Memory Boom, Memory Wars and Memory Crises

Abstract

The ‘memory boom’ refers to a development in which, over the last few decades, the prominence and significance of memory has risen within both the academy and society. While western societies seem increasingly obsessed with relating to the past through the framework of memory, there is no shortage of criticism of what is seen by some as an excessive preoccupation. For others the current concern with memory is best understood in relation to its increasing fragility. The ‘memory boom’ has been tied to the idea of a crisis in which the abundance of memory can be attributed to a very real fear of social amnesia or forgetfulness. According to critics such as Pierre Nora, ‘we speak so much of memory because there is so little of it left’ (Nora 1989: 7). Nora sees the discursive inflation of memory as a reaction to a perceived acceleration of historical change but not as the genuine article, which could only be found in the ‘milieux de memoire’. Rather, it is some kind of artificial substitute, belonging to what Nora terms ‘lieux de memoire’; modern society has become cut off from its past, traditions are not ‘organically’ passed on, but have to be ‘artificially’ recreated to be remembered, for example, in museums or memorials. For these critics memory is not only a precious good but has to be distinguished from ‘inauthentic fakes’: false, mistaken or implanted memories, prosthetic, second-hand, mediated or virtual memories, trivial or nostalgic memories, or simply memory scenarios whose veracity or relationship to the real is dubious. The so-called ‘memory wars’ were fought over recovered memories of abuse: indeed, in 1992 a foundation was established to fight an alleged epidemic of ‘false memories’, and the term has since been extended to encompass memories of a variety of events, from alien abduction to identity theft. While there seem to be many forms of pseudo-memories, it is much more difficult to define what makes a memory genuine.