The Work of Memory in the Project of Cosmopolitan Education

Abstract

The article examines the role that personal and collective memories play in the development of one’s sense of identity in the context of a multicultural society. Our way of remembering should be made object of an aware choice and should be exercised on morally relevant issues, like our personal or historical identities, with the aim of reaching an intentional, reflective, and acquired capacity to forget and remember in a cosmopolitan spirit. How should we educate ourselves about our own past, tradition and memory while living with others whose traditions and inheritances differ from ours? In the cosmopolitan orientation, a person or community juxtaposes reflective openness to new influences with reflective loyalty toward the tried and the known. Today the survival of personal and community integrity seems to necessitate the work of memory. Work is needed to retain beloved traditions in a dynamic manner, if those very traditions are not to be swallowed up in the tide of globalization. In the work of memory there is an interplay between “unlearning” the past—becoming mindful of its singularity and its interpretability—and reconstructing it.