UDC

130.2

DOI

10.17238/issn2227-6564.2019.6.132

Authors

Konstantin P. Shevtsov
Saint-Petersburg State University of Civil Aviation; ul. Pilotov 38, St. Peterburg, 196210, Russian Federation;
ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0002-7768-4602 e-mail: shvkst@gmail.com

Abstract

This article studies the interaction between collective and individual memory. Starting with Plato, the politics of memory has aspired to integrate the personal experience of the past into the sublime collective myth of the origin of society. The reason for this is the weakness of individual memory and its dependence on the methods of narration about the past that prevail in a certain society. The very idea about the past is possible only in the form of metaphors, since the experience of the past is redundant for the discourse that structures our common with other people present. But the weakness and uncertainty of memory do not negate its inner urgency for a person, which is associated with the experience of loss and claim for recognition. Therefore, the politics of memory should form the practice of appeasing the loss and recognizing the claims of memory. Once we stop such practices, the past will be experienced as a negative traumatic experience, and the return of this repressed experience will become a threat to the memorial discourse of the authorities. If the authorities fail to suggest a language for talking about the past, the demand of memory will find other indirect forms of expression for itself. Nietzsche believed that it is precisely the negative experience of pain that is the goal of social mnemonics, which turn a human animal into a calculable and predictable member of society. This calculation of a person, his desires and resources is raised to a power in today’s digital world. At the same time, in the field of new media, the recognition of the demand of memory is often connected not with appeasing the loss, but, on the contrary, with imposing a negative, traumatic experience of the past.

Keywords

politics of memory, demand of memory, basic contract, modern media

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