In his concluding chapter of Oblivion ( entitled “ A Duty to Forget ),” ethnographer and social theorist Marc Augé echoes Nietzsche ’ s case against the kinds of fixed memory that disable life . But here he extends this critique by reminding us that because memory and oblivion “ stand together , both [ ] necessary for the full use of time ,” only together can they enable life ( Augé , 89 ). Even survivors of the Nazi concentration camps , who do not need to be reminded of their duty to remember , may have the additional duty to survive memory itself . And to do this may mean to begin forgetting , according to Augé , “ in order to find faith in the everyday again and mastery over their time ” ( 88 ). In this view , the value of life in its quotidian unfolding and the meaning we find in such life are animated by a constant , fragile calculus of remembering and forgetting , a constant tug and pull between memory and oblivion , each an inverted trace of the other . “ We must forget in order to remain present , forget in order not to die , forget in order to remain faithful ,” Augé concludes . “ Faithful to what ?” we ask . Faithful to life in its present , quotidian moment , I say .
In my new book , The Stages of Memory ( from which this lecture was adapted ), I recount a handful of memorials , memory-themed exhibitions , and museum-debates that took place between 1991 and 2014 , which when regarded together , might trace what I call “ the arc of memorial vernacular ” connecting the dots between Maya Lin ’ s design for the Vietnam Veterans ’ Monument , Berlin ’ s Memorial to the Murdered Jews of Europe , and the National 9 / 11 Memorial located on the site of the former Twin Towers of the World Trade Center . The “ stages of memory ” here refer both to the public staging of these memorial projects and to the incremental sequence ( or stages ) of these memorial processes as they unfold . In every case , the emphasis here is on the process and work of memory over what we might call its end result . With this in mind , I would even suggest that as great and brilliant as Michael Arad and Peter Walker ’ s realized design for the National 9 / 11 Memorial at Ground Zero may be , its true foundation is the process that brought it into being , which includes the hundreds of thousands of hours spent by the other 5,200 teams in their offices and studios , at their families ’ kitchen tables . The “ stages of memory ” at Ground Zero necessarily include both the built memorial and the unbuilt proposals , which deserve and will surely have their own public showing one day .
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