Manipulation of Time Continuity in Shared Narratives. On the Construction of Collective “Truths” and Its Ambivalent Function in the Social World and in Education

Abstract

This article discusses the topic of politically motivated manipulation of time continuity in shared narratives. It examines the consequences of the irrational fusion of fragments of the stories of different protagonists who live in different historical periods, sometimes separated by centuries. The integration of bits and pieces of the myths borrowed from the past into the narratives of the present can take on psychotic proportions. It can seriously damage the living tissue of personal and collective memory. The story of the past, told in a certain way, can influence the self-perception of people, making them feel partly like heroes with a special mission, as well as victims, threatened by a hostile world, isolated, acting in response to the past, and therefore out of touch with reality. The result is the impossibility of distinguishing current events as a set of specific political and psychological forces that require a specific response to an urgent situation (Kalinowska, 2012). Current threats are thus perceived not only in their specificity, but in constant vigilance in the light of past traumas and illogical linking of the past, present, and future. The goal of this article is the understanding of this process with the help of Vamik Volkan’s psychoanalytic concept of “time collapse” (Volkan & Javakhishvili, 2022), and Michael Rothberg’s theory of the “implicated subject” (2019). When we talk about the transition to democracy and solidarity in education, we must understand the way of thinking that deviates from them.