Memory and democracy in theory
The most sustained thinking about the relationship between memory and democracy has happened in the literature on transitional justice and democratization . Of course , this is a highly complex matter , but we can roughly say that there are two relevant positions here – one emphasising the importance of building strong democratic institutions after the end of an authoritarian regime – a goal that often necessitates forgetting the past , not prosecuting perpetrators , or giving amnesties in order to get buy-in to the new state from elites and “ the masses ”. The other position is that the establishment of democracy fundamentally needs the development of particular types of norms . This means facing up to the past , hearing the voices of victims and memorialising their experiences . Anne Sa ’ adah calls these two pathways the “ community of behaviour ” in which citizens respect the rules and institutions of the state ( but it doesn ’ t much matter what they believe ) and the “ community of conviction ” in which democratic values are internalised . The former is established through an “ institutional ” strategy , which is concerned primarily with the absence of violations and the reliability of the citizenry . The latter is the result of a “ cultural ” strategy that seeks to create a trustworthy citizenry with a self-sustaining democratic spirit ( Sa ’ adah , 1998 ). This issue is one that West Germany faced during the postwar period , with so many former Nazis and fellow travellers at all levels of society after the high levels of general support for the Nazi regime . As Jeffrey Herf pointed out , the “ inherent tension between memory and justice on the one hand and democracy on the other would appear to have been one of the central themes of postwar West German history ”. ( Herf , 1997:7 ). Not only is remembering the past not always good for democracy , then , but not all forms of remembering are democratic – just think of the continued reverence for militaristic and fascists symbols after 1945 . So the question is : what kind of memory is good for democracy ? What is democratic memory and could undemocratic memory be good for democracy under certain circumstances ? To consider these questions , we can conceptualise democratic memory in four different ways , none of which by themselves are sufficient to guarantee that public remembrance will have a positive impact on democratic governance . What is important is how they interact in particular historical settings as various actors contend over how the past will be represented in the public space .
Representative memory
First , democratic memory can be understood in terms of the minimalist or electoral definition of democracy : it represents the view of the majority ( or the will of the people ). Memory can thus be democratic in that public memory culture corresponds to what the majority in society believes to be an acceptable depiction of the past . Importantly , this does not necessarily mean an historically accurate representation , but one that feels like it is “ telling the right story ” – and has majority support . However , what does it mean when a majority supports a narrative of the past that analysts believe is fundamentally opposed to democracy ? This was the case in the wake of the Holocaust in Germany . Contrary to the commonly held assumption , Germans in the period immediately after WWII did not remain silent about the past so much as they remembered it in a highly selective manner . As soon as the Allies allowed it , there was indeed a significant amount of civic activity to commemorate the war experience – but the overwhelming majority did not address or take responsibility for the perpetration of the Holocaust . Thousands of memorials were built to remember “ German victims ” – people who died or lost their homes fleeing west from formerly German territories , victims of Stalinism and the uprising in the GDR in 1953 , as well as POWs .
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Observing Memories Issue 7