Historical Memory and Contemporary Historical Scholarship

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Notes

1. For further details, see L.P. Repina, “Vyzov postmodernizma i perspektivy novoi kul’turnoi i intellektual’noi istorii,” odissei-1996 (Moscow, 1996), pp. 25–38. See also M. Dinges [Martin Dinges], “Istoricheskaia antropologiia i sotsial’naia istoriia: cherez teoriiu ‘stilia zhizni’ k ‘kul’turnoi istorii povsednevnosti,’” odissei-2000 (Moscow, 2000), pp. 96–124.

2. See O.G. Eksle [Otto Gerhard Oexle], “Kul’turnaia pamiat’ pod vozdeistviem istorizma,” odissei-2001 (Moscow, 2001). That said, Oexle does not speak of the emergence but of the “return of the concept of ‘culture studies’” (p. 179), of a “new reception of historical culture studies” (pp. 192–94 [emphasis added—L.R.]), and dates that reception to the beginning of the twentieth century.

3. B. Gene, istoriia i istoricheskaia kul’tura srednevekovogo Zapada (Moscow, 2001), p. 19 [Bernard Guenée, histoire et culture historique dans l’occident medieval (Paris: Aubier Montaigne, 1980). This quotation retranslated from the Russian— Trans.].

4. This relates not only to empirical historical studies but also to theoretical treatments and programmatic discussions. See esp. Les lieux de mémoire, ed. Pierre Nora, vols. 1–7 (Paris: Gallimard, 1984–92); Aleida Assmann and Dietrich Harth, eds., mnemosyne. Formen und Funktionen der kulturellen erinnerung (Frankfurt am Main: Fischer-Taschenbuch, 1991); Jan Assman, das kulturelle Gedächtnis: schrift, erinnerung und politische identität in frühen hochkulturen (Munich: C.H. Beck, 1992); and Eksle, “Kul’turnaia pamiat’ pod vozdeistviem istorizma,” pp. 176–98.

5. The point at issue here is a memory with “verified” authenticity, a memory that has been “transformed into history.” A commentary on the conception of “memory become history” is provided, in particular, by François Hartog: Fransua Artog, “Vremia i istoriia,” in annaly na rubezhe vekov: antologiia (Moscow, 2007), pp. 157–59.

6. Although both historical knowledge and social memory actually perform an orienting function (including in moral/ethical terms), one of the functions of historical knowledge is the organization of social memory, social consciousness, and social practices.

7. Maurice Halbwachs, La mémoire collective (Paris: Presses universitaires de France, 1950); Halbwachs, Les cadres sociaux de la mémoire (Paris: Presses universitaires de France, 1952). Assmann, das kulturelle Gedächtnis.

9. Ibid., p. 21. For Assmann’s theory of cultural memory, see also Eksle, “Kul’turnaia pamiat’ pod vozdeistviem istorizma,” pp. 179–80.

10. A more detailed familiarization with most of the topics touched on in these general propositions may be obtained by reading the wide-ranging introduction to a book by the anthropologist Elizabeth Tonkin: narrating our Pasts: the social Construction of oral history (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1992), pp. 1–17. For a Russian translation, see “Sotsial’naia konstruktsiia ustnoi istorii,” in evropeiskii opyt i prepodavanie istorii v postsovetskoi rossii [Moscow, 1999], pp. 159–84.

11. See G. Liubbe [Hermann Lübbe], “Istoricheskaia identichnost’,” Voprosy filosofii, 1994, no. 4, pp. 108–13.

12. Pierre Nora, “Entre mémoire et histoire. La problématique des lieux,” in Les lieux de mémoire, vol. 1, pp. xv–xlii; Nora, “Between Memory and History: Les Lieux de mémoire,” representations, vol. 26—special issue on “Memory and Counter-Memory” (Spring 1989), pp. 7–24 [“Between Memory and History” is available in Marc Roudebush’s translation at www.sfu.ca/media-lab/archive/2007/487/Resources/Readings/Nora_between%20memory.pdf. Arthur Goldhammer’s translation of a longer version of the same piece is in realms of memory: rethinking the French Past (New York: Columbia University Press, 1996), vol. 1, pp. 1–20.—Trans.]

13. S.A. Ekshtut, “Bitvy za khram Mnemoziny,” in dialog so vremenem: al’manakh intellektual’noi istorii, pt. 7 (Moscow, 2001), pp. 27–48.

14. Ignacio Olábarri, “History and Science/Memory and Myth: Towards New Relations Between Historical Science and Literature,” paper presented at the Eighteenth International Congress of Historical Sciences, Montreal, 1995. [This quotation retranslated from the Russian.—Trans.]

15. “The historian can rediscover what has been completely forgotten, in the sense that no statement of it has reached him by an unbroken tradition from eyewitnesses. He can even discover what, until he discovered it, no one ever knew to have happened at all. This he does partly by the critical treatment of statements contained in his sources, partly by the use of what are called unwritten sources” (R.Dzh. Kollingvud, ideiia istorii. avtobiografiia [Moscow, 1980] [R.G. Collingwood, the idea of history (Oxford: Clarendon, 1946), quoted here from www.brocku.ca/MeadProject/Collingwood/1946_2.html —Trans.]).

16. Susan A. Crane, “Writing the Individual Back into Collective Memory,” american historical review, vol. 102, no. 5 (1997), pp. 1384–85.

17. See John Tosh, the Pursuit of history: aims, methods, and new directions in the study of modern history, 3d ed. (London: Pearson Education, 2000). For a Russian translation, see Dzh. Tosh, stremlenie k istine. Kak ovladet’ masterstvom istorika (Moscow, 2001), ch. 1: “Istoricheskoe soznanie,” pp. 11–32.

18. Jörn Rüsen, studies in metahistory (Pretoria: Human Sciences Research Council, 1993). See also I. Riusen [Rüsen], “Utrachivaia posledovatel’nost’ istorii (nekotorye aspekty istoricheskoi nauki na perekrestke modernizma, postmodernizma i diskussii o pamiati),” in dialog so vremenem, pt. 7 (Moscow, 2001), pp. 8–26.

19. I. Riusen, “Krizis, travma i identichnost’,” in dialog so vremenem, pt. 13 (Moscow, 2004) [quoted from “Trauma and Mourning in Historical Thinking,” Journal of interdisciplinary studies in history and archaelogy, vol. 1, no. 1 (2004), p. 15—Trans.].

20. H. Butterfield, the englishman and his history (London: The University Press, 1944), p. 5 [quoted from pp. v–vi in the 1945 reprint (London: Cambridge University Press)—Trans.]. Semen Ekshtut develops this idea: “History has its points of discontinuity, points of oblivion, points at which historical memory is dislodged. Along with the unstudied and the mysterious, its pages contain so much that is unexpressed and unassented to. Lacunae alternate with paralepsis, and both attest to holes in memory, which professional historians are not always able to sew together. In fact, they are sometimes the ones who, by resorting (consciously or otherwise) to lies and distorting historical events, strengthen the discontinuity and facilitate the definitive dislodging from the world of undesirable remnants of the recent past” (Ekshtut, Bitvy za khram mnemoziny, p. 34).

21. R. Rorti, obretaia nashu stranu: politika levykh v amerike XX veka (Moscow, 1999), p. 12 [Richard Rorty, achieving our Country: Leftist thought in twentieth- Century america (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1998). Quoted from Robert S. Boynton’s review at www.robertboynton.com/articleDisplay.php?article_ id=44/—Trans.].

22. M. Ferro, Kak rasskazyvaiut istoriiu detiam v raznykh stranakh mira (Moscow, 1992) [Marc Ferro, the use and abuse of history, or how the Past is taught to Children (London: Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1984)—Trans.].

23. See, in particular, V.A. Shnirelman, “Natsional’nye simvoly, etno-istoricheskie mify i etnopolitika,” in teoreticheskie problemy istoricheskikh issledovanii, pt. 2 (Moscow, 1999), pp. 118–47.

24. Christopher Hill, history and the Present (London, 1989), p. 29 [quotation retranslated from the Russian.—Trans.].

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Notes on contributors

Lorina P. Repina

Professor Lorina Petrovna Repina, Doctor of History, is deputy director of the Institute of World History, Russian Academy of Sciences, and president of the Russian Society of Intellectual History.