Book contents
- Frontmatter
- Dedication
- Contents
- Preface
- Acknowledgments
- Introduction: Coming to Terms with Memory
- 1 The Tragedy of Memory: Antigone, Memory, and the Politics of Possibility
- 2 Remembering to Forget: Democratizing Memory, Nietzschean Forgetting, and South Africa's Truth and Reconciliation Commission
- 3 Introducing Segregated Memory and Segregated Democracy in America
- 4 Remembering What Others Cannot Be Expected to Forget: James Baldwin and Segregated Memory
- 5 Making Silence Speak: Toni Morrison and the Beloved Community of Memory
- 6 In Memory of Democratic Time: Specters of Mexico's Past and Democracy's Future
- 7 The Future of the Past: Unholy Ghosts and Redemptive Possibilities
- 8 Imprisoned by the Past: The Complexion of Mass Incarceration
- Notes
- Selected Bibliography
- Index
Introduction: Coming to Terms with Memory
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 05 November 2014
- Frontmatter
- Dedication
- Contents
- Preface
- Acknowledgments
- Introduction: Coming to Terms with Memory
- 1 The Tragedy of Memory: Antigone, Memory, and the Politics of Possibility
- 2 Remembering to Forget: Democratizing Memory, Nietzschean Forgetting, and South Africa's Truth and Reconciliation Commission
- 3 Introducing Segregated Memory and Segregated Democracy in America
- 4 Remembering What Others Cannot Be Expected to Forget: James Baldwin and Segregated Memory
- 5 Making Silence Speak: Toni Morrison and the Beloved Community of Memory
- 6 In Memory of Democratic Time: Specters of Mexico's Past and Democracy's Future
- 7 The Future of the Past: Unholy Ghosts and Redemptive Possibilities
- 8 Imprisoned by the Past: The Complexion of Mass Incarceration
- Notes
- Selected Bibliography
- Index
Summary
In the strict sense of the term, there has never been a true democracy, and there never will be. … If there were a nation of Gods it would govern itself democratically. A government so perfect is not suited to men.
—Jean-Jacques RousseauDemocracy is a great word, whose history, I suppose, remains unwritten, because that history has yet to be enacted.
—Walt WhitmanDemocracy is a recurrent possibility as long as the memory of the political survives.
—Sheldon S. WolinAn intriguing friction between democracy and memory reveals itself in ancient Athens, the cradle of the democratic idea. In 403 BCE, after the oligarchy of the Thirty Tyrants, the transition to democracy was made possible by a decree forbidding any recollection of the Thirty. The prohibition on memory conjoined to the pardon of the Thirty came with an oath that bound Athenians to publicly promise that they “shall not recall the misfortunes.” This event is widely understood as the model amnesty in Western history. The amnesty of antiquity had amnesia at its root in both practice and etymology. The coincidence of amnesia, amnesty, and democracy would not be confined to antiquity. Over two thousand years later, President Woodrow Wilson took the stage at the commemoration of the fiftieth anniversary of the battle of Gettysburg.
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- Chapter
- Information
- The Power of Memory in Democratic Politics , pp. 1 - 24Publisher: Boydell & BrewerPrint publication year: 2013