Towards an Ethics of Remembering: The Walser-Bubis Debate and the Other of Discourse

Abstract

Engaging with current theories of cultural memory, this article combines a largely phenomenological with a psychoanalytic perspective in order to address those alternative modes of cultural transmission that communicate through the unsaid, the sous-entendu and silence. Questioning the sufficiency of narratalogical models of cultural memory, the article focuses on memory as a rupture of presence with a view to outlining an ethically driven theory of cultural memory. In light of the recent proliferation of various forms of Holocaust commemoration, the article highlights some of the dangers associated with an overly didacticized approach to remembering. It proposes that cultural memory must be reconfigured in terms of an ethics of remembering which is based on the indexicality of historical experience. These insights are then applied to the Walser-Bubis debate, arguing that, entangled in a false opposition between shame and pride, Walser ultimately failed to recognize both the indexicality of the past and the alterity of the other.