This week has seen the vandalisation for the second time of the wall in Glasnevin cemetery in memory of all the dead of the Irish revolution. Coming hot on the heels of the debacle of the proposed commemoration of the Royal Irish Constabulary (RIC) and the Dublin Metropolitan Police (DMP), this incident throws the entire Decade of Commemorations project into crisis.
Maurice Manning, chair of the Government’s Expert Advisory Committee on the Decade of Commemorations, addressed the question of the RIC/DMP commemoration in an important speech in the National Museum of Ireland on January 21st last – the 101st anniversary of the first sitting of Dáil Éireann – and he made an eloquent plea for a continuation of “the generous, curious and collaborative spirit of the past few years” as we commemorate various contentious aspects of the remainder of the Decade of Commemorations. But will his plea be heard? The evidence so far in 2020 is not encouraging in this regard.
In thinking about commemorations, it is perhaps relevant to recall David Rieff's brilliant book, In Praise of Forgetting (published in 2016), about the interplay between history, memory and politics. That book represents a warning to us about the dangers of history – and particularly the dangers of so-called "public history", or what Rieff calls "collective memory".
In what is the essential message of the book, he emphasises what should be obvious to all, that a nation’s “collective memory” – its “public history” – is an artificial construct. He explains that:
“... the world does not have memories; nor do nations; nor do groups of people. Individuals remember, full stop. Yet in the early twenty-first century, collective memory is often spoken of as if it were indeed on a par with individual [memory], which is to say genuine memory, and not infrequently, though almost never explicitly, as if it morally outranked it.
Rieff deprecates this “takeover of history by memory”, arguing that it amounts to “the takeover of history by politics” – and so, he says, it is “little more than the present in drag”. We saw evidence of this in what Manning referred to in his speech as “the extreme language and political posturing” in relation to the proposed RIC/DMP commemoration. Rieff challenges us to be faithful to history – not to memory. He writes:
“Surely it is history that must be the senior partner and memory the junior one, at least if the goal is, as it should be, to amass the facts necessary to establish an unimpeachable historical record – something that collective memory, which ... involves ‘editing’ the past to further the needs of the present, rarely if ever does well.”
Disconcertingly, however, he also insists that a greater knowledge of history – desirable in itself, especially as an antidote to “collective memory” – does not necessarily lead to a more peaceful and harmonious world. Most historians like to think that the study of history does precisely that – in other words, by revealing the complexities and ambiguities of the past and restoring their common humanity to so-called “heroes” and “villains”, we come to a better understanding of the past and thus facilitate forgiveness and reconciliation. Rieff argues that the contrary is often the case. Hence his “praise of forgetting” extends to history as well as to memory. His book is, therefore, uncomfortable reading for the professional historian as well as for those engaged in engineering “public history”.
Rieff’s argument is, however, flawed in one important respect – and that is its practical application. To ask us to forget the past is to ask the impossible. National amnesia is just not an option. Instead, we must look to what Lincoln called “the better angels of our nature” – and make a conscious effort to confront the past, interrogate it, understand it, forgive where necessary and then move on.
Even though we still remember, we should disregard our memories and do the right thing in spite of them. That is what Manning exhorts us to do. The model is King Priam in Michael Longley’s poem Ceasefire, about the ending of the Troubles in Northern Ireland: “I will get down on my knees and do what must be done / And kiss Achilles’ hand, the killer of my son.”
Felix M Larkin is a historian and former academic director of the Parnell Summer School
