Strategies of Remembrance: The Rhetorical Dimensions of National Identity Construction (review)

Strategies of Remembrance is a nicely orchestrated trio of case studies that examine the place of invocations of historical memory in the construction of national identity. The book is organized around a small number of principles that M. Lane Bruner uses to great effect. First, he argues that national identities do not have a fixed essential existence, but take shape in an ongoing rhetorical process based in the telling of particular and partial narratives. Second, he argues that not all strategies of remembrance are successful, and that rhetorical failures occur along the fault lines of a polity, at conflict and limit points. Third, he argues that the study of such failures provides a means to undertake a critical history, identifying competing interests and relations of power.

The most satisfying chapter from the point of view of rhetorical studies is the one dealing with West German identity prior to unification. Here, Bruner skillfully contrasts two speeches that reflect upon Germany's Nazi past. The first speech, by West German president Richard von Weizsäcker on May 8, 1985, marking the 40th anniversary of the end of the war in Europe, was well received and regarded as a success. The second, Philipp Jenninger's Kristallnacht address, which on November 10, 1988, reflected upon the intensification of violence against Jews that began 50 years earlier, was very poorly received. Jenninger was heckled while delivering the speech, which was denounced as insensitive, a rationalization of the Nazi era, and even a form of "Hitler worship." Jenninger shortly thereafter left political life. Bruner accounts for the respective success and failure of these two speeches in terms of their rhetorical strategies in the context of prior West German conventions for addressing the Nazi era. Ultimately, both West German conservatives and their critics refused to admit German responsibility for Nazi atrocities, but limited themselves to condemning the National Socialist period and presenting Germans as victims of an historical aberration. They differed slightly in their treatment of the past, but not irreconcilably. Conservatives make no reference to Nazi perpetrators and praise the character of the German people, while their critics assign responsibility to perpetrators only and ignore the past, praising the new German democracy. Weizsäcker's address skillfully abided by all these conventions, as he sought to move West Germans past the legacy of the Second World War. As Bruner observes, he "sought to remember in order for the German public to forget and be forgiven" (23). Jenninger, in contrast, offered a speech that was tortured in form and violated all of these conventions. Jenninger sought to make Germans collectively responsible for Nazism, and argued that it was not an aberration, but consistent with Germany's culture and history. Jenninger offered a failed strategy of remembrance, and not surprisingly was wholly misinterpreted and poorly received. Explanations came to look like excuses, the critical distance he sought to enact was not recognized, and his political career was ruined.

Bruner's two remaining case studies also profitably consider failed strategies of remembrance, or appeals to history, that sought to define a people. His second analysis examines Boris Yeltsin's television address of June 23, 1993, which announced that he would rule by decree until a referendum was held on a new constitution of his design. The speech and his action received widespread condemnation, in part because they were undertaken under questionable legitimate authority, and in part because they put an end to political negotiations with the legislative branch over the new constitution's form. In his Russia chapter, Bruner focuses less on the form of Yeltsin's address than he did with those of the previous chapter, but rather considers the speech in the context of competing visions of Russia's past in relation to democracy and economic reform. Furthermore, he reflects upon the difficulties of constituting "Russia" as a people in the face of the collapse of a Soviet identity and the rise of particular...