Which is more risky - Memory or Imaginations?

Which is more risky - Memory or Imaginations?
Kazimierz Brandys, Polish Author

Which factor put you on the dangerous grounds: memory or imagination? But what is meant by “the dangerous ground”? Evidently it is a kind of danger, created whether by memory or by imagination, that can affect any independent phenomenon – tradition or power. It also implies the internal dynamism of memory or imagination, counting on each of which makes you able to question, obliterate, or devastate the present or any other thing – tradition or power. The radical hopes to change the world into what he imagines or into a golden past that has failed to survive. Both imagination, which helps one draw a picture of a better future and memory, which makes the past revive, tend to imply the need to change. Both are mysterious and dangerous. Nowadays it is extremely important for us, who have experienced both of these two models in our recent political history, to find a definite answer to the aforesaid question.
Popper believes that traditional utopianism is the father of today’s dogmatism.
Utopia has tuned into nostalgia. One’s desire to move forward and make progress has been replaced with deferring and delay. Those who used to promise a better future have become a defensive shield to protect memories. Whether one takes refuge to his imagination or returns to the distant and gone memories, there is a sign that an upcoming crisis is going to happen. It shows the disagreement of the existing time distrusts yesterday and tomorrow.
Which one is more dangerous? Many’s the time people have said that imagination tend to raise hopes for a different and better future; that you can use your imagination to burst the limits restrictions, possibilities, time and place; that it can help you look at the world differently and change it according to different tenets; that you can turn your back to the past to move out the labyrinth of memories and set off for the sunny days that will not be spent with nostalgia and regret; that tomorrow validate your wishes and hope, and not yesterday; that yesterday must be regarded as dead as a stone in the desert. That is why imagination is considered dangerous for the existing order. Alas, what if future becomes a big hope for people?
Manheim believes that utopia is destructive in nature. It shatters the existing order and opposes what the existing power thinks of what reality is, making others to believe in the same way.  
How about memories? What kind of meaning do they have when they are regarded as dangerous and under what conditions should they be? What you heard and said; any emotional and selective bond to the past which had been perceived by you – directly or indirectly – as your natural experiences has a preventive characteristic. It becomes a confining cage, trap, or wall; it requires sacrifice and determination. The fact that inclination toward memories sometimes entails explosive outcomes shows that memories at times can gain the authority to pass judgments, and can trigger not only truth-seeking movements but also new different promises and legitimacy. Undoubtedly, this entails the issue of collective memory of different groups in a society and the form of a standardized ratio between them.   

Nationalizing the Collective Memory
This feature of memory tends to make it play a supportive and helpful role. As there is no “I” without an individual memory, the existence of “we” deems impossible with no collective memory. You feel that you are a member of a society only if you [and other members] have a shared understanding of the past. The supportive role of any past experience is fulfilled only when it shows “unity”, “familiarity”, and “bond”, and helps preserve the identity of a society or a nation. The aforesaid triad, i.e. unity, familiarity, and bond, is usually a fine exterior; a guise under which hides interests; a systematic mechanism that veils a part of the past in favor of some other parts in order to reach a general and referable rule; Dumping any shameful memory and boasting about fortunate events. History reports both positive and negative points on any event; the structure of the collective memory, however, is built through excluding the negative ones. In other words, it has to nationalize the memories and make it impossible for any alternative parallel memory to develop, thwarting federalization of the memories. This task is usually performed by the existing power due to the fact that consensus guarantees symbolic stability of any society. Power is primary agent of existing order and collective memory in a society. Therefore, it is obliged to censor and play down any gray memory. Staying in power is not regarded the mere reason; sometimes it is performed in order not to hurt people’s feelings. Glory is not bestowed to a society just in case of referring to the past; on the other hand, imposing a united version of history with the purpose of forming the collective memory has not been regarded as successful. Sooner or later, the marginalized would come back at the nick of the time and question the validity of the unspecified unity in the name of “plural identities”, make new demands, turn the social gatherings into a battle between different members. These are all of those who have been forgotten, e.g. the political oppressed, the poor, workers, immigrants, and all those who have been marginalized in the official and national history.
Why does memory become active so suddenly? The reason is uncertainty in the concept of nation. Any social group reemerges to claim its right – symbolic or real – back; live underground to bring down a united entity which is called nation.
In 2005, for example, there was a recurrent civil unrest in France led by the second generation of colonial immigrants; it is regarded as one of the most important cases in which a memory has been unearthed, letting members of the society claim their rights to be officially recognized by in the collective memory. The aforesaid uprising has turned out to be their reaction to an act passed by the French parliament; this act intensifies France’s positive role as a colonizer in North African countries. The rioters were the survivors of slaves taken from the Indian Ocean and the Caribbean Sea as the first phase of French Colony invaded these regions. The story of their lives has never entered into the national history of France, let alone finding its right place. Their demand has been clear; what they want is that colonization as a less glorious national fact must be included in the French national history just like other historical events such as French Revolution, Jeanne d'Arc (Joan of Arc), La Commune de Paris (Paris Commune). They think of themselves as the only victims of the intentional ignorance of the French government. Their riot was the uprising of a minority which defined itself by its glorious past, heroic confrontation of its people against enemies, and all of their sufferings; they regard themselves as the victims of the stubborn action of the power that has not accepted their existence due to the fact that it will confess its prior slavery system in case of accepting its colonizing position. It is something that deems hardly acceptable for a country like France – the birthplace of revolution for freedom and intellectual development – to express its significant role in the earliest movements toward both slavery and colonization, to confess that Napoleon was the one who reestablished slavery system. The black pages of the history are glues together by official historians. The colonized survivors, however, want the government to express every thing, so that they could live together peacefully. Cohabitation of these two deems impossible without fixing the ratio between the past and the present.
France still can’t face its colonizing experiences, ignoring slaves it used to take advantage of. It is still a black hole in the history of the country that likes to forget and ignore some things in order to preserve its national unity. But this silence also created problems. The French urban riots obliged Jacques Chirac to admit that “the slightest issue can turn history into a matter of argument to intensify the feelings and to open old wounds.” The same thing happened in WWII where France helps Nazis in killing the Jews. Up to 10 to 15 years ago, the focus of French attention had been collaboration between the Vichy Regime and the Nazis in order to put out of sight the public help to Hitler’s army. It was not until 2005 that Chirac expressed this historical fact, saying that “in the history of a country, there are some moments that hurt our memories and the feeling we have about ourselves as a country. They are hard to be expressed due to the fact that these dark moments will make the picture of our history tainted and insult our traditions. Yes, French government and our people have long been accompanied by invasion craze.” Such a admission expressed by an official raises the hopes of the marginalized to find his way to its real place in the history, collective memory of a nation. Therefore, national identity and historical memory are needed to be redefined. The existing definition of official national memory, i.e. through deleting some parts of history, has become a danger for the concept of nation and national feelings because ignoring the totality of history entails oppositions that would grow through secret and underground activities imposed to parallel memories. There are some other harmful outcomes of the aforesaid definition, such as considering oneself as a victim, competing with each other over defining oneself according to the differences and sufferings, and not based on similarities with other member of the group, and eventually claiming new rights. Our contemporary history has also witnessed uprisings of such parallel memories as a result of their marginal position in the dominant discourse. There are several cases in which they have ignored the public and national events or have struggled to death to attain their position. The history of pre-Revolutionary active political and ethnic groups, the lower social class (workers, farmers, and slum-dwellers), religious minorities and the like are some parts of our ignored and silent memory that have the potential to suddenly threaten our nation.
Hence, it’s noteworthy to think over Kazimierz Brandys’s answer, i.e. memory is more dangerous than imagination. Within over 30 years we have long seen and heard about the threats of utopianism and imagination that is just like flying to somewhere else; it can be to nowhere, an unreal place, or a realistic one. Maybe it is the time we ought to check the explosives in order to accept their existence, but not to ignore them. Tomorrow is safe provided that it does not ignore yesterday. The mere way to form historical conscience like the axis of unity is to put all historical events in its source; in order to think of change and no to deem them impossible.       
 
Between illegal action or heresy
Here is something more dangerous than memory and imagination: impossibility of change – whether it is illegal to think of change (the one is suspected of creating peaceful or violent changes), or returning to the past is regarded as a recurring tragedy. But is disappointment not deemed heresy? And does hope not mean making tomorrow different from what you have had or done today? Which one is better – illegal action or heresy? Maybe that is why thinking of change in our country is considered to be absurd, impossible, and unbelievable. Hence it is under the control of imagination, memory or absurdity. It is impossible to build a utopia in which future is constructed by turning memories into white tables. If possible, it will turn out to be a catastrophe. We call it impossible due to the fact that the starting point of every movement is our human experience. Fragmented memories can’t be a proper point of reference. The only way left is to recreate every day by remembering yesterday. The first principle of modernity is the relation between “loyalty” and “movement”; in fact it is like building a road between memory and imagination, like planning a dialogue between yesterday and tomorrow.              
Tillich believes that without a utopia that opens the doors to all we need, the existing time is barren. Without a utopia, civilizations will return fast to their past. Just the present will survive the struggle between past and future.

Sousan Shariati
Translated by: Katayoun Davallou

Monthly Mehrnameh, No.2