State We're In: Reflections on Minnesota History

Remembering Our Past

35 gregory Schroeder s Remembering Our Past In 1908, the Habsburg Empire celebrated the sixtieth anniversary of the reign of the emperor Franz Josef, who came to the throne in 1848 to rule a vast, multinational empire. The celebrations included gatherings of many princes and heads of state—it was quite a monarchical celebration—and a large parade on Vienna’s Ringstrasse. One of the largest and most important national groups, the Hungarians, did not participate in the anniversary celebration: they argued that because Franz Josef had not recognized the Hungarian constitution and not been crowned as King of Hungary until 1867, he had not actually been their ruler for sixty years.This example demonstrates that even apparently simple calculations are not so simple if not everyone agrees on the starting point and, by extension, the validity of what is being counted or measured. The emphasis on 150 years of Minnesota history reflects one perspective of the past—the political reflection of the dominant narrative—but it does not tell the whole story of Minnesota. Missing, of course, or potentially pushed aside, are stories/narratives that fall outside the frame of the 150 years and the dominant narrative,whether the story of the region prior to 1857 or the story of Native Americans or other perspectives. The way we frame memory matters—whether German historian gregory schroeder introduces us to a new approach and some of the concepts of memory studies, a field that has emerged in the last twenty years. Historians of memory focus less on events themselves and more on how societies remember and memorialize the past. These historians demonstrate that memory often tells more about the rememberer than it does about the remembered. In his scholarly investigation into the ways in which Austrians remember and memorialize the Nazi period, Schroeder identifies key issues in the study of memory: the nature of memory and the difference between memory and history. His remarks, from which this passage was excerpted, were delivered at a session entitled “Remembering Our Past.” 36 u Schroeder it pertains to 60 years of rule by an emperor in 1908 or 150 years of statehood in Minnesota in 2008—and at such a conference, it is worth considering and deconstructing the very title of this panel: Remembering Our Past. There are only three words, but each is important and deserves our attention.1 Remembering is a selective act,whether we acknowledge this or not, and we should understand that when we remember something, we are both structuring the story of the past and leaving out or forgetting something else. Memory in the social, collective sense is a construction . Our—this might be the most important word in the title, especially for this conference. Who are the “we” behind the “our”? Who is telling the story, whose story is it, and whose story is it not? During this conference we assume that “we” means Minnesotans (noun) and “our”means Minnesotan (adjective),but who counts as a Minnesotan? Past—the past is not merely the things that happened before today,it is the basis of our identity and sense of belonging. In smaller and larger groups, people look to the past to find something in common, a story that gives them rootedness. As a phrase, the words “remembering our past” offer a reasonable definition of collective memory, which is a social construction that draws upon the past to provide identity in the present. This conference as a whole is, in a sense, an act of collective memory—even with the qualifications noted above.2 As we consider memory and identity in Minnesota, we might note several concepts that are useful both for general discussions of history and memory and for this particular set of presentations: narrative, the relation between the past and the present, and the opposition of history and memory. Narrative—master narrative—counter-narrative: The narrative, of course,is the story that is told about the past.The master or dominant narrative is typically a story or interpretation that represents the dominant group or the “standard” line; in some cases it might be referred to as a myth or a triumphal narrative, too. Master narratives are challenged by counter-narratives, especially when the counter-narratives represent a different perspective or try to tell a part of the story not reMeMberIng oUr paST u 37 included in the master narrative. We might ask today: What...