Politics Of Collective Memory Research Articles

Elite Revisionists and Popular Beliefs: Christopher Columbus, Hero or Villain?

According to revisionist historians and American Indian activists, Christopher Columbus deserves condemnation for having brought slavery, disease, and death to America’s indigenous peoples. We ask whether the general public’s beliefs about Columbus show signs of reflecting these critical accounts, which increased markedly as the 1992 Quincentenary approached. Our national surveys, using several different question wordings, indicate that most Americans continue to admire Columbus because, as tradition puts it, “he discovered America,” though only a small number of mainly older respondents speak of him in the heroic terms common in earlier years. At the same time, the percentage of Americans who reject traditional beliefs about Columbus is also small and is divided between those who simply acknowledge the priority of Indians as the “First Americans” and those who go further to view Columbus as a villain. The latter group of respondents, we find, show a critical stance toward modal American beliefs much more broadly. We also analyze American history school textbooks for evidence of influence from revisionist writings, and we consider representations of Columbus in the mass media as well. Revisionist history can be seen as one consequence of the “minority rights revolution” that began after World War II and has achieved considerable success, but the endurance of Columbus’s reputation—to a considerable extent even among the minorities who have the least reason to respect him—raises important questions about the inertia of tradition, the politics of collective memory, and the difference between elite and popular beliefs.

?A Space for Narration?: Milton and the Politics of Collective Memory

?A Space for Narration?: Milton and the Politics of Collective Memory

"A Space for Narration": Milton and the Politics of Collective Memory

"A Space for Narration": Milton and the Politics of Collective Memory

Commemorative Practices in Science: Historical Perspectives on the Politics of Collective Memory. (Osiris, 2nd Series, 14). Pnina G. Abir-Am , Clark A. Elliott

<i>Commemorative Practices in Science: Historical Perspectives on the Politics of Collective Memory. (Osiris, 2nd Series, 14)</i>. Pnina G. Abir-Am , Clark A. Elliott

A tale of three sites: The monumentalization of Celtic oppida and the politics of collective memory and identity

Three fortified hilltop settlements (oppida) of the ‘Celtic’ Iron Age have been resurrected in recent history as symbolic focal points in the highly politicized construction of collective memory and identity in modern France. This paper presents a brief comparative consideration of the processes of commemoration by which these three sites were ritually transformed into monuments that have served both to root constructed traditions of national collective imagination in place and to provide a sense of authenticity and continuity for them. In other words, it explores the ways in which attempts have been made to imbue certain places in the landscape with special symbolic value and turn them into historical ‘memory factories’ for the nation. It also examines the role of archaeology in this process of cultural production.

The German Predicament: Memory and Power in the New Europe

What does the unification of Germany really mean? In their stimulating exploration of that question, Andrei S. Markovits and Simon Reich sketch diametrically different interpretations than are frequently offered by commentators. One is that Germany, well aware of the Holocaust, has been 'Europeanized' and is now prepared to serve as the capitalist and democratic locomotive that powers Europe. The other is that the proclivities behind Auschwitz have been suppressed rather than obliterated from the German psyche. Germany's liberal democracy was imposed by the allied victors, according to this view, and will one day dissolve, revealing the old expansionist tendencies to try to 'Germanize' all of Europe. Markovits and Reich argue that benign contemporary assessments of Germany's postwar democracy, combined with admiration for the country's economic achievements, contribute to German influence far greater than military might was able to achieve. Yet, at the same time, some Germans have internalized liberal and pacifist principles and now see their nation as powerless, simply a larger Switzerland. As a result, while the Germans have enormous influence and latitude, they have not taken responsibility for leadership. The prime reason for this gap beween ideology and structure, Markovits and Reich suggest, lies in the politics of collective memory.