ABSTRACT

In the case of collective memory, however, recognition is more precarious and complex. Connected to collective history as the province of historians, collective memory can appear disconcertingly other and uncanny, as the desire to be faithful to memory — to recognize the past — competes with the quest for historical truth. In Multidirectional Memory, Michael Rothberg focuses on the interrelationship between Holocaust memory and decolonization primarily within the Francophone field of cultural memory studies. One concern with such a multidirectional model is that it might relativize and blur the specificity of events, stripping them of their precise causes and conditions. In the case of the Holocaust, this has been much debated in terms of its uniqueness or similarity to other genocides. The reflex of reverting to a diaristic approach to relating history as it is being made occurs usually for Simone de Beauvoir when she is in a state of being overwhelmed by collective history.