A Passion for Memory

Abstract

Moving through personal, intellectual and political autobiography this brief article traces the author's relationship with stories, memory and history. Her childhood was full of story-telling far richer than dry school history. As a student activist she was enthused by stories told by partisans, and a post-doctoral research job led to a great discovery: the revelation of primary sources. But the political spirit of the time was both ahistorical - in the sense of not caring about history - and anti-historical - in the sense of being determined to reject the past. When in 1967 she spent time in Dar es Salaam, however, working with and on the Mozambique liberation movement (Frelimo), history and memory helped to explain the impact of colonialism and to explore new forms that liberation might take. Back in Italy, in workers' education groups and in a left discussion group which involved the study and analysis of the history of capitalism in a world context, her attitude to history was still instrumental. In the last years of 1970s she began a transition from socio-political history to cultural history, in which oral history and memory were central. This led her to value the memory of others and to look for workers outside of the places where she had always met them. Finally, a passion for memory was free to emerge, in the interchange with women and men older than her, and in the effort to understand the various levels of their narrations. Their testimony and conversations revealed traces of more ancient memories; for instance, oral traditions transmitted from the rural to the industrial working class, or women's traditions of freedom and independence. She became part of an international network of people and initiatives dealing with memory. Listening to the memory of others allowed her, after about a decade of such practice, to listen to her own memory and to think about subjectivity. Her new perspectives allowed her to bring history and memory closer together, using the concept of cultural memory to think about identity. In this time of postcoloniality and of diasporas through and to Europe, she saw, the memory of Europe, an abstract concept, could not be understood as belonging exclusively to European subjects, that is, concerning what and how they remember. ‘Memory of Europe’ must also be given a meaning within which Europe is the object: who remembers Europe and how? As the memory of Europe extends beyond Europeans themselves, who are anyway scattered and migratory, as well as coming to include people from outside Europe's ever-changing boundaries, the distinction between self and other is broken down - at least in terms of European identity, of who is European - an operation which takes on historical force, at the same time as history inspires memory towards an understanding of the colonial era its and present implications.