The Art of Forgetting: Disgrace and Oblivion in Roman Political Culture

CHAPTER I: Clementis’ Hat: The Politics of Memory Sanctions and the Shape of Forgetting

Clementis’ Hat The Politics of Memory Sanctions and the Shape of Forgetting· · · The face of the Lord is set against the doers of evil To wipe their memory from the earth. Psalm 34.16 Who controls the past controls the future: who controls the present controls the past. George Orwell, 1984 Any recalling or recording of the past involves selection, both deliberate and unintended. Choosing what to remember must entail also the choice of what to forget, what to pass over in silence, and what to obscure. Consequently, every account of the past is incomplete and partial. It involves a loss, whether for an individual, a family, or a whole community. It is impossible to travel back in time to recover every detail, to relive past experience as if moment by moment. Nor would such a journey even be desirable. Rather, we pay attention to memories of the past in a present that is by definition not the same as the time that is being invoked as “past.” Similarly, active recalling itself (re)creates that past from fragmented pieces of evidence, whether in the human brain or on the basis of an archive or at the physical site of some historical action. The image of the past that is most alive in human memory is seen as a road that leads from that past into the present. A past that is completely disconnected from present experience and circumstances does not remain “memo-  Clementis’ Hat rable.” Rather the past, because it comes before the present, is expected to connect in a logical manner to subsequent events and circumstances. Hence our picture of the past shapes both our present identity and our hopes for the future, for what has not yet happened is essentially unknowable. Only the past really stands available—at least apparently—as material in our search for meaning, purpose, and pattern in human experience. One of the most powerful effects on human memory and perception is the bias created by hindsight. As we look back into the past, we already know what will happen next. The shape of the story is familiar. Therefore, it is natural and inevitable to look for explanations that will accommodate what did happen, rather than what could have happened. Meanwhile, other aspects of the past become easy to forget because they seem irrelevant and become increasingly hard to understand, if they do not lead to results and consequences in our present lives. Our account of the past, whether expressed in terms of history or of memory, is selective and tends to favor information that appears relevant to later events, and especially to present circumstances at the time of recollecting or writing. Hence the perspective of the person or group that guards and (re)produces memory is also vital and may produce a very different narrative from that of another party, even if both are eyewitnesses or have access to similar original sources. Memory sanctions are deliberately designed strategies that aim to change the picture of the past, whether through erasure or redefinition, or by means of both. Such strategies can be found in most, perhaps even in all, human societies that place distinct value on an account of their past. Conscious manipulation , introduced for a specifically desired effect, must be understood as one vital factor that affects the picture of the past outlined here—in other words, a picture that is by its very nature incomplete and subject to various other distortions. Deliberately imposed modifications resulting from memory sanctions do not impede a perfect view, as if of a landscape on a cloudless and sunny day. Rather they contribute to and interact with many other factors that shape human memory, causing it to produce its own, very particular narrative of the past. An alternate account to the one that has obviously been tampered with would not necessarily represent a “true” and “unbiased” version , but in most cases simply a different version, one that brought out another set of emphases, meanings, and implications. With such considerations in mind, Maurice Baring called his memoirs, which were published in 1922, The Puppet Show of Memory. In Roman thought, memory was not taken for granted as a natural state or product. Rather, oblivion was considered the more normal condition, as Clementis’ Hat  the past receded from the present and was simply no longer connected to it. Hence, as a carefully cultivated and deliberately invoked culture of...