The crux of the political import of memory and history is thus not one of the dangers of amnesia, of forgetting, of loss; nor is it one of the need for a constant presence, a perpetual reality [eg, "We can never forget the Holocaust."]. Like the slogan silence=death, it mistakes the simple presence of discursive acts for political efficacy, and their simple absence with physical elimination. Rather, the real political import of memory and history it is to be found in the process of remembering, in the dialectical combination of loss and presence. Remembering is a necessarily selective process. One can not recapture the totality of even one single moment of the past, so one re-presents it, reproducing it in the imagination, individual and collective, by evoking its key signs/elements. Power thus functions in the ways in which the narratives of history are formed, in the ways in which particular memories are produced, taken up and woven into a fabric of larger social meaning, social power and social identity.
Contrary to the position proposed by Yoshie, and leaving aside here for the moment her essentialist conception of "Americans," oppressors are not men without memories and men deprived of histories. To the contrary, they hold onto particular memories and particular historical narratives with great ferocity, as if their very existence depended upon it. And in a way, it does, insofar as their 'identity' is grounded on those memories and that historical narrative. For oppressors are men with particular memories and histories which inform and justify their current identity and subjectivity, men who, in a strange dialectic of slave and master, of oppressor and oppressed, understand themselves as past victims of historic domination and oppression who are in constant danger of historical reversion -- one is justifying in acting as a master in order to prevent and forestall one's enslavement, one is justified in acting as an oppressor to prevent one's oppression: the Boer of apartheid constitutes himself out of his "heroic survival" against murdering Englishmen and Africans a century past, the Serbian of ethnic cleansing constructs himself out of centuries old grievances against Turks and Moslems, Croats and Slovenes, the genocidal Hutu creates himself out of a history of mistreatment at the hands of Tutsi.
It is wrong to dismiss this as simply "false consciousness," as simply "invented history." The Boer, the Serb, the Hutu did indeed suffer, albeit not always in the ways, or even necessarily at the hands, that they would like to believe, and so there is a resonance to their historical narrative. The crucial point is to recognize how these national historical narratives construct the dialectic of, to use Camus' terms, victim and executioner, and use it -- through the insistence of "Never Again!" -- to justify their current stance. The anti-Semite finds his justification in the "power" of the Jew that he fears, the racist finds his justification in the "power" of the African or Asian he fears, and so on. [The South African Truth and Reconciliation Commission is a very interesting attempt to create a history which is not simple a victor's history, a history which breaks with the cycle of executioner and victim, precisely by recalling and memorializing certain experiences of oppression and of wrong without making them the basis of revenge and retribution. Is it possible, as Camus would like, to be neither executioner or victim?]
The literary text which best captures the complex problematic of history and memory is not, I would contend, that of Melville, but rather Toni Morrison's _Beloved_. Morrison understands that history involves a dialectic of memory, a struggle and duality of presence and of loss. _Beloved_ is not a parable of didactic messages, of simple condemnations of peoples as historical amnesiacs who have lost their humanity, as Yoshie reads Melville. Its complexity belies a simple analysis of the problems of memory and history, combining as it does, both the individual and collective dimensions of that problem. (As we know increasingly from the field of law, and from various campaigns against purported cabals of Satanic child molesters, individual memory can be a very unreliable account of basic events.) Yet it is the very complexity which makes _Beloved_ such a rich source for this investigation.
Consider: Sethe "works hard to remember as close to nothing (of slavery) as was safe. Unfortunately her brain was devious." Something would jog her memory, and "suddenly there was Sweet Home (the slave plantation) rolling, rolling, rolling out before her eyes... It never looked as terrible as it was and it made her wonder if hell was a pretty place too. Fire and brimstone all right, but hidden in lacy groves. Boys hanging from the most beautiful sycamores in the world. It shamed her -- remembering the wonderful sycamore trees rather than the boys. Try as she might otherwise, the sycamores beat out the children every time and she could not forgive her memory that."
How, indeed, do we integrate and re-make ourselves whole in the face of such human depravity? [Was it not Adorno who said something to the effect that, after the Holocaust, how could there be poetry?] Specifically, what do we do with those memories? How do we construct our history, and shape our identities, in ways that make sense of these experiences without holding us hostage to them, and allow us to re-enter the world of human relations, to, in Morrison's terms, be loved. By interesting coincidence, Sunday's _New York Times_ carried an editorial page piece by Tina Rosenberg on "The Unbearable Memories of a U.N. Peacekeeper," which recounts the post-traumatic depression and stress (a very inadequate set of psych terms) of a Canadian military officer who had been part of the UN contingent during the genocide in Rwanda, and done his very best, unsuccessfully, to get the UN to act, and then, far more successfully, to expose the genocide and the Western inaction in face of it. A "powerless" observer to mass murder of neighbor by neighbor, carried out with machete and hoe, he now lives with his own haunting "beloved," just as the woman of Morrison's story who slew her own child, rather than allow her to be taken back into enslavement, did. Isn't "forgiving our memory" in part forgiving ourselves, for the sins of omission and commission these inhuman systems force upon us, whether it be sacrificing our children for freedom or standing by helpless in the face of mass murder?
In the closing chapter of _Beloved_, Morrison tells us, after each paragraph: "It was not a story to pass on... It was not a story to pass on... This is not a story to pass on..." And yet Morrison has told it, the story of the unnamed, the presence which, "in the dark," is called "beloved": "Everyone knew what she was called, but nobody anywhere knew her name. Disremembered and unaccounted for, she can not be lost because no one is looking for her, and even if they were, how can they call her if they don't know her name? Although she has claim, she is not claimed. In the place where long grass opens, the girl who waits to be loved and cry shame erupts into her separate parts, to make it easier for the chewing laughter to swallow her all away."
Beloved is the specter of the past which will not go away, which appears in the present as the reminder of history -- the dehumanizing experiences of enslavement -- until she is acknowledged. She must be remembered, must become part of the historical narratives of our identities.
One of the facets of Morrison's work which is so relevant here is that she understands, in a way that Yoshie clearly fails to understand, how much African-American memories and history are woven into the very weft and woof of the fabric of American memories and history, how much the African-American presence is an ineluctable moment and part of American identity. The examples here are multitudinous, but let me cite my favorite: the very conceptions of equality and liberty which operate in American constitutional law, politics and popular culture are simply incomprehensible outside of the context of the African-American freedom struggle; for it was the that struggle which both gave us the 14th amendment, and which has been a constant presence in its interpretation and application. Absent the 14th amendment, there is no concept of equality at all in American constitutional law, and what notion of liberty that does exist in the Bill of Rights, is not applied against the greatest threats to freedom -- state and local governments. [On this point, see Condit's and Lucaites, _Crafting Equality: America's Anglo-African Word_.] But Yoshie ignores all of this because she insists upon seeing American historical narratives and American identities in the most essentialist fashion, as -- despite all the claims of an "ethic-less" perspective -- the embodiment of pure evil, the "evil empire." At the center, the criminal American, in the image of a white man; at the periphery, the margin, his victims, in the image of people of color.
Never mind that every movement of the left that ever amounted to anything in the American context, from abolitionism and the civil rights movement to the suffrage movement and feminism, from early 20th century mass socialism to the labor movement, has always grounded itself in American historical narratives and struggled over the meaning of American identity. Never mind that such movement of the left have always understand American historical narratives to be contradictory discourses, with much in the way of positive grounding for their struggles. Discard Frederick Douglass, Harriet Tubman, Sojourner Truth, Eugene Debs, A. Phillip Randolph, Martin Luther King and the host of other American figures in this tradition. Forget the struggle for hegemony: the American historical narrative is one of evil and criminality to the core, which is why Americans evade memory and history. It must simply be defeated, vanquished, eliminated.
This is not a "new politics." It is the sum and substance of the worldview of the Weatherunderground, and of similar "anti-imperialist" politics since at least the 1960s. It is also a profoundly pessimistic and deeply negative politics [how could it be anything else?]. It is a politics of nihilism, which denies all ethical and moral judgments about means and ends, because against the evil of the "evil empire," all else pales. Ethnic cleansers and practitioners of genocide, military dictators, war criminals, anti-modern religious fundamentalists, whomever: so long as they are in opposition to the overriding evil, they can be supported.
For a whole host of reasons, I think that Hegel is not the best source material for a political philosophy, at least not for one which has aspirations to be radically democratic and fully pluralist. But he is not without insight, and he should not be read selectively. The section of the Phenomenology which critiques the Reign of Terror which consumed the French Revolution is of particular interest, and it fits this politics to a tee: it "can thus produce neither a positive achievement nor a deed; there is left for it only negative action; it is merely the rage and fury of destruction." Further, "the sole and only work and deed accomplished by universal freedom [Hegel's term for the political philosophy of the Reign of Terror] is therefore death--a death that achieves nothing, embraces nothing within its grasp; for what is negated is the unachieved, unfulfilled punctual entity of the absolutely free self. It is thus the most cold-blooded and meaningless death of all, with no more significance than cleaving a head of cabbage or swallowing a draught of water."
Hegel was correct, I believe, in finding this fascination with death at the core of politics of "revolutionary defeatism," with its singular focus on bringing about the defeat of the imperial power and the death of the 'evil empire.' And it is this fascination with death which leads so directly into the suicidal politics that has marked such "anti-imperialism," from the Weatherunderground onwards. What is support for Milosevic, Hussein and their ilk, in the American context, if not a death wish?
<< Americans are deprived of memory and history. This is the point that
Herman Melville makes in _Benito Cereno_ (1856). Melville
mercilessly indicts American blindness & obliviousness through his
portrayal of Captain Amasa Delano. Here's the crucial dialogue near
the end of the story:
***** "You generalize, Don Benito; and mournfully enough. But the
past is passed; why moralize upon it? Forget it. See, yon bright
sun has forgotten it all, and the blue sea, and the blue sky; these
have turned over new leaves."
"Because they have no memory," he [Benito Cereno] dejectedly replied;
"because they are not human."
"But these mild trades that now fan your cheek, do they not come with
a human-like healing to you? Warm friends, steadfast friends are the
trades."
"With their steadfastness they but waft me to my tomb, _senor_," was
the foreboding response.
"You are saved," cried Captain Delano, more and more astonished and
pained; "you are saved: what has cast such a shadow upon you?"
"The Negro." *****
The cheery absence of memory and history (as well as an inability to
confront the wages of whiteness), Melville suggests, makes Americans
(especially of the master class) "not human."
The story works as an allegory of the American assumption of imperial
hegemony, replacing the declining European empires, especially
Spanish colonialism symbolized by frail Don Benito (the trades waft
him to his tomb). Don Benito cannot put down the slave rebellion led
by Babo. He becomes a prisoner of ruthlessly intelligent Babo on the
slave ship named _The San Dominick_ (an allusion to Haiti, and the
story is set in 1799). When Captain Delano comes on board, thinking
that the ship was in distress & trying to offer succor out of his
"good nature," Babo has Benito play the Master, and he plays the
faithful & devoted Slave. For Babo knows how men like Delano think:
each time Delano suspects something is amiss (on the _San Dominick_,
a black boy hits a white boy, labor discipline is lax, and so forth),
his suspicions are disarmed by "charming" pictures of selfless
devotion that Babo presents. Delano thinks himself more
compassionate than Don Benito and feels slaves are ill used --
alternately oppressed & spoiled -- by the tyrannical & temperamental
Spaniard. Eventually, with the desperate flight of Don Benito,
however, Delano realizes that the slave rebellion has overthrown the
Spanish, cajoles his sailors into attacking the _San Dominick_ with
the promise of gold, puts down the rebellion, and brings the rebels
to justice. The rebel leader Babo gets executed in Lima, but the
shock of having been overthrown -- even temporarily -- by the slave
rebellion, and made a slave of a black man, eventually kills Don
Benito as well. _Benito Cereno_ uncannily foreshadows developments
in real history, in which the USA puts down (or coopts, as the case
may be) anti-colonial struggles -- the Spanish-American War of 1898,
to take just one example -- and in the process becomes the foremost
imperial power that reduces the Europeans to subordinate positions,
all the while believing, like Amasa Delano, that it has & will always
act out of boundless generosity & compulsion to help peoples in
distress.
The present stage of "humanitarian" imperialism is, in one sense, a
resumption of the American self-image temporarily torn asunder by the
Vietnam War and the anti-war movement. Americans bring criminals of
the periphery to justice, for Americans are, you see, the only
righteous people in the world.
American leftists used to laugh at Amasa Delanos -- oppressors who
think of themselves as do-gooders -- of the evil empire. Nowadays,
American leftists act like Amasa Delano, with one twist -- believing
that they are saving Babos from Benito Cerenos. What has not
changed, however, is the idea that it is Americans who should bring
criminals of the world to justice. It goes without saying that this
self-image makes Americans forget the fact that they are the biggest
criminals: the only remaining superpower that acts with impunity, for
there is no one in the world who can bring Americans to justice.
Yoshie >>
Leo Casey United Federation of Teachers 260 Park Avenue South New York, New York 10010-7272 (212-598-6869)
Power concedes nothing without a demand. It never has, and it never will. If there is no struggle, there is no progress. Those who profess to favor freedom, and yet deprecate agitation are men who want crops without plowing the ground. They want rain without thunder and lightening. They want the ocean without the awful roar of its waters. -- Frederick Douglass --