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Introduction Objectives, Methods, Concepts “What you’re doing in Iraq is as important and courageous and selfless as what American troops did in places like Normandy and Iwo Jima and Korea. Your generation is every bit as great as any that came before it. And the work you do every day will shape history for generations to come.”1 (U.S. President George W. Bush addressing U.S. troops in Baghdad, Iraq, on December 14, 2008) “Each American who has served in Iraq has their own story. Each of you has your own story. And that story is now a part of the history of the United States of America, a nation that exists only because free men and women have bled for it, from the beaches of Normandy to the deserts of Anbar, from the mountains of Korea to the streets of Kandahar. You teach us that the price of freedom is great.”2 (U.S. President Barack Obama addressing U.S. troops in Camp Lejeune, North Carolina, on February 27, 2009) “But it is not possible, it is not possible that you were wrong, Athenians, to take on the danger for the freedom and safety of all [the Greeks]—I swear by those of your forefathers who bore the brunt of battle at Marathon , by those who stood in the ranks at Plataea, by those who fought the sea battles at Salamis and Artemisium, and by the many other men who lie in the public tombs, brave men, all of whom the city buried, deeming them all equally worthy of the same honor, Aeschines, not just those among them who were successful or victorious.” (Dem. 18.208) (Demosthenes justifying Athens’ stance at Chaeronea to an Athenian jury in 330 BC) 1. http://www.presidency.ucsb.edu/ws/index.php?pid=85287&st1=#axzz1ntHhsZm. 2. http://www.presidency.ucsb.edu/ws/index.php?pid=85807&st=&st1=#axzz1ntHhsZm. 2 • social memory in athenian public discourse Objectives Though separated by more than twenty-three hundred years, these statements have a lot in common. All three speakers recall the past in order to persuade their audiences to adopt a particular view of the present. By equating the troops’ service in Iraq to the achievements of the “Greatest Generation,” President George W. Bush conveys a sense of the importance and greatness of the current mission. President Barack Obama firmly grounds the soldiers’ present undertaking in Iraq and Afghanistan in the American tradition: they, like their predecessors at Normandy and Korea, preserve their country through their willingness to fight and die for the sake of freedom. Similarly, to justify, before an Athenian jury, Athens’ decision to oppose Philip of Macedon, Demosthenes evokes their ancestors’ accomplishments during the Persian Wars; they—so the implication goes—had fought for the freedom and safety of all the Greeks, just as his generation did at Chaeronea. The speakers allude to these past events because they regard them as deeply meaningful for their respective communities. These allusions resonate with the audiences and thus function as powerful emotive arguments in public debate. It is precisely this use of the past that lies at the heart of my investigation. That we are thereby dealing with social memory and not history per se is my central premise. The D-day landing (June 1944), the battle of Iwo Jima (February 1945), the Korean War (1950–53), the land battles of Marathon (490 BC) and Plataea (479 BC), and the sea battles at Salamis and Artemisium (480 BC) are all historical events, yet they are not mentioned by the speakers for the sake of constituting and disseminating historical knowledge. We learn nothing about the historical circumstances, the enemy, the reasons for these wars, the course and outcome of the battles, the strategies and tactics employed, their repercussions and aftermath. On the contrary, common knowledge is taken for granted. These events have become an integral part of the social memory, that is, the collective historical consciousness of a community. The particular historical circumstances had faded over time, and these events had become symbols of national character.3 Such shared images of the past, often idealized and distorted, have long been viewed as an unreliable counterpart of history.4 To refute such “myths” and uncover the historical reality behind them has been one of the historian’s most noble tasks. Yet, in recent decades, anthropologists, 3. A. Assmann (2001) 6824. 4. For this reason, such myths were deliberately abandoned by professional historians in the nineteenth century, who established critical...

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