Public uses of dictatorial pasts. Visualizations in Germany and Argentina. Preliminary research findings

M. LUCILA SVAMPA

Berlin

Otro; Doktorandencolloquium; 2014

Freie Universität

The debate on historical representations and their crystallization in memory policies is absolutely in force in the contemporary political scene. There is a concern about the (re) definition of the analysis regarding the recent past revitalized in the last years. According to Nietzsche and Benjamin, the ways in which the state handles history must be observed carefully. In Von Nutzen und Nachteil der Historie für das Leben, monumental history is presented as a narcotic, which petrifies life. In Der Begriff der Geschichte, official history is associated with the oppression of the winners that silence the history of the losers. But, are memory policies always unable to get along with a ?proper? use of the past? Enzo Traverso?s answer would be positive. In his thesis on a secular theodicy he warms about the governmental uses of the past. This happens when certain episodes of the history are showed in a very negative way, in order to justify the current political order. The current project aims to reconstruct the issues visualized by the public uses of the past. This involves manly the study of German thinkers like Nietzsche, Benjamin, Arendt and Koselleck, who were involved in this subject. The analysis contemplates also one case: the German remembrances in relation to the National Socialism. The work is focused on the memory culture that refers to NS regime in Germany from 1945 to nowadays. This includes the consideration of memorials, museums, trials, laws and economic compensation analyzed though theoretical aspects such as the uses of history -indicating various forms of articulation between memory and forgetting-, the interpretive process coming from historiographical statements and the notion of truth, understood as a space contending forces that struggle with each other.