct, insofar
as for the proper function of the market the practices of cultural
memory are just as many hindrances. But even if one disregards
the idea of the self-regulating market, one will still encounter
other interest-regulated activities, all of them exclusively
future-oriented. By future orientation I mean orientation towards
the near future, the future of the present. Interest is rather
competitive, not cohesive, or if cohesive then only in a cooperative
manner. Even when not individuals but groups compete with each
other, where the groups share interest, such group-affiliations
are contingent, also result-dependent, and mostly also ephemeral.
To us Max Weber’s terminology, they are purposively rational
and not value rational. In a merely interest-guided activity
there is neither love nor hatred, although there is indifference
and cruelty. Interest has no aesthetics, it does not believe
in repetition, it is anti-ceremonial. The
central places of economic activity, e. g. the stock market,
are certainly not places of memory. Stockbrokers do not assemble
every year on the Wall street for the anniversary of the great
crash for remembrance and mourning. Yet as I already mentioned,
not only strictly economic activities are mainly interest and
competition oriented. There are also spectacles of such a kind.
Sport events are perhaps the most popular spectacles in our
times, yet it occurred in no one’s mind during the Sidney Olympic
games to make a pilgrimage to Melbourne to pay tribute to the
athletes who won victory for their team in 1956. Big shopping
centers are sometimes ironically termed the cathedrals of the
postmodern age. This hits the mark only in part. True, parents
take their children every Sunday to a shopping town just as
they used to take them to the cathedrals. But shopping centers
are not places of memory. There is no past here to be “presenced”.
Here something new must appear or happen during every visit.
The need for cultural memory is not satisfied by paying visit
to a shopping town. And such need exists. The strong showing
of fundamentalism of all kinds and the influence of identity
politics of all sorts, yet also the hunger for sense and meaning,
clearly signalize the presence of such needs. But
not just interest–oriented activities are lacking cultural memory
today. This is the case also with most of the political movements,
collective acts of public concern, if they are engendered by
civil society and if the stay within the spaces of civil society
before falling apart. This happens with the so-called single-issue
movements. As long as such movements keep their issue on the
agenda, they put a pressure on the state, via mobilizing and
influencing public opinion in a few ways such as demonstrations,
distribution of leaflets, propaganda activity in institutions,
etc. This is often called “the raising of consciousness”. Among
the hard-core members of such movements, there are shared symbols,
signals, sign of “belonging”, they wear their identity on their
sleeves in the literal sense of the word. In spite of sharing
cultural marks, such movements are future-oriented. This is
true even if the slogans are conservative or romantic. What
is, however, more important that single-issue movements do not
establish a cultural tradition of their own for future generations.
They come and go. They can achieve their aim and fall apart
just because of their – even if limited – success, like abolitionism,
or their aim can become entirely irrelevant, and then they fall
apart because of that, like the peace movements. They may also
leave some traces on civil societies but these will not be memory
traces, but pragmatic ones, like changes in customs, behaviour
and the like. They normally get a strong media coverage, but
when they lose momentum, the media will lose interest of them.
The most complex movement of the last decades, that of 1968
changed the life of people in many respects, it has not established
cultural memory because it has not created identity and vice
versa. The only memory it left behind has been nostalgia. Broader political movements of civil society, and especially
the revolts of civil society against a repressive state can
initiate a forceful cultural memory as long as the repression
lasts. Since the repressive state will give the event – be it
revolution, rebellion or the acts of civic disobedience – an
abusive interpretation, the cultural memory of the victims will
be an alternative memory, a counter-memory. Since their celebration
will remain clandestine, they will not erect monuments. Secrecy
in fact can reinforce at least for a while cultural memory.
The marrano situation can end in two ways. Either the marranos
are beginning to forget and then they cease to be marranos,
or their cause will win the day. In the second case the new
government will take over the care for the cultivation of the
rebellion-created cultural memory. The counter memory will become
official memory. The past will be celebrated by the state, the
issue will be “etatized”, and the memory will be cease to be
the memory of civil society. This happened with the revolution
of 1956 in Hungary. October 23 is now official holiday and people
mostly cease to remember. Counter memory works also in cases
where an act of repression was not preceded by a revolt, such
as in the case of the grieving mothers’ demonstrations in Buenos
Aires. If
I am not mistaken, the trade union movement of the 19th century
alone succeeded in establishing a lasting memorial day, a festival,
repeatedly taking place every year, namely the Mayday parade.
Yet the Mayday parade is not about remembrance, at least it
is no more. It is rather a day of making merriment and the day
to showing the music of the unions and of socialist parties
while concentrating on issues which had been put on the political
agenda in the very year of each and every march or demonstration. Hegel
pointed at the Absolute Spirit - that is art, religion and philosophy
- as the carrier of cultural memory. The great political deeds
will not be forgotten, because they are immortalized in writing,
by artworks and by religion. I sidestep one of Hegel’s points,
namely that philosophy, the medium of which is conceptual, does
not establish cultural identity, but the identity of modernity
itself. This is why it does
not remember the past, but exists wholly - as recollection
- in the present. Hegel belonged to those who believed that
modernity is about the full disenchantment of the world. What
is, however, interesting, that art began to play the role of
cultural memory provider on its own as early as the 18. century.
Art, artistic creation and distribution are located in civil
society. Since the emergence of the nation state and its increasing
effort to create a cultural memory on its own, the state has
enlisted the help of the so-called Kulturbourgosie. And vice
versa: the creation of a new national cultural memory contributed
to then emergence of the nation state itself. The German case
is the most representative. There was no common German state,
yet the German Kulturbourgoise created the forceful myth about
the spiritual brotherhood between the ancient Athenian and the
modern German culture, thus they extended the German cultural
memory to the remote past to encompass Athenian tragedy, sculpture,
philosophy and architecture. The German cultural memory was
thus formed as anti-Roman and anti-French (the French being
associated with Roman). The cult of national poets, composers
and painters was invented in civil society, together with the
myth of the genius. The houses or graves of those national geniuses
became holy sites calling for a quasi religious pilgrimage,
like Rousseau’s Hermitage, the house of Goethe in Weimar, or
Chopin’s piano. During the German occupation the Dutch tried
to institutionalize a Rembrandt memorial day. Nowadays this
kind of cult has assumed a cosmopolitan character as the places
of remembrance became also touristic attractions. The
currently widespread identity politics - be it about race, ethnicity,
gender of sexual orientation - have also been initiated by the
forces of civil society. In one respect, these identity movements
resemble single-issue movements insofar as they put pressure
on the state, on the legislature and legal institutions to rectify
grievances and to introduce politics of justice the implementation
of which have been long overdue. But since they are not issue
but identity movements, more precisely, their issues concern
their identity, they have to re-establish or to establish cultural
memory for their group. Without shared cultural memory there
is no identity. Even families have a cultural memory, objectified
in old letters, photographs, family lore etc. Among all the
groups which were in need for cultural memory, ethnic groups
had the easiest task, for they have never entirely lost their
cultural memory, sometimes including their language, although
they have not used it. Many things which have been forgotten,
can be brought to light, fused with new myths, with stories
of repression and suffering, combined also with heterogeneous
cultural memorabilia such as music, decoration and religious
lore. Dissimulation implies the restoration and the creation
of cultural memory. In spite of the biological difference, or
perhaps also because of it, the attempt to create a forceful
cultural memory for women in feminist philosophies and writings
was in my mind less successful. Here one faces again a clear
case of counter-memory with the need to establish continuity,
an attempt which leads to a great amount of mythologizing. In
the case of sexual orientation, cultural memory creation mostly
stops at the cult of great homosexual artists. As
it was already mentioned, the push and pull of assimilation
and dissimulation, the repeated pendulum movement between universality
and difference, or – to use Foucault’s expression – the revolving
door of reason, all are connected with cultural memory. Since
civil society is not only the heterogeneous mosaic of a great
variety of different, sometimes even colliding and hostile cultural
memories, yet also a heterogeneous mosaic of activities and
group formations in no need of cultural memories, the choice
is not as simple as it seems. It is not between assimilation
and dissimulation, value and interest, passion and calculation,
past and future but among others, also between a life with cultural
memories and a life without them. One has to consider that science
became the dominating world explanation of our times and that
science is an activity void of cultural memory. Religions and
artistic practises, but mainly the first, are playing now a
similar role as science used to play before the time of Enlightenment,
namely the role of the critic. Civil society can function without cultural memory, it can smoothly operate through the clashes of interest and cooperation, limited to short term future-oriented activities and to short term memory, without archive and without utopia led simply by utilitarian considerations. Still it seems as if the need for cultural memory were very strong and as if the Weberian slogan about the disenchantment of the world could be one of the many failed predictions. The old conceptual differentiation between community and society comes to my mind. It seems as if pure society could not deliver the goods which are still kept in store by communities. When confronted with the upsurge of myths which offer a kind of feeling or belonging yet also with the soullessness of the utilitarian machines, one loses the old confidence of knowing what is kept in store for the new generation. Even those who, like myself, are committed to the maintenance of open-ended cultural memories, know that one does not remember ahead. |
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© Friedrich Ebert Stiftung | net edition malte.michel | 2/2001 |