In Praise of Forgetting
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| Author | David Rieff |
|---|---|
| Publisher | Yale University Press |
Publication date | May 10, 2016 |
| ISBN | 9780300182798 |
| OCLC | 1005287157 |
| LC Class | D16.9 .R534 2016 |
In Praise of Forgetting: Historical Memory and Its Ironies is a 2016 non-fiction book by David Rieff, published by Yale University Press. Rieff argues the contrarian position that sometimes history, including past mass atrocities, is better forgotten than commemorated:[1] "whereas forgetting does an injustice to the past, remembering does an injustice to the present".[2]
The book examines a range of case studies, from the end of apartheid in South Africa, Spanish transition to democracy and the related pacto del olvido, Chilean transition to democracy and the related amnesty for human rights abuses under the Pinochet regime, and others.[3] Such studies draw extensively on Rieff's personal experience as a foreign correspondent in countries undergoing conflict.[4] Rieff distinguishes history and (collective) memory: "History is about the past, whereas memory is about how we use the past for the present."[5] The latter, he maintains, often has little to do with history and should not be uncritically celebrated as an end in itself.[5] Rieff argues for a pragmatic weighing of the costs and benefits of remembering versus forgetting, rather than a morally absolutist position that memory is always desirable.[3] He states that "collective memory deployed by communities, peoples, and nations has led to war rather than peace, rancour rather than reconciliation, revenge rather than forgiveness... the invocation of historical memory serves to accentuate differences rather than bridge them".[6] Rieff argues that intractable conflicts and "memory wars" might sometimes be ended if societies underwent the right kind of forgetting.[6]
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