CONICET | Buscador de Institutos y Recursos Humanos

It is common to think that for faithfully representing our past, we have a responsibility?an epistemic responsibility?as rememberers: to be as accurate as possible, and to be sincere with ourselves in order to avoid self-deception. Nonetheless, memories cannot be reduced to simple facts because our memories always present the alleged facts from our particular perspective. Furthermore, the act of remembering not only involves a private and individual aspect but also a public aspect, especially when the events remembered are socially significant. These characteristics of memory become more complex when the way a collective remembers is under consideration.In this article, we examine the concept of historical memory as a particular kind of collective memory, as well as the characteristics that distinguish historical memory from individual memory and other simpler forms of collective memory, such as the relations of power. Our aim is to analyse the sense in which a collective that remembers its shared past can be an epistemically responsible collective, especially when this shared past is matter of dispute or conflict between groups that remember it differently. We claim that the duty of truthfulness is intrinsic to historical memory, and that this duty can only be fulfilled when the demand for moral integrity is satisfied.