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Memory and Democracy

University of Leicester, United Kingdom

This article reconstructs and evaluates prevalent assumptions in the literature about links between collective memory and democracy. There are widespread assertions that memory is important for democratic community to achieve its potential, avoid dangers of past crimes, and secure its continuation. These assertions assume collective memory as a condition for freedom, justice, and the stability of democratic order. This article considers these assumptions with equally popular counterpropositions, arguing that memory presents a threat to democratic community because it can undermine cohesion, increase the costs of cooperation, and cause moral damage to civil society by conflating political and ethnic or cultural boundaries. The relationship between memory and democracy is discussed, along with the intermediate notions of identity, trauma, and ritual. The article concludes that what matters for democracy’s health is not social remembering per se but the way in which the past is called up and made present.

Key Words: memory • democracy • past wrongdoings • forgetting

American Behavioral Scientist, Vol. 48, No. 10, 1320-1338 (2005)
DOI: 10.1177/0002764205277011


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