About Historical Memory
concluded yesterday at the National University of Mexico the International Conference "35 Anniversary of Coup in Argentina, where Norbert Emmerich, an Argentine doctor degree in Political Science and International Relations presented a paper related to a reading of "On the Concept of History" by Walter Benjamin and other texts. In my opinion, an indispensable material to support the struggle for memory, truth and justice, which offer a synthesis.
look to the past are not making a scientific question seeks to know the "truth" of what has happened, but a question fraught with anxiety. To articulate the past historically does not mean discover 'the way it was' (scientific truth) but to appropriate the memory when it flashes briefly in a moment of danger (real politics). We asked the past with the intention of answering this emergency. "In the past there promises, therefore the past," talks about things that concern the future. "
need history "For life and action" ... "to act against and beyond our time in favor of a future time" (Nietzsche, 1999: 38-39).
1. Historical memory is a collective memory, an evocation geared towards this the symbolic value of collective action by people experienced in the past. It is an action that preserves the identity and continuity of a people is not to forget what they learned, often with blood, is the way to avoid repeating past mistakes.
is a dangerous exercise because remembering One day we were free to break the stranglehold of threat who now takes advantage of our chains. Only the ruling classes seem to have historical memory, because for them it is important to determine the historical facts, they just need everyone to remember the end result: those facing end defeated them (García Bilbao, 2010).
A people's historical memory of his own destiny. They consider necessary to prevent that from happening have the social, political and economic to do so. Just wipe the symbols, language, education and emptying the collective life of identity connects with reality and memory common (García Bilbao, 2010).
problems which we live have already been experienced before. Without historical memory we are doomed to live an eternal present, the constant repetition of the same suffering, and Prometheus Bound (García Bilbao, 2010). There is no need to live everything as if for the first time it happens, the historical memory also acts as a mechanism for economy of effort.
The past is the past remembered as it happened, but the past as is the act in the present. Before we can report what happened, this past has changed several times and we learned all too late. It is therefore important the role of the militants, who can predict this because I referred to in the middle of the fatalities that have already happened. As in the Old Testament prophets of the past and lived.
2. As difficult as it is, historical memory is always dedicated to the memory of "the nameless." Not devoted to them just because their names back from oblivion, their careers and their data, but this time because it "effectively" their actions. Means wanting to remember their actions and play them to know, know what they are, need its objectives, share his dreams.
When a young worker meets almost secretly to organize with peers, historical memory the league with a past that may not know, but is reborn through him, in a moment of urgency, driven by a sense danger. Historical memory needs to catch that flash of the past, because in truth he plays this, the oppressed classes who are victims of the "force of things" have forgotten the past and its subversive force.
This task of rebuilding a lost historical memory is difficult because the rulers of a particular moment are the heirs of all who have ever won in history. Anyone who has achieved in today's victory in one of the thousand battles that make the story has its share of the spoils at the feast of the rulers to ruled. That little meeting is an event working hard mentally because the inventory show that the victors to the vanquished is called culture , and that culture is fed daily mastered. In the words of that culture, dominated perceive, understand and explain the reality in which they live. Historical memory only allows to lift the veil of the dominant culture and away from ignorance.
3. Last recreated in the present for a resurrection, and for reasons of this, look at the arguments passed to meet the urgent needs of the present. But you can only use this mechanism if the arguments redeeming the past are 'emerging', if going through the fleeting moment of becoming recognizable.
Last re-created is not capricious Search powered unrelated events, but the discovery of the social significance of emerging facts. There is a search ex nihilo, but a current diving general thinking of the time, and shared common hopes, a general spirit that flies our frustrations. So anything that ever took place must be given up as lost for history, even the most insignificant of our collective behavior is a historical fact.
4. The real image of the past is fleeting, becomes recognizable only briefly and threatens to disappear suddenly, never be seen again. But who brings us this image from the past forgotten and lost? The militants, carriers of historical memory, the central actors in social praxis. The militants are the ones who make history is not a catastrophic sequence of events unpredictable, but a conscious tool of re-construction of the past. L of repression provides the breakdown of social bonds that act as carriers of memory. If historical memory not only carries concepts or "memories" but experience, the passing of the "messengers" destroys the possibility of reproduction policy l xperiences collective. Unlearn social groups reactive behaviors, defense mechanisms, the pivotal question slogans, the importance of their organizations. They go from "being" part of a group (be a Peronist, a socialist) to "be" a party that lacks all alone and just himself (consumer, citizen, individual). New experiences are based and built a new historical memory, based on fear, demobilization and apathy. In terms of historical memory, see the "oblivion."
5. The danger does not threaten only to carriers or recipients of the tradition, it also threatens to memory content transmitted. And the threat is always the same: to become an instrument of the ruling classes. In each historical epoch memory is to be removed from the hands of conformity. From the old Greek philosophical dichotomy between "being and nonbeing is not," affirming the stability of reality, against the claim that "we come in and do not enter and n the same river, for we are and are not the same ", which affirmed the permanence of change, the memory content is transmitted in an eternal war between those who advocate the continuation and those who advocate change.
6. Recognize and reclaim the past means taking into account everything that has happened after the initial defeat, means not having empathy with the victor means understanding that all past was present, that all future and past was that all this will last.
empathy with the victor, the "idolatry of the factual"-an analysis methodology that is widely used to study the current situation Mexican-(Nietzsche, 1999: 96), not encouraged to own the genuine historical image, which is the image of the oppressed. Therefore the main task of the historian is to take over the tradition of the oppressed. Our history is the story of Tupac Amaru, Jose Marti, Emiliano Zapata, Augusto Sandino, Che, our 30 thousand dead. It is a story of the downtrodden, defeated and dead.
7. How is historical memory if our past only accumulates dead? Giorgio Agamben reminds us that in America there are two words to refer to a witness, one of them is testis, which ranks as the third in a dispute between two contenders, taking an impartial non-participant, the second is superstes , refers to who has personally experienced a process, usually to the end and can give a faithful account of what happened. In superstes derives the word survivor. Our survivors have been both of two things: they have realized what happened and have been witnesses in trials against genocide. The witness knows what the others forget and feel urged to speak because the crime once committed, there is only when stored in memory men. His paper makes the revolving door of every eye present to the past and any term of the past into the present. Argentine survivors remind us not only what happened, also militated for justice. Auschwitz, like the ESMA, "not only was a gigantic factory of death, but also a project of forgetting", in which everything was designed so that no trace .
8. The continuum of history is the continuum of the oppressors, those who equate all at ground level, for whom continuity of history is the guarantee of the continuity of its historical interests. Because until now the history of conquests is the story of the conquerors, because if "history is written by the winners, that means there is another story, the true story" as a popular song says Argentina.
The consciousness of a historical discontinuity is characteristic of the revolutionary classes at the time of his action. However there prevails a close connection between the revolutionary action of a class and the concept that this class has in past history. The French revolution came from two thousand years until the Roman Republic to find a mirror that reflected. While the idea of \u200b\u200bcontinuum equates it all to the lowest level, the idea of \u200b\u200b discontinuum is the foundation of the authentic tradition.
9. What is the point of support we let the 30 thousand missing? is not just that the past sheds light on this, but the past is based with this. But this union is only possible in a time of danger. They are images that come involuntarily. The historian must have the ability to perceive the crisis that has entered currently the subject of history, the oppressed class is struggling in their increased risk. At that time, historical knowledge is just for her. And just a moment: are the workers on strike against the coup on March 24, 1976 in Cordoba, Argentine workers are screaming against the dictatorship in the afternoon of April 27, 1979, is the crowd gathered around the Congress at Easter 1987.
The big story does not record these facts, but facts are fainter than historical significance, are the spark of hatred at a time of danger, are a time to break with historical continuity. As a result, "never again" will be a coup in Argentina, 30 000 deaths have left the school for times of danger. The slogan "Never again" is cumulative in the concept of semantic memory, as a mere memory, but it is revolutionary in concept historical memory as a tool of struggle in times of danger.
10. The story is constructed in a time that is not homogeneous, empty but in a time when the present shows signs to be "in the thick of the past."
The revolution breaks continuum of history, not passively involved in the chronology of history, not a fact that adds to other facts, interrupts the moment. So uncomfortable "telling" the revolutionaries. As it were, all was well rhythmically, until Fidel came and interrupted history.
revolutions So the first thing that changes is the calendar, move routines, change the dates, break the historic protocol. Timing schedules of historical consciousness, are no clocks, are reminders of who we are because they remind us (with-memorable) time in which "left." The dates inserted revolutionary governments, highlighting characters, symbols and whether they can enter "create" and "re-create" the story, incorporating forgotten characters, events foregrounds lost, reward characters "cursed."
The role of clocks in capitalism is to mark the time of labor, unifying the human routines, making it unheard of in normal, isolated from the whole and dive into the parties.
The French Revolution introduced the Republican calendar, abolished by Napoleon briefly in 1806 but reinstated by the revolutionary Paris Commune, Russian Revolution left the Byzantine calendar, the Church abandoned the Egyptian civil calendar of Julius Caesar Roman (Julian) and adopted the Gregorian liturgical calendar, which was imposed to all mankind. Parisian workers destroyed the clocks in the revolution of 1830, the Brazilian Indians broke the clocks in the O Globo in celebrating the fifth anniversary of the discovery of Brazil in 2000 . Revolutions are visible rupture historical continuum, so sometimes begin a recount the years, in order to accelerate the historical time and introduce a "new beginning."
11. If time ceases to be homogeneous, empty what today we would know that there obviously is not the totality, not the last word of history, there is more than the destructive force of modern capitalism. Failure to take away from the own defeat ends up creating the conditions for the betrayal of the cause itself. So the machine of repression always takes on an overwhelming, urgent, hysterical. The intention is not to allow "take away" the state of emergency, do not let understand what the policy is inserted into the chaos of repression, not think, just feel. The goal is not only defeat, also seeks to achieve empathy with the victor. If defeat him away from his, the empathy it closer to ours. Because empathy with what ever has been is in harmony with its updating. This will eliminate any echo of regret in it, removes the pain of past generations and hatred that should cause pain and requesting the approval of an uncertain future. Surrounding torture tortured "parts" and disposes of all above, but also proposes inclusion in a new totality, the acceptance of authority outstanding. So repressor Massera was more dangerous, as it sought to create new wholes, destroying and incorporating.
How is a new historical memory?
12. Today, the experience is not perceived or valued as a treasure, has no authority, not tied to the past (Fernandez, 1995: 109). Speaking about the First World War Benjamin said: "the people became silent battlefield. Not rich, but poor in terms of communicable experience " . Their impoverishment is the devaluation of the goods of education, learning, tradition, memory, narration that broaden the horizon and enhance the possibilities of our existence (Fernández, 1995: 110).
Thinking shake itself requires the weight of tradition to not compromise. Progress requires a departure from the past and continue traveling, learning. Degree of forgetting is an essential resource for vital health. Only lightweight and selective memory have the freedom necessary to weave the story itself.
release occurs in the impoverishment of experience and a new kind of barbarism. Real barbarism but positive, which shows that the experience is not mere accumulation, neither is inherited without making their own, or imposed by law in the past. In fact their poverty of experience leads them "barbarians" to start from scratch. To invent and create, in a universe full of signs, customs, orders, it is necessary to overcome the temptation to stay in mere curators, forget, erase tracks and experience (Fernández, 1995: 112).
Experimentation is the active dimension, positive experience poverty. The downside is the loss of part of the heritage of humanity, the risk reduction and depletion of the experience it in bookended triumphant modernity (Fernández, 1995: 113-114).
13. The memory structure is crucial for the experience. But memory is not accurate and complete record of all events. It is selective, reject or marginalize certain facts, and make up other privileges, associates and separates. Has structural weaknesses and not just accidental, moves spurred by the danger.
But the relationship between consciousness and memory is not collaboration but of opposition. Consciousness does not care for the maintenance of the skills, but their task is to protect against stimuli that can lead to shock trauma. Plays a vital role, as protection against stimuli is to living organisms as important as receiving them, but contrary to their aspirations for complete knowledge. Consciousness acts against the historical memory, between the desirable and necessary, can always choose trying to preserve the normality of the social psyche.
your selection does not respond to interest knowledge but bearable anguish criteria. Try to avoid the strong impressions, obnoxious, disruptive, and if he fails, he toils in his tracks. When the defense device fails, there is trauma, fright (Fernández, 1995: 115). When the device is successful, appears to oblivion.
Under the function of monitoring and warning, temporarily ordered the conscious memory and holds events "at the expense of the integrity of its contents." This means that the voluntary recall is naturally forgetful and constantly alter our memories so that our past does not conflict with our present. Remember things otherwise forget or directly. This means that for a long time the Mothers of Plaza de Mayo were called the "crazy" in the Plaza. Transferred all trouble his conscience, the voluntary recall was not forgetful, they strove to recall things as they were, against all the convenience, against all logic, against all interest.
14. The very notion of time is far to enjoy internal order, to be consistent, on the contrary, is clearly paradoxical. It is assumed that over time is an arrow going from past to future and so the story is ordered and affirms the priority of the background, the value of the old and the authority of the sources, origins and its elements (Fernández, 1995: 117).
Under this we take time as the event's primary computer, operating also in the explanations. It is a basic principle that the cause precedes effect, resulting in a hierarchy of course, the cause is prior and superior to the effect. That way you slide the idea that causal processes are down, it gives primacy to the cause and is considered independent, while the effects are dependent and subject to its dominance, to the point of excluding any retroactivity. Ends up looking ridiculous to claim that parents are such by virtue of their children. The cause subject to the effects and finishes resulting in a conviction for them (Fernández, 1995: 116). The Historical Memory subverts the chronological order of time and under achieved political practice that children are root cause of the parents, as evidenced by the Madres de Plaza de Mayo, which turned the insanity standard.
15. But the chronological primacy of time in the study also says that the past is irrecoverable and irreversible. Can not seek or act backwards, the lifetime and the story is based on the death of the dead. But someone once said, "nobody is dead until we forget", and Mother's slogan was always "a live appearance." Our dead who died are not dead, not only because we remember them, but especially because we are still struggling. We are acting to back, we are changing the past history, we continue to destroy the temporal order claim that was our past experience.
16. The story stops when reduced to a set of actions that are repeated to infinity. Is the phenomenon of deja vu , where everything that happens seems to have already happened before. While attending a continuous change, everything is equal, everything is repeated (Virno, 2003: 41), is the thesis of the end of the story.
In his work entitled "On the usefulness and harm of the story to life," Nietzsche says that an overabundance of memory blocks the action (Virno, 2003: 50). If the memory is just remember practicing a bow submissive to the past, we justify our present projected backwards in time "everything is indifferent, everything is futile, everything has already been." Men abandon fatalism pervaded of resignation at the time that this perceived seems to copy this remembered (Virno, 2003: 52).
If everything has been, all other current event repeats prior event is destined to be repeated in the no-future is the future. It's terrible life in that everything new is old, that any future is past. In imperialist societies, where tomorrow will be repeated today, suicide rates are very high, because the repetitive order suffocation.
But the spell that considers the current action as a duplication of a previous action, declined when asked about the central action. In deja vu seems to repeat something, but we can not say what we are repeating. This is because the content of repetition is established only by actual experience, this corresponds to retroactively determine what has already happened (Virno, 2003: 53).
actuated whole life now is to act first, but within that experience sometimes feels strange and dark, as has been experienced at other times. But what kinds of returns from the past? That will happen for the first time in the next instant (Virno, 2003: 54).
Conclusion: A little further back, to go a little further
In the 1930 comes to Argentina, a English citizen, Juan Avellaneda, a militant anarchist and trade union and political activity was stopped 36 months in the years following the coup Uriburu.
Some 40 years later, April 15, 1976 (35 years are commemorated in a few days) a task force unsuccessfully looking for her son Munro Floreal, a Communist and delegate Tense textile factory. Unable to capture him, violently entered the house of the family and kidnap teen of the same name, barely 15 years, Floreal Avellaneda. Floreal young body appeared on the Uruguayan coast, with signs of having been brutally tortured and have died from impalement. Floreal's mother, Iris, was also kidnapped, detained and tortured for two years.
33 years later, in 2009, were charged, tried and convicted for committing crimes against humanity: General Santiago Omar Riveros, to life imprisonment, General Fernando Ezequiel Verplaetsen, 25 years, General Julio Horacio García, 18 years, the captains and Cesar Raul Jarcich Fragni, 8 years in prison and Commissioner Alberto Aneto to 14 years in prison.
The teenager's father Floreal Avellaneda, died the following year, on June 23, 2010, 34 years after the coup. The military was never able to know where Floreal Avellaneda that night in April 1976. Or your teenager or your wife will never reveal their whereabouts. With his death, a long cycle of impunity that had begun in the 30's, was closed.
But the story did not stop ...
The March 19, 2011, shortly before commemorating the 35th anniversary of the 1976 military coup, the leader of the Argentine Rural Confederation (CRA) Mario Llambias said at a ceremony in the town of Junin, Province of Buenos Aires: "there are many who want to replace our national flag by a dirty red rag."
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"would stop talking about the past, if this were not so."
Barthelemy Boganda,
hero of the independence of the Central African Republic.