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How do we tell what has happened to us ?
Diana Castelblanco Professor , Jorge Tadeo Lozano University in Colombia
In his work Voices from Chernobyl ( 2015 ), in the chapter ‘ Monologue on Why People Remember ’, the Belarusian writer Svetlana Alexievich presents us with the testimony of the psychologist Piotr S ., who asks , why do people remember ? “ Is it to restore truth ? Justice ? To free themselves and forget ? Because they realise they have been part of a great event ? Or because they seek some form of protection in the past ?” This is the account of an ‘ ordinary ’ man , reflecting on one of the human tragedies that , beyond the intention to quantify it through the force of its death toll , impacts as profoundly as the Holocaust , the repression and disappearance of people during the civil-military dictatorship in Argentina , or the more than nine million people recognised as victims of the social and armed conflict in Colombia .
While statistics shake our collective conscience , they also overshadow the individual stories behind these numbers , diluting our understanding of the human condition imposed in such circumstances . A story , a singular voice , among others , resists oblivion by unearthing images from the past , images that appear with overwhelming force in the present , reminding us that in the contest over numbers , the profound meaning of what has been lived must not be lost .
But what does it mean to remember ? It is to have an image of the past . How is this possible ? Because this image is a mark left by events , one that remains imprinted on the spirit . “ The truth is that when we recount true events from the past , what we draw from memory are not the events themselves , but words created by the imagination , imprinted upon the spirit like marks engraved on the senses as they pass by ” ( Ricoeur , 1996 , p . 44 ).
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Observing Memories Issue 8