ABSTRACT
Attending to an absence-which-ought-not-to-be also rests on a theoretically crucial, albeit often implicit principle: that which is not publicly known and spoken about will be socially forgotten. An absence within collective memory may be psychologically motivated, of course, but it carries consequences well beyond individual mind and soul. An absence acts on people who may have nothing to forget individually as it makes parts of the past disappear altogether. The absence of memory is just as socially constructed as memory itself, and with an equally strong intervention of morally as well as ideologically grounded claims to truth. The claim that an absence within collective memory is evidence of social forgetting is a strong claim. Tracing absences immersed in the “infrastructure” of collective memory is often a demanding task. Behind the analysis of absences— and exclusion—lie concerns the legitimating power of collective memory.
