To Remember or to Forget: Which Way Out of a Shared History of Violence?

Abstract

During the 1990s, the innovative term ‘culture of remembrance’ was coined, providing a cultural framework within which we automatically assume that remembering is a beneficial obligation that we must fulfil. Remembering thus appears to be a significant social and cultural resource. This picture has been recently thoroughly upset by Christian Meier, whose latest book Das Gebot zu vergessen und die Unabweisbarkeit des Erinnerns (The Imperative to Forget and the Inescapability of Remembering, 2010) posits the theory that it is the ability to forget which should be considered the cultural achievement; remembering is only to be recommended under absolutely exceptional circumstances such as Auschwitz.¹ Using Meier’s study on the importance of forgetting after civil wars as its point of departure, this chapter opens up a more general discussion on ways of possibly overcoming a shared history of violence.