In Praise Of Forgetting: Historical Memory And Its Ironies

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A leading contrarian thinker explores the ethical paradox at the heart of history's wounds The conventional wisdom about historical memory is summed up in George Santayana's celebrated phrase Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it Today the consensus that it is moral to remember immoral to forget is nearly absolute & yet is this right? David Rieff an independent writer who has reported on bloody conflicts in Africa the Balkans & Central Asia insists that things are not so simple He poses hard questions about whether remembrance ever truly has or indeed ever could inoculate the present against repeating the crimes of the past He argues that rubbing raw historical wounds-whether self-inflicted or imposed by outside forces-neither remedies injustice nor confers reconciliation If he is right then historical memory is not a moral imperative but rather a moral option-sometimes called for sometimes not Collective remembrance can be toxic Sometimes Rieff concludes it may be more moral to forget Ranging widely across some of the defining conflicts of modern times-the Irish Troubles & the Easter Uprising of 1916 the white settlement of Australia the American Civil War the Balkan wars the Holocaust & 911-Rieff presents a pellucid examination of the uses & abuses of historical memory His contentious brilliant & elegant essay is an indispensable work of moral philosophy