ABSTRACT
Among the things which Mike Brearley and I agree about, there is one which also sets us apart from many cultural historians who write about "collective memory". There is a prominent strand within this literature which sees the commemoration of the world wars, fascism, even the Holocaust, as entirely malleable and present-centred matters, moulded by contemporary politics and discourses. By contrast, Mike and I would both argue that violent social ruptures have long-running emotional and psychological consequences. And so we might both offer ourselves as members of a second, smaller group: scholars who would tend to depict the same acts of historical commemoration as a dialogue between contemporary concerns, and real affects which are often stubbornly resistant to efforts to shift the cultural significance ascribed to them. This way of formulating the problem begs a kind of chicken-and-egg question: where did that "original", rather immovable significance come from?
