HISTORY IN POST CIVIL CONFLICT COUNTRIES

(75) Countries that have only recently emerged from authoritarian rule or countries where there has been intra-state conflicts are often in a precarious state. In countries such as Sierra Leone and Rwanda that have been traumatized by civil conflict, post conflict peace is likely to be fragile and the consensus upon which that peace is built highly vulnerable. Such countries have many wounded collective (and individual) memories. How should these be dealt with to avoid endless cycles of retaliation and felt needs to speak for wronged ancestors, demand justice for the victims and avenge them? In the case of Sierra Leone, the post conflict Republic of Sierra Leone Armed Forces (RSLAF) were composed of both former government soldiers and members of the various rebel factions. Each side had its own wounded memories, its own historical collective identity and its own view of the history of the recent conflict. This is where forgetting enters the picture.

(76) Forgetting stands in stark contrast to the duty of memory and everything we know about the role of history in people’s identities. It also puts Arthur Marwick’s claim that societies only have knowledge of themselves in so far as they have knowledge of their history into sharp relief (Marwick 1970). Sometimes societies have to make a virtue of forgetting their history.

(77) By and large forgetting is experienced as an attack on the reliability of memory. Memory deals in faithfulness to the past and often defines itself precisely as a struggle against forgetting. Still, as Ricoeur points out, the idea of a memory that never forgets anything is more terrifying than appealing.

(78) So what does it mean to forget something? Already St. Augustine (1961) struggled with the paradox that we may forget something but still remember that we have forgotten this something. In what sense can, for example, the armed forces of Sierra Leone forget past events in a way that would allow former enemies to join forces in a new national army? Is there a duty of forgetting, parallel to the duty of memory?

(79) Perhaps it is wise to distinguish here, as in the case of memory, between individual and collective forgetting. St. Augustine speaks of individual forgetting; his memories were exclusively his and only he could forget them. Ricoeur suggests that one form of forgetting is an erasing of all traces, both material (written) and psychical. But memories, such as childhood memories, may not have been definitively erased; rather they have been rendered inaccessible or unavailable. This view is of course epitomized by Freud: memories are still there, only relegated to the unconscious and kept there by repression. St. Augustine seems to have been genuinely afraid of forgetting, while Ricoeur (2004) seems to think that we forget less than we fear, and that the idea of a total memory is terrifying anyway.

(80) But how can we understand collective forgetting, of the kind attempted when the former enemies in Sierra Leone decided to bury the past? It certainly cannot mean an erasing of all traces; in all likelihood people will still carry their wounded memories with them. In the case of Sierra Leone, the various groups of former enemies could work together in the new national army only by a deliberate act of collective amnesia: they agreed to bury the past. This is a kind of institutionalized forgetting, a commanded amnesia. Such a form of forgetting may border on abuse, similar to abuse of memory. But collective, commanded amnesia has other important political dimensions. Paul Ricoeur (2004) makes much of the fact that the concepts of amnesia and amnesty share a common root. Both indicate a denial of memory, and amnesty in addition is historically considered a sort of pardon.

(81) So what do we have here? A collective amnesia, a decision to not remember the history and past battles. Without such amnesia, civil peace – a reconciliation of enemy citizens – may be hard if not impossible to obtain. The forgetting in question is a tacit agreement not to recall. Present strife becomes a past not to be recalled.

(82) It seems to us that this is a fair description of what has taken place in Sierra Leone, and perhaps in other countries as well. Studying the past would entail trading accusations for starting the civil war, apportioning blame for the numerous atrocities committed over a 10 year period, and rekindling an urge or a need to seek vengeance and justice for the victims. To keep the past alive would most likely be highly counterproductive and potentially undermine a fragile peace. Reconciliation rests on collective amnesia, a kind of commanded forgetting. Forgetting holds the power to heal wounded collective memories.

(83) Can we speak here of a duty to forget? Ricoeur himself is highly sceptical. There can, he says, not be a duty of forgetting parallel to the duty of memory. A commanded forgetting can only be temporary; a collective amnesia that should last “for ever” would amount to an abuse of forgetting. The reason for this is that a commanded absolute amnesia would prevent both individual and collective memory to work on the past, reshape their identity and finally take possession of their past again. No peoples are without a past, one only has to learn to deal with it differently and draw different lessons from it. As Ricoeur puts it, “If a form of forgetting could then be legitimately invoked, it would not be as a duty to silence evil but to state it in a pacified mode, without anger” (2004, p. 456). Nobody knows how much time is required for such processes. And as we have seen in the case of Serbia, skilful orators may bring past battles back to living memory and use them for their own purposes. In some sense both past and present may be damaged by such abuses of memory, if too much attention is given to one portion of history while other portions may be erased and forgotten. While there may be no duty to forget, there certainly may be a right to forget.

Date: 2015-01-02; view: 931