기억과 역사

Memory and History : For the New Theory of History

The increasing interests in memory refers to the decreasing interest in ‘History’ which has lost the former privileged status in the works of representation of the past and been dependent on the vagaries of “heritage －industry.” While historicity and continuity, two basic schemes of the modern historical thought, lost their relevance to the human life, memory is commonly accounted as an alternative mode of representation. Usually were addressed the very substantial differences between memory and history: The former depends on vivid experiences of the individuals and is characterized by subjectivity, informality, emotionality, plurality, concreteness. The later one oppositely depends on intellectual works and characterized by objectivity, formality, rationality, singularity, abstractness. These apparently contradictory strands made historians hitherto inhospitable to paying close attention to the confines of memory. Currently, however, such a conventional idea has been coming into questions. The new theories of ‘collective memory’ address the issue that memory results not only from the communications of closed social groups but also from their ‘cultural’ acts constructing the lasting images of the past. Itmight be a pressing point regarding this issue that the enmity between memory and history traces back to the different formative principles: the spatial and temporal schemes. This assumption is in line with the issues pertaining to the mediums of memory. Stimulated by the abrupt experiences of electronic mass media, all the modes of representation fall into discredit, then the prevailing conception of history should be relativized. Now it could be said that ‘history’ changed the modes of representation from repetition to recollection and this tendency depended on the rising print culture which used to ‘textualize’ vivid images of the past. So the difference between memory and history in no way precludes their common ground. The issue concerning oblivion and identity incidentally inform us about the constructive character of memory－it puts an end to its enmity against history. The remarked theory of memory foreshadows some of the main issues concerning our historical science. Today's historians are ready to blame theirselves on the absence of historical consciousness: They used to treat the past as the pure cognitive object and thereby played a decisive role in petrifying organic relations of present and past. The historians now in earnest strive to place the domain of history within the broad scope of memory. This new tendency can be well illustrated by the methodological concepts like “historical culture” as well as “Erinnerungskultur(memorialculture).”