The nation is a narcissistic entity for it celebrates rather than questions its past. Underlying this narcissistic sense of itself as a national self is the necessity not to remember certain aspects of its own history. This holds especially true when these historical moments would question the nation's ability to live up to its full national promise to those who constitute the nation as well as to retain its honourable status within the community of other nations. This double imperative – simultaneously to remember and not to remember – is a key factor in theorising the nation. In ‘Qu'est-ce qu'une nation?’ Ernest Renan stipulates:

In Imagined Communities, Benedict Anderson concurs with Renan by drawing attention to Renan's insistence on having ‘already forgotten what Renan's own words assumed that they [the French have] naturally remembered!’ (Anderson 1991: 200) Anderson does this by highlighting Renan's use of the ‘peremptory syntax of doit avoir oublié [have already forgotten] instead of doit oublier [must forget]’ (ibid.) when discussing the nation's darkest past history.