Between Memory and History: Retracing Historical Knowledge Through a Phenomenology of Afterlife

Abstract

How can Jan Patočka’s phenomenology of afterlife enable us to understand the historiographical process in general and the role of testimony in the historiographical process, in particular? Patočka presents a phenomenological analysis of co-existence and afterlife where others continue to be with us, as a part of our lifeworld and our constitution of ourselves, even after they are gone. We see ourselves through others and we continue to experience our lifeworld with them, a relation that is transformed but not disrupted after their death. In historiographical discussions, historical knowledge is often defined in opposition to memories, on account of its distance to our immediate, personal relation to our past. Such discussions were famously undertaken by thinkers such as Paul Ricoeur and Pierre Nora. The aim of this paper is to place the phenomenological analysis of death and of loss within discussions surrounding the relation between memory and historical knowledge. In particular, it examines how we constitute and re-constitute collective memory and historical knowledge through testimonies and archives. It argues that we can understand testimonies and archives as different modes of being with the dead, modes that continue to constitute both our individual field of experience, and our collective historical situation.