Beyond Competitive Memory:
Why is there a Holocaust Museum in DC, but no memorial anywhere to slavery? Why is there a monument to the Holocaust in which there is no real mention of American racism, but nothing to mention what Americans did to Black people?
We have to “think about the relationship between different social groups’ histories of victimization,” which is a function of collective memory (2). This is particularly relevant in multicultural societies, where different people groups with different histories will inevitably bump up against each other.
Collective memory defined = ” the relationship that such groups [victimized groups] establish between their past and their present circumstances” (2)
“What happens when different histories confront each other in the public sphere? Does the remembrance of one history erase others from view? When memories of slavery and colonialism bump up against memories of the Holocaust in contemporary multicultural societies, must a competition of victims ensue?” (2)
The real question here is “Does collective memory work like real-estate development?” (2). Does remembering one thing take up the space required to remember another? Is there a scarcity of collective memory?
“Because many … commentators also believe that a direct line runs between remembrance of the past and the formation of identity in the present, they understand the articulation of the past in collective memory as a struggle for recognition in which there can only be winners and losers, a struggle that is thus closely allied with the potential for deadly violence” (3)
“Against the framework that understands collective memory as competitive memory – as zero-sum struggle over resources – I suggest that we consider memory as multidirectional: as subject to ongoing negotiation, cross-referencing, and borrowing; as productive and not privative”
Instead of interacting cultural memories competing with one another for a single-direction space, these memories can interact and articulate visions for one another in a dynamic and productive way that he calls “Multidirectional memory.”
He acknowledges that the definition of memory itself is complicated and changing over time. People even study the way memory changes. He is going to use the definition the Memory is the past made present.
This means two things
1) memory is contemporary, happening in the present
2) “memory is a form of work, working through, labor, or action” (4)
This book focuses on points at which “social actors bring multiple traumatic pasts into a heterogeneous and changing post-WWII present” (4).
“Memory is closely aligned with identity” (4). Although he agrees that no one really knows what identity is or means. “What is the relationship between memory and identity?”(4).
Rothenburg doesn’t think that
a) all claims of memory or identity are inherently suspect or tainted based on the nature of memory and identity. He sees claims to memory and identity as necessary.
b) that identities and memories are pure and infallibale. That there is a definable difference between individuals or groups.
He doesn’t agree with those polar opposites because he rejects “two central assumptions that they share” (4):
1) that a straight line runs from memory to identity
2) the only kinds of memories and identities that are therefore possible are ones that exclude identities who do not share specific memories.
“Our relationship to the past does partially determine who we are in the present, but never straightforwardly and directly, and never without unexpected or even unwanted consequences that bind us to those whom we consider other” (5).
Competitive memory theory posits the public sphere as “A pregiven, limited space in which already established groups engage.” (5) Multidirectional memory posits the public sphere as “a malleable discursive space in which groups do not simply articulate established positions but actually come into being through their dialogical interactions with others” (5).
Multidirectional memory also defeats the idea that memories are owned by groups or that groups are owned by memories. There are always shared borders.
So he is going to argue that it is a GOOD thing that Holocaust studies dominate everything everywhere. Those studies aren’t detracting from the studies of other genocides or atrocities, they are creating frameworks for understanding those atrocities. They are setting people up to be more prepared to interact with and heal from those atrocities.
And moving in the other direction, not only does the Holocaust influence other atrocities, but it has been influenced by outside atrocities. This book claims that awareness of the Holocaust came about just as the subjects of European colonialism began to gain independence and understand the extent to which colonialism had offended and maimed them. The relationships between these different atrocities tend to be competitive and negaive, but he is saying that they should be generative and cooperative.
“From Uniqueness to Multidirectionality”
We have a tendency to think of our own identities, cultures, and history as unique, separate, and true only for us. While it is important to understand the specificity of different events and the details that make it unique, it is dangerous to isolate any traumatic event from the wider course of history. Separating atrocities out like this “potentially creates a hierarchy of suffering (which is morally offensive) and removes that suffering from the field of historical agency (which is both morally and intellectually suspect)” (9).
He does acknowledge the dangers in too much or too little uniqueness in a memory. Too much uniqueness? No other genocides measure up. The holocaust is the worst genocide out there and nothing has ever been so bad. Too little uniqueness? We marginalize the Holocaust and say that the US is just using it as a smokescreen to distract from ongoing genocides or that we use it to make it feel better about ourselves.
The way to get around this whole uniqueness conundrum “requires thinking about the work of memory and representation – the consequential areas in which narrative acts shape understanding” (10). “It is itself the inaugural narrative act that grounds the perception and interpretation of the events to be narrated”- said by Fredric Jameson (10).
Thinking about memory in ways that allow for multidirectional interaction allows “complex acts of solidarity in which historical memory serves as a medium for the creation of new communal and political identities” (11).
“Rethinking Screen Memory”
Screen memory is when memory of the Holocaust doesn’t just compete with memories of other pasts, it actually covers up other traumatic events that cannot be approached directly because it provides a “greater level of ‘comfort’ than confrontation with more ‘local’ problems would allow” (12).
Rothenburg feels that this screen memory displacement “functions as much to open up lines of communication with the past as to close them off” (12).
Freud argues that the structure of memory itself is multidirectional, making connections and displacements and subsitutions. Rothenburg points out that screen memory can be thought of as multidirectional instead of competitive because “it both hides and reveals that which has been suppressed” (14).
“According to Halbwachs and the tradition that has emerged from him, all memories are simultaneously individual and collective: while individual subjects are the necessary locus of the act of remembrance, those individuals are imbued with frameworks common to the collectives in which they live. The frameworks of memory function something like language – they provide a shared medium within which alone individuals can remember or articulate themselves” (15).
Avishai Margalit distinguishes between shared memory and common memory. Common memory aggregates the memories of all those people who remember a certain episode which each of them experienced individually. A shared memory is not a simple aggregate. It require communication. It integrates and calibrates the different perspectives of those who remember the episode into one version. Shared memory is build on a division of mnemonic labor. (15)
“While a given memory rarely functions in a single way or means only one thing, all articulations of memory are not equal; powerful social, political, and psychic forces articulate themselves in every act of remembrance” (16).
“On Comparison and Justice”
He feels that the multidirectionality of memory can be demonstrated by how collective and individual memories develop. “When we look at collective memory historically, one thing we notice is how unevenly-and sometimes unexpectedly-it develops. Memories of particular events come and go and sometimes take on a surprising importance long after the materiality of the events remembered has faded from view” (17).
He questions the understanding that “the Holocaust cannot be compared to any other history … because it is unlike them all” (18). Rothenburg points out that no two events are alike we need to focus our “intellectual energy on investigating what it means to invoke connections nonetheless” (18).
“Comparison, like memory, should be thought of as productive – as producing new objects and new lines of sight – and now simply as reproducing already given entities that either are or are not ‘like’ other given entities” (19).
“Multidirectional memory is often the very grounds on which people construct and act upon visions of justice” (19).
“Argument and Outline of the Book”
Overall goal of exploring multidirecditonal memory in this book: “an ethical vision based on commitment to uncovering historical relatedness and working through the partial overlaps and conflicting claims that constitute the archives of memory and the terrain of politics” (29).
The Last One Thousand and One Nights 