Modes of historical memory: from Hegemonism to agonism

Letnyakov Denis Eduardovich PhD in Politics Researcher, RANEPA Center for Theoretical and Applied Political Science 119571, Russia, g. Moscow, pr. Vernadskogo, 82 letnyakov@mail.ru Other publications by this author

Introduction

 Admittedly, today we are dealing with a real boom in memory studies – both in Russia and abroad, many books and articles on historical politics and public history are published annually, scientific conferences are held, specialized journals are published. At the same time, despite the abundance of new works, the study of historical memory is still strongly influenced by the research approaches of a century ago. As you know, M. Halbwaks, who introduced the concept of "collective memory" in the 1920s, was greatly influenced by E. Durkheim with his idea of society as an organic integrity. Durkheim argued, in particular, about the "collective or communal consciousness", which forms "a set of beliefs and feelings shared on average by members of the same society" ^{[3, p. 80]}. In this context, historical memory was considered as one of the varieties of "collective representations" that ensure social cohesion. The idea of the nation as an integral community of memory is also influenced by "methodological nationalism", which considers the world "naturally" divided into national states and national cultures ^[2]. One of the pillars of the latter is traditionally seen as historical memory, i.e. common ideas about the past for members of one nation. Such attitudes underlie the regime of historical memory, which can be called hegemonic. It presupposes the existence of a dominant historical narrative within the nation-state, which is supported through the education system, media, museum sphere, a set of official holidays, etc. At the same time, those versions of the past that contradict the hegemonic narrative are marginalized and suppressed, since they are seen as undermining national unity and patriotic feelings. This memory mode is characterized by securitization of the discourse about the past – history must certainly be protected from "rewriting" (read – falsification), from attacks by internal and external enemies.

One can, however, see how in recent decades, in different countries, the established historical "canon" is beginning to experience more and more challenges from counter-hegemonic narratives, the carriers of which are people with a migration background, representatives of ethnic and racial minorities, regional communities, etc. Many of them are often not ready to associate with the version of the past in which their cultural and historical heritage is given unfairly little space, or in which due attention is not paid to the experience of suffering and oppression experienced by their community (genocide, discrimination, slavery, etc.). All this forces researchers to problematize the hegemonic approach to historical memory, identifying the memory of dominant groups and classes with the memory of the national community as such.

This article is devoted to substantiating a possible alternative to the hegemonic memory regime. The author sees it in the so-called "agonistic" (from the Greek agon, "struggle") approach. According to him, the historical memory of society should be represented not as a single, consistent narrative, but as a set of narratives that constantly challenge each other. From this point of view, memorial conflicts, disputes over the interpretation of certain historical events, the concept of teaching history, the demolition/installation of monuments seem to be a natural part of the discussions that take place in the public sphere of any democratic society. Therefore, the "rewriting" of history should not be seen as an attempt on national foundations, but as a normal process of revision by society of ideas about itself, which can occur due to generational shifts, ideological transformations, the growth of cultural diversity, etc.

 Agonistic memory: justification of the concept

The very concept of "agonal" has entered the political and philosophical discourse of recent decades thanks to the Belgian philosopher Sh. Mouff, who substantiated the agonistic theory of democracy in her works. The starting point of Muff's reflections is a critique of the deliberative models of democracy (Yu. Habermas, S. Benhabib, etc.), which are based on the idea of a rationally achievable consensus on the common good ^[13]. Muff proves that a final consensus in politics is impossible by definition. Politics is a collective action, and any collective identity is based on the division between "we" and "they", always fraught with confrontation. Therefore, in politics it is necessary to focus not on overcoming conflicts (if this happened, such a state would be the end of politics as such), but on developing certain rules of the game that will not allow the conflict to slide to the level of existential confrontation ^[5]; ^{[12, p. 632]}. Thus, the most important task of democratic politics is to create and maintain "institutions, practices and language games, thanks to which antagonism can, so to speak, be summed up and transformed into "agonism", i.e. into "relations of "rivals" (adversaries)", and not enemies ^[12].

In other words, an agonistic conflict should be fundamentally distinguished from an antagonistic one. Within the framework of agonism, there is no war to destroy the opposite side (not only in the physical, but also in the psychological, moral sense), extreme forms of struggle are not used, and rivals recognize the legitimacy of their opponents' demands and share with them a common "symbolic space" (symbolic terrain). The opposing sides are united by the so-called "conflict consensus": they agree with the basic ethical and political principles of liberal democracy (although they differ in their interpretation). For example, everyone stands on the fact that the struggle cannot be waged through violence, and the key values to which we are committed are the values of a free, just society and legal order, although at the same time a liberal, a social Democrat and a communist may interpret the concept of social justice differently, which leaves room for broad public discussions. Therefore, agonistic pluralism sees signs of social pathology not in public confrontations (sometimes quite acute), discussions and conflicts, but in their absence. For example, the hybridization of ideologies, the shift to the political center of all mainstream parties in the West has become, from the point of view of the Muff, one of the reasons for the growing popularity of right-wing populists in recent years.

The principles of agonism were among the first to be transferred to the field of historical memory by A. Bull and H. Hansen. These authors introduced the concept of "agonistic memory mode", which is based on the idea of the socially constructed nature of the latter. This means that the collective memory stores not some real, "authentic" version of the past, but the one that, due to certain circumstances, was accepted by society as the dominant one. According to Bull and Hansen, such a regime of memory, in contrast to the "antagonistic" one, recognizes many perspectives from which the national past can be evaluated and interpreted, which, in turn, legitimizes the struggle of different actors around a particular interpretation of history. These actors (individual and collective) can defend their own version of the past, seeing in it a source for the formation or strengthening of the identity of their community, a means of moral satisfaction (for example, from the recognition of crimes that were committed in the past against representatives of some ethnic, racial, religious group), a resource for defending their own interests (an opportunity to claim historical rights to the lands on which the ancestors once lived, to justify obtaining autonomy within the state, to raise the question of compensation for damage caused in the past). All this allows us to look at historical memory as a battlefield; as a narrative that is regularly reconstructed and redefined ^[7].

In recent years, the concept of agonism has been gradually entrenched in the discourse of memory research. So, a pan–European research project is currently working, which is based on this conceptual framework - "Unsettling Remembering and Social Cohesion in Transnational Europe" ("Concern about memories and social Cohesion in transnational Europe" – http://www.unrest.eu /); a number of papers have also been published working on the agonistic memory model ^{[1, 8, 14]}.

To complete the picture, it is worth pointing out some works that, without using the very concept of agonism, nevertheless also proceed from the pluralistic nature of historical memory. This is, in particular, the research of M. Rotberg, the author of the concept of "multi-vector" (multidirectional) memory. Rothberg defined historical memory in modern societies, where cultural boundaries are much more mobile and porous than before, as a process of "continuous negotiations" during which "multiple versions of the past collide with each other in a heterogeneous present" ^{[15, p. 86]}. In addition, we can recall an important article by R. Wagner-Pacifity and B. Schwartz devoted to American discussions around the Vietnam War Veterans Memorial, opened in 1982. Reflecting on the specifics of the commemoration of politically and morally controversial events that do not unite, but rather split society, the authors introduce the concept of "moral entrepreneurs" (moral entrepreneurs). They are understood as actors who, competing with each other, "seek public attention ("seek public arenas") and support for their interpretations of the past" ^{[18, p. 382]}. The idea of "moral entrepreneurs" obviously echoes the concept of "mnemotic entrepreneurs"/"agents of memory" (memory entrepreneurs/ memory agents) by R. Urkada ^[9]. By such, the French sociologist understands actors who are fighting for the approval of a certain interpretation of historical events in the collective memory of society. Ourcade himself examines the activities of these memory agents using the example of the memory of slavery in modern France. As Ourcade shows, French society has long been characterized by collective amnesia regarding this painful topic. Both white Frenchmen and descendants of slaves tried not to remember about the history of slavery in the French colonies, about France's participation in the slave trade. However, in the second half of the 20th century, under the influence of the concept of the negro (one of the ideas of which was that slavery was one of the key events that shaped the identity of blacks), the topic of slavery gradually began to enter the French public discourse. Thus, since the 1990s, under the influence of the "slavery memory entrepreneurs", which were representatives of the black community, as well as professional historians and intellectuals, cultural events, exhibitions, scientific conferences devoted to the history of slavery have been held in Nantes and Bordeaux, once important centers of the French slave trade.. Thus, despite the resistance of other memory entrepreneurs with their agenda (for example, from among the right), the French "memory regime" (memory regime) began to transform first at the city, and then at the national level. 

The need for an agonistic approach to historical memory becomes clear if we turn to another important concept of "mnemonic resistance" for our conversation. According to her, an attempt to monopolize history by dominant social groups usually turns out to be counterproductive, since the predominance of a certain historical narrative in the public sphere is not yet equivalent to the acceptance of this narrative by the whole society, because ordinary "consumers" of public memory may not relate themselves to those attitudes and values that are embedded in the historical "canon". In this case, along with the dominant memory, there is a "suppressed", "repressed" memory ^{[16, p. 502-503]}. And counter-hegemonic versions of history can be quite stable, despite all attempts to drown them out. An illustrative example here is the memory of the Flemings, which in many respects does not coincide with the general Belgian memory. One of the symbols of Flemish nationalism after the First World War was the Iser Tower, erected in honor of the Flemish soldiers who fell on the battlefields. Pretty quickly, this object turned into an important "place of memory", to which regular "pilgrimages to Yser" began to be made. To stop them in 1946 unknown (Walloon nationalists are suspected) The Yser Tower was blown up. However, this act of violence, carried out, apparently, for the sake of preserving the common Belarusian identity and historical memory, caused a backlash. "Pilgrimages" not only did not stop, but until the early 1980s they remained the most massive political demonstrations in Belgium ^{[6, 17]}, and the Yser Tower itself became one of the symbols of the Flemish resistance. Therefore, it seems that an open discussion, a public struggle of memories is much better than a situation when "suppressed" versions of the past are forced to "go underground" without being able to be publicly expressed.

 Agonistic pluralism: some applied conclusions

 As it was shown in the text, the agonistic regime of historical memory prevents the monopolization of history by dominant groups and considers memorial conflicts as an integral part of the discussions that are conducted in any healthy society, constituting its public sphere. What practical conclusions can be drawn from this approach?

First of all, the pluralistic, contested nature of collective memory must be taken into account when analyzing memorial conflicts, when deciding on the choice of official holidays and memorable dates, writing history textbooks and thinking over the concept of museums, installing monuments, renaming streets, etc. It is obvious, for example, that the complication of the cultural landscape of the countries of the global North under the influence of mass migrations, an increase in the proportion of ethno-racial minorities, immigrants from former European colonies raises the question of reforming school historical education, which would help migrant children relate themselves to the historical narrative broadcast by the school. It is no coincidence that in Britain the National Curriculum has been repeatedly adjusted towards greater inclusiveness ^{[10, 11]}. The same applies to the topic of monuments to controversial historical figures (more broadly, the appearance of public spaces), which was so clearly manifested during the Black Live Matter movement – if a significant part of the population in some city is non–white residents, it turns out to be much more difficult to justify the need to preserve the statue of a slaver in the central square. Thus, the change in the cultural composition of the urban and national community also transforms the "social framework" of memory, forces us to re-search for conventions acceptable to society in the field of historical memory. This, of course, is no less true of "historical" minorities (such as blacks in the USA or Aborigines in Australia), who should also be able to participate in public discussions about the national past, contrasting their counter-narratives with the socio-cultural mainstream. I note that the problem under discussion is also relevant for Russia, which includes many regional and ethnic communities with their own counter-memory (the memory of the highlanders about the Caucasian War, the memory of the peoples of the Volga region and Siberia about the colonization of this territory in the XVI-XVII centuries). At the same time, in Russian public discourse, these regional and ethnic versions of history are usually ignored – President Vladimir Putin's statement during the discussion of the draft unified history textbook is highly characteristic: "I fully agree that there should be some canonical version of our history. If, indeed, we will be on To study one history in the East, in the Urals – the second, in the European part – the third, this in general can destroy, and certainly will destroy, the single humanitarian space of our multinational nation" ^[4]. During all this long-term discussion about a single textbook, the very idea that the pantheon of heroes on the ground and the assessments of certain historical events may not coincide with the Moscow-centric narrative seems to have occurred to few of the official speakers.

At the end of the article, it is necessary to make a fundamental reservation once again that the memorial conflicts and discussions discussed have a constructive impact on society, not destructive, but only when they do not turn into a zero-sum game. It is important that the confrontation takes place within a common symbolic space, and discussions are held about the national past. The above example was given with the Black Lives Matter movement, which in 2020 declared itself in many Western countries, but is especially active in the USA and the UK. So we can talk about a truly agonistic memory regime in this situation when two extreme attitudes are discarded – conservative-alarmist (the overthrow of monuments means at least an attempt on national history, at most – the "death" of the West) and radical-activist (white culture is historically hostile to black, it is impossible to reconcile them) – and the parties are trying together to redefine what American/British culture and history are. Only in this way – in the space of a broad public discussion – can a truly inclusive version of historical memory arise.