influence our vision of the past, present and
future? how can remembrance become a tool of social
transformation?
Neoliberalism
compresses our lives
into an eternal present,
a world dominated by
acceleration that gives
us the impression of
permanent change,
although the social and
economic foundations
remain static. The melancholy of the left-wing has always existed.
The free-market society promises to satisfy all
our desires — our utopias become individual and
are “privatised” — within the context of a social
and anthropological model that shapes our lives,
institutions and social relationships. In a neoliberal
society, the past is reified and remembrance
transformed into a consumer item shaped and
disseminated by the cultural industry. Politics of
memory — museums and commemorations —
are submitted to the same criteria of reification
(profitability, media coverage, adapting to
predominant tastes etc). Inventing and especially
imposing different timeframes is no easy task.
Connecting to the temporality of the past (shooting
at clocks of church towers in order to arrest time,
according to the famous image of Walter Benjamin)
It has followed failures of collective movements and
the collapse of hopes for revolution. It seeks neither
passivity nor resignation and can favour a critical
reappraisal of the past capable of preserving its
emotional dimension. This means both mourning
lost comrades and remembering the joyful and
fraternal moments of social transformation through
collective action. We need this melancholy powered
by remembrance, which is no obstacle to the
reactivation of the left-wing.
How would you describe the politics of
remembrance that the EU has implemented up
until now and what are its main challenges?
The essential mission of the European Union’s
politics of remembrance has primarily been
instrumental and decorative: showing virtue whilst
adopting anti-social policies.
On one hand impoverishing Greece, on the other
organising commemorations of the Holocaust;
on one hand introducing the power of the troika,
a supranational power devoid of any democratic
legitimacy, on the other proclaiming human
rights; on one hand financing museums and
commemorations dedicated to the victims of
totalitarianism and genocide, on the other
meticulously closing borders and refusing to adopt a
common policy to welcome refugees. This hypocrisy
can only have detrimental consequences. The rise of
the far right is proof of this.
or inventing timeframes that are not submitted to
the rules of the free-market society is the major
challenge facing all alternative projects. Social
movements in the last few years such as 15M, Occupy
Wall Street, Nuit Debout etc. have been interesting
experiences in this sense.
What is the “melancholy of the left-wing” and
Expert’s view
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