Displacement and Memory

In The Practice of Everyday Life, Michel de Certeau (1984) analogises memory to a bird that lays its eggs in another's nest. He writes, ‘Like those birds that lay their eggs only in other species’ nests, memory produces in a place that does not belong to it’ (de Certeau 1984: 87). De Certeau's analogy is profoundly relevant in the context of the Partition because it identifies the experience of displacement as crucial to the process of remembrance. De Certeau also emphasises the effect this has on the shape and form of memory. He continues, ‘It [memory] receives its form and its implantation from external circumstances, even if it furnishes the con-tent (the missing detail)’ (87). De Certeau sees displacement (whether in space or time) as a fundamental trigger to the production of memory. In this way, de Certeau too defines memory as a social construction whose narrative form is shaped by the present within which it is recalled (Halbwachs 1992; Connerton 1989; Boym 2001).

Frankish and Bradbury (2012: 305) note that the process of remembrance involves assembling one's memories into a narrative that gives a sense of ‘who we were, who we are and who we could possibly be’. In a sentiment similar to de Certeau's idea of memory receiving its form from ‘external circumstances’, Michael Roth (2012: 85) notes that memory ‘transforms the past as a condition of retaining it’. Halbwachs (1992) identifies this as the intervention of ‘collective’ frames of remembrance. Memory comes to be shaped by the ‘collective’ social frames within which it is (re-)constructed.

Nostalgia – the bittersweet longing for one's past – shares this quality of memory (Boym 2001). As Svetlana Boym writes, ‘The nostalgic rendezvous with oneself is not always a private affair’ (50). Boym describes nostalgia as ‘a sentiment of loss and displacement, but … also a romance with one's own fantasy’ (xiii). Nostalgia is the process of creating ‘perfect memories of imperfect worlds’ (Finlay 2004: 150). However, nostalgia contains within it a ‘utopian dimension’. Yet, nostalgia's poetic desire for utopia is not directed at the future. Nostalgia is at times directed at the past but at other times yearns to escape the linear progression of time.