Memory, narrative, and rupture: The power of the past as a resource for political change

Abstract

In politics ÒsoftÓ ideational factors are often dismissed in favor of ÒhardÓ quantifiable data. Since the Òmemory boom,Ó however, collective memory has become an important variable for explaining persistent grievances and cycles of hatred. Building on the work of Hannah Arendt and the first generation of the Frankfurt School, I seek to counterbalance the literatureÕs predominantly negative conception of memory by developing a constructive understanding of remembrance as a resource for rethinking politics in the aftermath of breaks in the narrative thread of historical time. My basic thesis is that historical ruptures shared by an entire generation can activate collective memory as a resource for reimagining political life. I show how Arendt and the critical theorists of the early Frankfurt School used the caesura of 1945 to rethink the meaning of the past and endorse new forms of political life in the aftermath of EuropeÕs age of total war.

Habermas’s Politics of Rational Freedom: Navigating the History of Philosophy between Faith and Knowledge

“…His longstanding view of religion is summed up in the first epigraph quoted above. In the Philosophical Discourse of Modernity (hereafter PDM), originally delivered as a series of lectures in 1983, Habermas defined the modern age in terms of the break or "rupture" (see Verovšek 2020) signified by "the Enlightenment and the French Revolution." Whereas thinkers in previous historical periods saw themselves as part of a "continual renewal" or "rebirth" of the past, as the label for the Renaissance makes particularly clear, in PDM Habermas argued that modernity could no longer take "its orientation from the model supplied by other epochs."…”

Progress, emancipation, hope: Rethinking critical theory through memories as counternarratives

“…In other words, hidden memories help question the teleological conceptions of history. Commenting on Benjamin's Theses on Philosophy of History , Verovšek defines them as “Benjamin's attempt to understand how human freedom can be saved from teleological conceptions of history” (Verovšek, 2017, p. 8). Emphasizing on the relevance of discontinuities rather than continuities, Benjamin recognized that “in clashing together, the past and the future destroy narrative leaving only fragments of the past behind” (Verovšek, 2017, p. 9), and that the “hiatus between the ‘no‐more’ and the ‘not‐yet’” can be seen as an “opportunity to set the foundations of a new world” (Verovšek, 2017, p. 9).…”

Dealing with Difficult Pasts: Memory, History and Ethics

“…Memory processes of painful and violent pasts certainly have the potential to generate or reactivate conflicts, but also to lead to social transformation, to overcome division (McGrattan and Hopkins, 2017;Verovšek, 2020). The temporality can impact on the likelihood of one or the other, but this impact is not unidirectional (Bratton, 2011).…”