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Memory, history and the classical traditionFrederick Whitling aa European University Institute , FlorencePublished online: 18 Mar 2009.

To cite this article: Frederick Whitling (2009) Memory, history and the classical tradition, European Review of History: Revueeuropéenne d'histoire, 16:2, 235-253, DOI: 10.1080/13507480902767644

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Memory, history and the classical tradition

Frederick Whitling*

European University Institute, Florence

(Received September 2007; final version received November 2008 )

‘Memory’ is often confused and mistaken for myth; this is in turn connected with thewidespread use of mistaking collective mythology and common myth for the idea ofa ‘collective memory’. This essay discusses memory and history terminology in thecontext of the generic concept ‘classical tradition’. The case study explored here – thenineteenth-century Walhalla ‘temple’ near Regensburg in Southern Germany – is anattempt to discuss the classical tradition, focusing on archaeology and architecture ratherthan philology), within the parameters of the memory and history debate in contemporaryhistoriography. The essay aims to develop the position of the iconic and symbolicimportance of antiquity and the classical tradition in the memory and history debate aswell as in historical writing. The concluding remarks emphasise the necessity ofhistoricising tradition and its genealogies, conceptualised here as a tradition of legacies.

Keywords: memory and history; classical tradition and classical reception

The unfortunate divide between memory and history as a result of the ‘memory boom’ or

‘memory wave’ of the last 20 years remains markedly conspicuous. The main argument in

this essay is that ‘memory’ is frequently confused and mistaken for ‘myth’, a problem that

is connected with the widespread use of mistaking collective mythology and common

myth for the idea of a ‘collective memory’. ‘Official’, large-scale self-determination and

self-justification (which is what the lay meaning of collective memory is based on) has

historically been enacted within a national framework, as opposed to a regional, local or

transnational arena.

Avishai Margalit tentatively suggests that memory is situated in between history and

myth, emphasising the element of ‘bringing the past to life’.1 I will here discuss and

develop a contextualisation of the position of the classical tradition and the cultural

symbolic importance of antiquity in tradition and (Western) self-perception. The ‘classical

tradition’ is a generic concept and on the whole too large to be discussed sensibly,

entangled in a web of values and conceptualisations of roots and ‘identities’.

The magnitude and inherent ambiguities of the concept have in part entailed its use as a

smokescreen, masking narratives of hegemony and domination as well as political

agendas (as a myth of origin – indeed as the European master narrative par excellence).

Hence we are arguably faced with a complex multitude of simultaneous and intertwined

classical traditions related to the paradigms of Classics (broadly defined as Classical

Archaeology, Philology, Ancient History and Mythology), Art History, Philosophy,

Literature, Intellectual History, Juridical tradition and Political thought.

ISSN 1350-7486 print/ISSN 1469-8293 online

q 2009 Taylor & Francis

DOI: 10.1080/13507480902767644

http://www.informaworld.com

*Email: Frederick.Whitling@eui.eu

European Review of History—Revue europeenne d’histoire

Vol. 16, No. 2, April 2009, 235–253

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The focus on antiquity in academe – mainly in the fields of Classics (including Classical

Archaeology) and Art History– coincided with the peak of European nation-building and

European nationalism in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, with archaeology and

neoclassicism playing their parts. In the academic system the doctrine of the classical

tradition rests on the pillars of the (broadly defined) Anglo-Saxon paradigm of Classics

(with its main focus on Philology and Ancient History), and German Altertumswissenschaft

(focusing on Ancient History and Classical Archaeology).2

The notion of roots is both inherent and problematic to the discourse on memory,

identity and history, as well as to the classical tradition. It contributes to a doctrinal

understanding of history, often disregarding strategies of legitimisation. National identity

as a constructed category can in this sense be split up into (at least) a binary definition of

‘cultural’ and ‘territorial’ identity.

The (Roman-Italian) classical tradition and classical archaeology were essential

integral components of the creation and construction of the new Italian state in the late

nineteenth century and during Fascism. The three concepts of Romanita, Italianita and

Universalita were central to Fascist ideology and self-perception. Mussolini wanted the

city of Rome to become ‘purified and disinfected’, as the centre of the Italian Empire,

of the Church and indeed of the World. Rome has thus regularly been perceived to be

‘outside time’, which might then in a sense help to explain this inclination towards

national political uses of classical heritage.

The canon of the classical tradition is firmly grounded in the legacy of the phenomenon

of the educational Grand Tour (from the mid-seventeenth century until the early nineteenth

century), which enabled claims to Roman history and material remains of pan-European

dimensions.3 The Grand Tour fuelled the increasing interest in an aesthetics of ruins that

was further encouraged by Romanticism. One might perceive terms such as ‘antiquity’,

‘Greece’ and ‘Rome’ as concepts (not to be confused with, say, the city of Rome or with the

Roman state), forming a wide-ranging subject conglomerate referred to as the classical

tradition, tuned into on different frequencies in diverging national frameworks, with a

plurality of different ‘memories’ or receptions as a result. The city of Rome is for example

at times portrayed as a mirror ‘in which different nations can reflect themselves in their

search for their identity and of their traces in History’.4

The classical tradition, or the ‘impact of the classics on postclassical culture’ (following

Kallendorf),5 is often associated with the philological realm; the aspect that is of interest here

is on a more abstract level: that of Greek and Roman antiquity as an inspiration (ideological,

architectural and otherwise) and a foundation (filtered through Archaeology, Architecture

and Aesthetics) for symbols and values as part of the construction of (Western) European

nation-building in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. This essay focuses on symbols,

form and aesthetics in relation to the ideological character of memory studies.

The classical tradition, as filtered through the Renaissance, the Enlightenment,

Romanticism and Modernity, is elusive and proves hard to define effectively, as it

simultaneously refers to its foundations (antiquity) as well as to its influence on

post-Renaissance Western culture and history.6 In the visual arts, it can be represented by

the French ‘artiste engage’ Jacques-Louis David (1748–1825), who believed in the use of

painting as a pedagogical device underpinning universal values (or ‘universals’). David’s

iconic Oath of the Horatii (1784) can be said to have both defined late eighteenth-century

Neoclassicism and embodied the core elements of contemporary nation-building –

abstract references to ideals as well as anonymity.7

The 1980s and 1990s witnessed a gradual paradigmatic shift towards representation and

visual culture in the humanities; the debate regarding the role of memory in historical

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discourse is to some extent the result of the failure of historical writing to assert itself in the

postmodern academic situation – the challenge of combining the cult of the fragment with

hegemonic historical narrative. The issue of representation is intimately linked with the core

of the central problematique of memory studies, which on a trans-individual level boils down

to question of representation and misrepresentation. Memories (in the plural) can indeed be

useful as a source material category for historians; from this does not however follow a

division between memory and history as two diametrically opposed categories.

This essay begins with a discussion of this terminological misfortune, to which it returns

in its conclusions. The case study explored here – the nineteenth-century Walhalla ‘temple’

near Regensburg in Southern Germany, inaugurated in 1842 as a place dedicated to preserve

the memory of illustrious individuals ‘of German tongue’ – is an attempt to discuss the

classical tradition (here referring to archaeology and architecture rather than philology)

within the parameters of the memory and history debate in contemporary historiography.

The essay thus aims at discussing the role of antiquity and the classical tradition in

the memory and history debate. It discusses memory terminology, philosophical and

theoretical aspects of memory and history discourse, as well as the relevance of concepts

such as lieux de memoire and collective memory in relation to the reception of antiquity

and the classical tradition – exemplified here by the case of the Walhalla monument.

The essay aims to develop the position of the iconic and symbolic importance of antiquity

and the classical tradition in the memory and history debate as well as in historical writing.

Memory and history terminology, as it has developed over the past two decades, rests on

a fundamental crude binary opposition between ‘authentic’ memory and ‘ideological’ history

(traditionally in defence of memory). While the writing of history always entails a political

aspect as well as having to take authorship and subjectivity into account, and does not aspire

to be labelled ‘authentic’, ‘memory’ (following the common understanding of the term in the

singular) certainly can be ‘ideological’. The gap between the concepts of memory and history

needs closing, if for no other reason than their interdependence as two sides of the same coin.

II. Memory terminology and definitions

The unsatisfactory terminology of the memory and history debate is characterised,

even defined, by interdisciplinary terminological overlapping; as well as by tension

and multiplicity in the borderland between history and anthropology.8 This is embodied

in concepts such as collective memory, popular memory, individual memory, social

memory, traumatic memory and embodied memory. This essay operates within the

extensive field of cultural memory, broadly defined as a reserve of historical references

with symbolic and iconic relevance. The responsibility for ‘memory’ in the sense used

in historical discourse lies with those who refer to it and use it in official and private

narratives, not with those who create the ‘memories’ out of the everyday action, which

eventually becomes the repertoire of symbols referred to as tradition.

‘Memory’ is often asked to do too much; too much is expected of it. On top of

that, memory and history terminology suffers from a range of blunt and inflexible

categorisations.9 Such categorisations would require deconstruction and further develop-

ment including a thematic approach to the field; with anthropological perspectives (cf. the

work on imagined communities by Benedict Anderson); phenomenological perspectives and

subjectivity (Husserl); literary perspectives (Proust) as well as historiographical perspectives

(cf. Raphael Samuel on ‘fanatical empiricism’ in relation to memory consumption).

Categories such as cultural memory, popular memory, social memory and above all

collective memory are subjected to persistent interdisciplinary ‘traffic’, to multiplicity and

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overlapping tension, with a wide range of uses applied by scholars in a variety of fields

of research as a result. The black-and-white distinction between memory and history

is disconcerting exactly because of its simplified binary character. On the whole, this

terminological confusion is to some extent the result of the complexity of the

interdisciplinary appeal of ‘memory’.

The field of memory studies is rooted in the ideological and political legacy of the

Second World War, and has been shaped in the wake of the Cold War. The ‘memory-boom’

or ‘memory-industry’ phenomenon can be said to have largely emerged in a post-1989

situation (indeed a second postwar period),10 struggling to (re-)define itself. Aleida Assmann

for example argues that the past is replaced with an ‘abstract idealism’ in the post-Holocaust

scenario, and that the Holocaust has become the historical point of reference in an emerging

post-Cold War ‘remembrance landscape’ (Erinnerungslandschaft). Assmann’s argument is

strengthened further by her emphasis on the importance of the ‘medialisation’ of history in

this regard, as she argues that the recent ‘memory boom’ is largely connected with an

outspokenly ‘emotional’ (and commercial) history.11

The empirical focus of memory studies to a large extent connects the field with the two

world wars – and most obviously with the Holocaust. At present an abundance of

variations on the concept of ‘memory’ can repeatedly be found on varying levels of

abstraction in present academic discourse. Pierre Nora’s assertion that ‘we speak so much

of memory because there is so little of it left’,12 is symptomatic of a misguided and naive

reliance on the previous existence of a widespread ‘memory culture’ permeating society.

The fundamental gap between memory and history that Nora implies is exaggerated.

Historical writing is by its very nature an act of selected artificial and reconstructed

‘remembering’ in interpreted form. Leaving out the possibility of the neutralising factor of

indifference (intentional or otherwise) for example, on a scale ranging from remembrance

to forgetting (or from ‘memory’ to oblivion), tends to trivialise and thus neutralise the

potential impact of memory studies. Clashes between memory and history occur in levels

of recognition of varying interpretations of memory (memories), as well as in issues

concerning legitimacy and institutionalisation.

To the traditional three complexes of memory (memory as culture, memory as politics

and memory as shared knowledge) should be added at least one more category: memory as

private narrative. Memory as shared knowledge can be thought of as ‘official knowledge’

interacting with private narratives; ‘shared knowledge’ is however not interchangeable

with ‘collective memory’.13 Memory as private narrative is, it might therefore be argued,

the only level on which it is legitimate to make references to ‘memory’ as such. Aleida

Assmann writes that ‘history turns into memory when it is transformed into forms of

shared knowledge and collective identification and participation’.14 This transformation

takes place in the construction of historical narratives.

Alon Confino addresses the inherent danger of ‘reducing culture to some vague notion

of memory, whereby memory is separated from other memories in society and from the

culture around it’. The way ahead then lies in distinguishing ‘between memory as a

heuristic device and memory as part of the mental equipment of a society, of an age’, and

(most importantly) to historicise the use of ‘memory’ itself.15

III. Remembering the past, remembering the present

The question of how much memory we – as individuals or as societies – can take in,

handle, digest or ‘remember’, at any given time in the absence of powers of total recall,

requires further discussion as interest in other peoples’ pasts continuously creates bilateral

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entanglements. In a late essay Reinhart Koselleck posed three simple but truly

fundamental questions to the study of memory: Who is to remember? What is to be

remembered? How is it to be remembered? Aleida Assmann adds a fourth question to

Koselleck’s triptych: Who remembers him/herself? (Wer erinnert sich?).16 This critical

stance is important to keep in mind in each particular case of dealing with memories as

historical source material in the present from which we are writing. On a similar note, Jan-

Werner Muller stresses that ‘apart from the power of memory to influence the present,

there is also the power of the present to influence memory’.17

Philosopher Michael Dummett argues that ‘to establish the truth of a statement about the

past, one must rely on one’s own memory or that of others’, and goes on to clarify an

antirealist stance to the past according to which the past survives only in its present traces,

including memories: ‘the past is genuinely no more and does not possess even the shadowy

existence needed for it to render statements about it true or false . . . there only ever is what

exists in the present, and hence . . . a statement about the past, if true at all, can be true only in

virtue of what now exists or holds good’.18 This last statement is relevant to the discussion on

the place of ‘memory’ in historical discourse, as the choice of assumed position regarding

this issue might emphasise a role for memories as a link between past and present.

A shared transnational common, or collective, memory suggests making claims about

discourses and ‘freezing’ narratives, which highlights the political dimension of such an

undertaking. The public dimension of collective memory projects and the collective nature

of their geneses make them highly susceptible to instrumentalisation and manipulation.

Individual psychological characteristics can easily assume different dimensions and

frameworks of meanings when magnified into ‘commonalities’. Consider the phrase

‘the nation mourns’. The censorship of collective identity in this regard is thus ultimately

prone to manipulation.

The danger of politicising a historical argument is that one already ‘knows’ the

question as well as the answer. The historian therefore by necessity needs to keep an

open mind and to challenge notions of collective memory and identity by providing

counter-arguments and a plurality of ‘counter-memories’ in order to neutralise the tangible

uncomfortable risks involved in operating with notions of collectivity.

IV. Lieux de memoire and Erinnerungsraume in relation to memory and history

Pierre Nora’s well-known conception of lieux de memoire arguably ultimately serves

a national identity agenda.19 ‘Memory’ needs to be subjected to the analysis and

deconstruction of memories, not simply their construction. Notwithstanding the

impressive scale of the lieux de memoire project, Nora and his followers in effect reify,

rather than critically debate, forms of identity and shared memory,20 as Nora’s version of

memory studies is ultimately of a positive and affirming nature.

Physical manifestations of commemoration of memory culture (lieux de memoire),

seem to be more about reminding, rather than about actual remembering.21 Nora’s

ambitious (and political) lieux de memoire project has inspired Italian and German

counterparts and reactions: I luoghi della memoria22 and Deutsche Erinnerungsorte.23

Works of this kind, undeniably ambitious, partly constitute a collection of ‘memories’ in

the form of the various contributors; they also have a tendency to ‘freeze’ a certain

experience or interpretation into a solid and unchallengeable whole – which constitutes

the very essence of an enterprise such as collective memory.

Simone Mangos’s recent study of the Holocaust monument in Berlin provides a

concrete analysis of the debates and political interests involved (in concealing the fact that

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the monument is located on the very site of Goebbels’s bunker and offices, for example).24

In search of more nuanced conceptualisations of ‘memory space’ it could be argued that

the notion of memory space (Erinnerungsraum) is more flexible and thus more useful than

Pierre Nora’s more concrete spatial manifestations of lieux de memoire, which are often

closely tied with issues related to the importance of symbols and often seem to open up

new questions rather than to offer answers to old ones.25

Nora’s definition is elusive: ‘it is the exclusion of the event that defines the lieu de

memoire. Memory attaches itself to sites, whereas history attaches itself to events.’26 One

might well argue, however, that history attaches itself to sites and places (how else could

we write for example a topographical history of Ancient Rome, or indeed a political

history of the Second World War?), and that ‘memory’ is associated with events.

V. Individual and collective memories

What exactly is being legitimised and justified in the creation of generalisable patterns of

collective memory, if not present and anticipated future political actions? This position is

supported by Susan Sontag, who argues that ‘all memory is individual . . . what is called

collective memory is not a remembering but a stipulating: that this is important, and this is

the story about how it happened, with the pictures that lock the story in our minds’.27

Scholars such as Wolf Kantsteiner have conceptualised collective memory as a

collective phenomenon expressed in individual statements;28 the opposite, however, is

often also the case – with collective memory as an essentially individual phenomenon

expressed in collective statements – i.e. following a narrative drawing on common

references, a complex conceptualisation of identity, a sense of belonging and shared

experiences; perhaps most importantly a sense of common direction. Collective memory

needs to be discussed in relation to collective identity; this, however, lies beyond the scope

of this essay.29

Events are individually experienced phenomena, retrospectively ‘painted from

memory’. Collective memory is a retrospective phenomenon – if it is to be discussed it has

to be as a thing of the past. Tadhg O’Keeffe uses the arguably more attractive term

‘collected memory’,30 which has also been picked up by Jeffrey Olick and other scholars.

Historians in effect gather and interpret pluralities of memories, not ‘memory’ in the

singular. In avoiding a ‘top-down’ approach to history, specific private dimensions need to

be integrated with memory-history discourse in order to transcend a division between

historical, anthropological and sociological perspectives. The subject (individual or

collective) needs to be clarified every time, as attribution and reception of memories are

fundamentally important.

Another common aspect of the framing of collective memory is an emphasis on

nostalgia and sentimentality.31 According to Pierre Nora, the ‘atomization of memory’

(the transformation of collective into individual memory) imposes a ‘duty to remember’,

or a ‘law of remembrance’ for each individual.32 Such a ‘law’ naturally cannot realistically

be enforced, and – more importantly – any conceptualisation of the collective has to be

based on the notion of the sum of its parts. This also implies that collective memory (and

collective identity) can never be pinned down to a precise moment in time, precisely

because its constituent body is constantly in flux.33

Jan-Werner Muller and Thomas Berger offer a profitable way ahead for collective

memory analysis advocated by Jan-Werner Muller and Thomas Berger, which involves

identifying the social carriers of memory, ‘engaged in a constant process not just

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of remembering, but also of reshaping [as] memory is not a vessel of truth or a mirror of

interests, but a process of constructing meaning’.34

The random configuration, or recasting, of the sphere of public perception constantly

influences how we remember our pasts, which effectively renders any notion of collective

memory incoherent. Identifying and analysing such social carriers and the genealogy of

memory terminology can help to penetrate the smokescreen of myth and hidden agendas

of memory culture.

Jan-Werner Muller rightly emphasises that ‘individual memory is a quantitative

problem’, with collective memory potentially providing contexts for interpretation of

individual memories in a ‘new matrix of meaning’.35 Intermediary levels of possible

shared memories might be found in many strata of society. Stressing variant narratives

would facilitate striving towards an awareness of the difficulties and multiplicities of

intermediary groupings or ‘clusters’ of individual memories, conceivably as categories of

pre- and post-collective levels of memory. The role of history in this regard remains

contested as collective memory arguably lacks reflexivity; it transcends the artificial and

verges on becoming a reified artefact.

VI. ‘Remembering’ antiquity and visualising the nation: the Walhalla case

The connection between the ‘impenetrability’ of the classical tradition concept in relation

to memory and history terminology lies in the common characteristic of being generic and

too vast to function as categories for criticism and analysis. Both require deconstruction

and discursive analysis. In the prelude to this essay I proposed discussing the symbolic

importance or ‘cultural capital’ of classical antiquity and classical tradition (here with a

focus on classical archaeology) in relation to memory and history studies.36 For these

purposes I will here discuss the Walhalla ‘temple’ in southern Germany. The Walhalla –

‘hall of the dead’, or hall of fame – near Regensburg in Bavaria, is a potent symbol of the

neoclassical ideology of ‘marble-white antiquity’, following Winckelmann and the

elevated status of antiquity in the late eighteenth century.37

The Walhalla provides a case of the reception of antiquity as an example of

questioning notions of collectivity and a master identity narrative, and is indeed equipped

with a fitting name – Walhalla, the ‘hall of the dead’ in Nordic (Norse) mythology.

The idea was to create a setting in which to commemorate prominent figures and events of

ethnic German history as a visual aid to a constructed master narrative.

Initiated in 1807 by the young Crown Prince Ludwig of Bavaria (1786–1868), the

Walhalla project commenced with the battle of the Germanic tribes against the Romans in

the Teutoburg forest (AD 9), and should also be understood in the light of the

Hermannsdenkmal commemorating the battle and the victorious ‘German’ Arminius. As a

symbolic statement of inherent force and independence it challenged Napoleonic rule, and

did so cunningly by embracing musicians, scientists, clerics, writers, and – importantly –

women. After his coronation in 1825, King Ludwig I commissioned a temple-like

structure overlooking the Danube, in order to preserve the memory of ‘ruhmlich

ausgezeichneten Teutschen’ (‘laudable and excellent Germans’), based on the by then

well-known Parthenon on the Athenian acropolis.38

Walhalla, as the building was to be called, was the work of Leo von Klenze

(1784–1864), Ludwig’s architect of choice. It was inaugurated on 18 October 1842. The hall

housed 96 busts and 64 plaques commemorating important ‘Germanic’ persons ‘of German

tongue’ and events in the history of the Germanic people (transcending the Valhalla of

Nordic mythology, which was reserved for warriors slain in battle). Walhalla remains

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to this day, and is sporadically added to pending decisions made by the government of

Bavaria: 31 busts have been added since its inauguration (12 of them female), making a total

of 191 commemorations.39

The Philhellene King Ludwig was a keen admirer of Ancient Greece as well as the

Italian Renaissance, and patronised a number of neoclassical buildings – also designed by

Leo von Klenze – mainly in Munich (the Glyptothek and the Alte Pinakothek, for

example). The Munich Glyptothek was not only a neoclassical shrine in aesthetic terms; it

was also the ‘first public classical archaeology museum’, with the Aegina marbles

(the ‘German counterpart’ to the Elgin marbles in the British Museum) as its centrepiece.40

Ludwig, the ‘neoclassical monarch’ (following Dyson), remained a dedicated sponsor of

the arts after his abdication from the Bavarian throne following the revolutions of 1848.

The ‘German’ (or Germanic) interest in antiquity was inspired by the mainly French

classicism of the Enlightenment, and was grounded in nineteenth-century German

Romanticism (with a highly influential ‘Romantic’ take on idealised antiquity as a result)

as well as in contemporary pan-European nation-building processes.41 The new old world

of Ancient Greece was of particular interest, made accessible to Westerners after the

establishment of the Kingdom of Greece at the 1832 London Conference.42 Ludwig

supported the Greek war of independence, and his second son Otto (1815–1867)

significantly became the first King of the Hellenes (he was to hold the throne for 30

years).43

‘Rational’ Neoclassicism and ‘emotional’ Romanticism are often viewed as

contradictory or opposing cultural movements. Fascination with antiquity was a common

denominator, although this was expressed in very different ways in the two ‘isms’.

The German romantics created their own new vision of Greece – their idealised Hellas

was considered ‘not as the repository of rational classicism but as a Volkland that

embodied core elemental values of European culture’;44 this was further intertwined with

the growing opinion in favour of the ‘liberation’ of the Greeks (from Ottoman rule).

The Walhalla is naturally not an archaeological site and cannot be referred to as

archaeological heritage, but functions here as a good example of the ideological

importance of the reception, or imitation, of classical antiquity in the neoclassical

nation-building era of European history (here roughly defined as the mid-eighteenth

century until the Second World War), which coincided with a peak of the

above-mentioned status of the classical tradition. The inspiration was found in surviving

monuments such as the Roman Pantheon and the Greek Parthenon, both of which acquired

an iconic status as symbols of the very roots and foundations of Western (European)

culture, but also as representing something lost – as inspiration and ideal.

The persons and events in the Walhalla are not collectively remembered, as

remembering is related to direct (personal) experience, but commemorated, in representing a

selection of individuals and ‘important historical events’ which are important on a symbolic

level. The symbolism here (as in other similar cases) is not an a priori given, but is strongly

context-dependent and thus bound in time and space. The Walhalla provides a useful

example of the kind of ‘memory space’ alluded to above (more as an Erinnerungsraum than

as a lieu de memoire), implying an illusory permanence and stability and reinforcing a

specific identity narrative. As we have observed, this complex case of entangled neoclassical

and romantic influences on a specific ethnic and linguistic ‘cult of the dead’ requires

contextualisation in order to acquire meaning.

Salvatore Settis argues that if the study of Classics is reduced to an ‘ornamental role’ it

clearly sets it on the road to oblivion and risks reducing its heritage to mere historical

curiosity. According to Settis, the only way in which to discern the possible symbolic

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value of classical heritage in modern society as tangible heritage, in an integral

contemporary sense, is by dissecting the defining characteristics of the very idea of the

‘classical’. Hence the real challenge lies in defining and discussing the interplay between

tradition and modernity, starting with perceptions of antiquity in contemporary society, as

a teleological view based on nostalgia and sentimentality ultimately does not sit well with

conceptions of modernity.45

Returning to the three levels of analysis discussed earlier (local, national and

transnational – in this case ‘pan-European’), the Walhalla has some significance on a

regional scale as a symbol of Bavarian grandeur and ambition; certainly – but differently –

on a national German level as a relic of a constructed unifying political ‘Germanic’ project;

and again differently in a European context as the aesthetic architectural form of the

monument tunes in with the symbolic (and political) value of Ancient Greece and Rome as a

transnational inspiration at the time of its construction.

In this sense the reception of antiquity fits well with aspects of the main problematique

of the memory and history debate as discussed earlier. What exactly the symbolic value of

the classical tradition can be said to have been in different historical contexts defies

comprehensive assessment and needs to be approached on a case-by-case basis. What can

be said, however, is that the primacy of the classical is no longer taken for granted and

does not play the same unquestionable role as a foundation for European ‘core values’ as it

once did, in part due to debates contemporary with those in memory and history in the

fields of postcolonial theory and subaltern studies, in this context most importantly in the

wake of Martin Bernal’s influential and contested book Black Athena: The Afroasiatic

Roots of Classical Civilization (3 vols) in 1987.46

The further up the analytical scale we progress (from the individual to the

supranational level), the more abstract the outspoken connection with antiquity becomes.

Associations of Ancient Greece and Rome with certain values (such as democracy, culture

and the arts) are flexible due to their abstract nature, and are thus easily manipulated for

political and other purposes.

VII. Suggested strategies and concluding remarks

Memory discourse is permeated with implicit moral claims and tacit (mis)understandings.

Whatever ‘memory’ is understood to consist of as an analytical category, it cannot, must

not, be perceived as a stable or constant factor. If ‘memory’ is perceived to lose its internal

dynamism, it is not only drained of meaning but at the same time becomes politically

charged through abstraction. Its production and its falling out of fashion (the ‘rising’ and

the ‘setting’ of memory) creates a division between living, ‘hard’ or tangible memory on

the one hand, and a ‘history of memory’ on the other. Muller highlights the problematique:

‘Memory versus history is something of a false dichotomy . . . what we are interested in is

precisely memory in history’.47

Memories are replaced with and absorbed into other memories over time. Lucian

Holscher justifiably maintains that this tendency for memories to expire, expressed in a

form of ‘censorship’ of forgetting, constitutes an integral part of the essence of history –

without it, history would indeed be just as inconceivable as if it were incapable of

incorporating memories.48

The two main strands of collective memory discourse – ‘official’, prophetic or

utopian; and ‘nostalgic’ or ‘sentimental’ memory – often seem to have a general tendency

to merge. If globalisation is similarly (con)fused with nationalism, challenges such as

transcending boundaries, linguistic frontiers and ahistorical narratives will follow.

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Historicism and agentiality contribute to shape the future, and a ‘history without history’

essentially reduces complexity in regard to the scope of possible interpretations.49

We do not remember historical pasts in historical narratives; we agree that they exist.

‘Coming to terms with the past’ thus appears to be more of a coming to terms with the

realisation that ‘the past’ existed in the first place – second, as a selection of focus on one

of many possible pasts. If history is considered as a reserve of identity-shaping material,

this can lead to an unfortunate ‘cult of the dead’ and a view of the past as an ethnic

cemetery (with tradition as the legitimising factor), which provides useful ammunition for

nationalist political fractions.

The heart of the matter of the problematic aspects of collective memory is a lack of

long-term perspectives catering for change, challenging the notion of a fixed ‘memory

space’ or a ‘memory landscape’ that implies permanence and stability. Diversity should be

considered an asset – not a problem. Narratives are most often locally contained within the

superstructure of national frameworks, which advocates a preference for regional and

transnational approaches to integrating memories as historical source material.

Historical writing needs to step out of the ‘boxes’ of national frameworks in order

fruitfully to strive for alternate counter-narratives. A repertory of positive values is a

prerequisite for a potential common ‘memory culture’, if such an idea is indeed desirable,

in learning to listen without filters of censorship to a multiplicity of individual or ‘group’

stories. Such positive aspects of common memory might be found in stressing aspects of

benign ‘Western’ assets, such as enlightenment values, the development of human rights,

or indeed Ancient philosophy and literature.

‘Memory’ essentially suffers from its status as an abstraction; it lacks stable fixed

points of reference – the past constantly has to be negotiated to satisfy a specific

mythology and narrative. Historical writing, then, more actively needs to critically

accommodate myth, memories and testimonies of a private dimension, integrating

perspectives that take both remembrance and forgetting into account.50 It would seem that

history is increasingly associated with emotional and moral obligations – what the victim

cannot forget; what the succeeding generations must not forget.51

Marita Sturken correctly observes that ‘there is so much traffic across the borders of

cultural memory and history that in many cases it may be futile to maintain a distinction

between them’.52 The dichotomy between memory and history is, in other words,

incompatible with the present and future of historical writing. It should ultimately prove

more fruitful to discuss and conceptualise common themes of individual memories,

focusing on their intermediaries and interrelationships on regional levels, rather than on

collective memory on a national scale.

The caveat voiced by Nietzsche of the burden of a cultural memory that had lost its

‘capacity of limitation’53 still echoes in the persistent constructed dichotomy between

memory and history. Everything cannot be remembered, the history of ‘everything’ cannot

reasonably be written; source material categories, however, arguably do deserve equal

rights of existence in order to be acknowledged and employed by historians.54 In order to

accommodate individual memory, historical writing needs a clear focus on the

identification, separation and application of varying scales of analysis (individual,

institutional, regional, national, transnational) and of a sense of interconnectedness.

Thus far we have established a clear connection between ideology, politics and

decision-making processes in relation to the memory and history debate. This is most

clearly expressed in a nation-building context. This would advocate approaching for

example the study of the reception of antiquity and the classical tradition from such

a perspective, as we have observed in the Walhalla case. Definitions and further

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discussions are necessary for a developed insight into the role of antiquity, archaeology

and the classical tradition in the memory and history debate; the approach suggested

here entails focusing on analysis of the semiotics, iconicity and symbolic value of

form and preferred aesthetics from an ideological perspective in the context of European

nation-building (from the eighteenth century to the present).

Following Ricoeur, ‘it is along the path of critical history that memory encounters

the sense of justice’.55 ‘Memory’ can easily be confused with myth and nostalgia; and

memories, as histories, fall in and out of fashion. As the meaning of memory terminology

is constantly contested its practical applications constantly need justifying and defining, as

historical writing is not an act of remembering but an interpretive act. ‘Memory’ cannot be

perceived as ‘static’; one size does, in this context, not fit (at) all.

The same applies for the classical tradition, which has been criticised here for its

generic self-characterisation. The discussion of the Walhalla monument implies that it is

necessary to historicise the tradition itself and to understand its specific traits in terms of

its genealogy, focusing on distinguishing and discussing elements that emanate from a

multitude of sources and from the legacy of the Renaissance, the Enlightenment and

Romanticism, as well as nineteenth- and twentieth-century nation-building. This

corresponds with the observation made by Settis that ‘the “classical” is presented in

each of its various incarnations as a postulate more or less to be taken for granted, but in

reality it always reflects a project . . . on a case by case basis’.56

The foundations of the European political project require critical attention, attempting

to arrive at a more fluid and justifiable concept transcending national identities and

national histories. The national boundaries inherent in the paradigm of History could

potentially benefit from theoretical and methodological perspectives in the field of

Classics, with a long and on the whole successful tradition of thinking in terms of cultural

transfers and cultural comparisons in a longue duree perspective. History, on the other

hand, might in return be able to offer Classics a reserve of nuanced and developed

theoretical and methodological reflection.

The classical tradition is indeed a multifaceted world in itself with its own cosmology.

The elusive character of time, the vastness of classical imaginary and the imprecision

of memory leave us with a truly rich legacy; however, no legacy defies scrutiny,

deconstruction and contextualisation.

Interpretations of antiquity and the meaning and value of tradition simultaneously

narrate the past and speak of the future. The more we understand about the roots and

components of the classical tradition, the more we are able to redefine and appreciate

the legacy of that tradition as a tradition of legacies, as a means to a more profound

understanding of ourselves and of contemporary realities.

Notes

1. Margalit, The Ethics of Memory, 64–6. Cf. the critical appraisal of Margalit in Winter,Remembering War. Jan-Werner Muller reminds us that ‘all too often, collective memory issimply collapsed into myth, and important conceptual distinctions are lost’. Jan-WernerMuller, in Muller, Memory and Power in Post-war Europe, 20. According to Jan and AleidaAssmann, myth can be defined as ‘remembered history’: ‘With a developed sense of theshortcomings of both myth and history, they are no longer confronted as antagonistic andmutually exclusive but rather seen as complementary modes of referring to the past’. Assmann,“History and Memory”, 6824–5.

2. See for example Stray, “Curriculum and Style in the Collegiate University.” For a slightly moreexotic (Swedish) perspective, see Lindberg, Humanism och vetenskap. Classical studies wereestablished in the Swedish university system in 1909, with chairs in Ancient History and

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Classical Archaeology at the universities at Lund and Uppsala, with a blended paradigm,drawing from both sides of the divide between Classics and Altertumswissenschaft.

3. See for example Hudson, ed., The Grand Tour; and D’Agliano and Melegati, eds., Ricordidell’antico.

4. Vian, ed., Speculum Mundi, 16. When we speak of ‘Rome’, we in a sense often speak of theactual city and the Roman Empire at the same time, in one incomprehensively comprehensivebroad sweep.

5. Kallendorf, ed., A Companion to the Classical Tradition, 1.6. Salvatore Settis observes that the ‘classical’ often functions as a catalyst, not as a constraint.

Settis, The Future of the ‘Classical’, 27. The European (re-)cyclical narrative on the ‘return toantiquity’ of the Renaissance has long been well served, notably by the renowned writersEdward Gibbon (1737–1794), Jacob Burckhardt (1818–1897) and Oswald Spengler(1880–1936). For antiquarian history and the ‘respect for origins’, see White, Metahistory,350–1.

7. Jacques-Louis David’s Oath of the Horatii expresses loyalty to the state and republicanpatriotism in his rendering of the Roman salute – a defining image for the French Revolutionand the new Republic in the making.

8. For a critical appraisal of historical and anthropological approaches to ‘memory’, cf. Berliner,“The Abuses of Memory”. For social memory in relation to history, see Burke, “History asSocial Memory.” See also Mannheim, Essays on the Sociology of Knowledge. For traumaticmemory in relation to notions of collectivity, see Giesen, Triumph and Trauma; and Giesenet al., Cultural Trauma and Collective Identity.

9. See for example Glassberg, “Public History and the Study of Memory,” 16–17; Southgate,What is History For?; Kantsteiner, “Finding Meaning in Memory”; Vosu et al., “Mediation ofMemory”; Goebel, The Great War and Medieval Memory; Klein, The History of Forgetting;Connerton, How Societies Remember; Ashplant et al., eds, Commemorating War; Passerini,ed., Memory and Totalitarianism; Phillips, ed., Framing Public Memory; Le Goff, Histoire etmemoire; Sturken, Tourists of History; Williams, Voice, Trust, and Memory; Goebel,“Intersecting memories”; and Winter and Sivan, War and Remembrance in the TwentiethCentury.

10. Cf. Jan-Werner Muller, in Muller, Memory and Power in Post-war Europe, 3–13.11. Assmann also reminds us that we do not react to historical facts but to the way they

are represented, interpreted and evaluated. Assmann, Der lange Schatten der Vergangenheit,272–3.

12. Nora, “Between memory and history”, 7.13. See Bourke, “‘Remembering’ War”.14. This is complicated further by a distinction between ‘history in general’, and ‘our history’.

Assmann, “Memory, Individual and Collective”, 215–16. Assmann also notes that ‘theperennial business of culture [according to Zygmunt Bauman], is to translate the transient intothe permanent, i.e. to invent techniques of transmitting and storing information, which isdeemed vital for the constitution and continuation of a specific group and its identity.Monuments perpetuate historical events; exhibitions and musical or theatrical performancescreate continuous attention for the canonized works of art.’ Assmann, “Memory, Individualand Collective”, 222.

15. Confino, “Cultural memory and cultural history: problems of method”, 1402–3.16. Assmann, Der lange Schatten der Vergangenheit. Erinnerungskultur und Geschichtspolitik,

63. In the German original Koselleck’s questions were more rhythmically phrased: ‘Wer ist zuerinnern? Was ist zu erinnern? Wie ist zu erinnern?’ Koselleck, “Formen und Traditionen desNegativen Gedachtnisses”, 26. Cf. the rhetoric of collective memory highlighted by AlonConfino above, as well as Koselleck’s terms ‘space of experience’ (Erfahrungsraum) and‘horizon of expectation’ (Erwartungshorizont). See for example Assmann, “History andMemory”, 6827.

17. Jan-Werner Muller, in Muller, Memory and Power in Post-war Europe, 34.18. Dummett, Truth and the Past, 49–52. In his book (Truth and the Past), Michael Dummett

advocates a ‘justificationist’ rather than a ‘verificationist’ account of meaning regardingstatements about the past, and ‘The justificationist theory of meaning takes the meaning of aform of statement to be given by what is needed to establish it as true’. Dummett, Truth and thePast, 51 (for these purposes see particularly chapter 3 ‘Statements about the Past’, 41–55).

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19. See for example Nora, “Between memory and history”, and Nora, “General Introduction:Between Memory and History”. For an informed commentary on the lieux de memoire project,see Ricoeur, Memory, History, Forgetting, 401–11. In her discussion on Nora, AleidaAssmann emphasises that Nora ‘defines memory and [abstract] history as polar opposites’, andfurther that the notion of lieux de memoire reinterprets Ancient Roman mnemotechnics – ‘the‘imagines’ and ‘loci’ of the ars memorativa’. Assmann, “History and Memory,” 6826.

20. Tadhg O’Keeffe’s take on Nora is clarifying: ‘Nora laments what he sees as a decline of anational, collective, identity-forming, memory in the age of globalization, [the] Lieux dememoire [project] will thus become a lieu de memoire in its own right.’ Tadhg O’Keeffe, inMoore and Whelan, Heritage, Memory and the Politics of Identity, 8.

21. Cf. Jay Winter’s critique of the use of ‘memory’ – as a cultural action, rather than asremembering – a critique with which this essay agrees. Winter, Remembering War.

22. Isnenghi, ed., Simboli e miti dell’Italia unita; Isnenghi, Personaggi e date dell’Italia unita; andIsnenghi, Strutture ed eventi dell’Italia unita.

23. Francois and Schulze, eds, Deutsche Erinnerungsorte (Vols I–III), see particularly the‘Introduction’ (Einleitung) section, 9–24.

24. See Mangos, A Monumental Mockery.25. For the concept of Erinnerungsraum, see Assmann, Erinnerungsraume; Neumann et al., eds,

Literatur, Grenzen, Erinnerungsraume; and Diefenbach, Romische Erinnerungsraume.26. Nora, “Between memory and history”, 22. I find this definition abstract and limiting at the same

time, however. Nora also offers further definitions of lieux de memoire, such as that ‘the lieu dememoire is double: a site of excess closed upon itself, concentrated in its own name, but alsoforever open to the full range of its possible significations’. Nora, “Between memory andhistory”, 24.

27. Sontag, Regarding the Pain of Others, 85–6. See also Assmann, “Memory, Individual andCollective”, 222.

28. See Kantsteiner, “Finding Meaning in Memory.”29. See Lepenies, “Fur eine Politik der Mentalitaten.” Jurgen Straub brushes off the notion of

‘collective identity’ as ‘scientifically untenable’. Jurgen Straub, in Friese, Identities, 71. I arguethat the same applies to ‘collective memory’.

30. According to O’Keeffe, ‘collected memory is always historical (or narratological) and isalways the product of some programme of being-reminded’. O’Keeffe also speaks of ‘visual-factual’, as opposed to ‘sensual-emotional’, memories; he also proposes that visual-factual‘elements of collected memory . . . are not really memories of the event but memories of itsmediation’. Opposing the concept of an essentialist ‘intuitive collective memory’, O’Keeffeargues that ‘collected memory is thus “a product of external programming”’, and that ‘the fieldof collected memory [was] significantly enlarged [by] the great wars’. He also emphasises theproblematic aspect of penetrating the ‘strong scent of nostalgia’ in dealing with individualrecollections. Tadhg O’Keeffe, in Moore and Whelan, Heritage, Memory and the Politics ofIdentity, 5–7 and 15–16. Akin to the notion of collected memory is Jan Assmann’sdifferentiation of Halbwachs’s concept of collective memory into communicative and culturalmemory. Assmann, Das kulturelle Gedachtnis. See also Sauter, “Memories in Conflict”, 6–8.In this context Sauter discusses connectivity, or connective structures of cultures joiningindividuals and institutions. Sauter, “Memories in Conflict”, 5–6 and 9–10.

31. Avishai Margalit stresses that the issue at hand is to discuss ‘what humanity ought to rememberrather than what is good for humanity to remember’. Margalit, The Ethics of Memory, 82.

32. Nora, “General Introduction: Between Memory and History”, 11. On a contrasting note,Ricoeur emphasises that ‘one absolutely cannot speak of a duty of forgetting’. Ricoeur,Memory, History, Forgetting, 418.

33. This is related to Luisa Passerini’s observation that ‘it is the multiplicity and diversity ofmemories, as well as of languages, that constitute the only privilege of Europe’. Passerini, ed.,Memory and Totalitarianism, 18.

34. Jan-Werner Muller, in Muller, Memory and Power in Post-war Europe, 27 and 29–30. Suchcollective memory analysis would then entail the following steps: ‘one first needs to trace theorigins of a particular set of collective memories, examine their institutionalisation and thenestablish an association between certain types of historically derived arguments and theunderlying core principles on which foreign policy is based’. Jan-Werner Muller, in Muller,Memory and Power in Post-war Europe, 29. Muller goes on to rule out privatising and

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‘neutralising’ collective memory, as it ‘cannot be privatised by definition’. Jan-Werner Muller,in Muller, Memory and Power in Post-war Europe, 32.

35. Jan-Werner Muller, in Muller, Memory and Power in Post-war Europe, 22.36. Classical tradition and classical reception literature is a vast and continually expanding field; a

sample selection will suffice here: the two recent Blackwell anthologies (1) Kallendorf, ed.,A Companion to the Classical Tradition; and (2) Hardwick and Stray, eds, A Companion toClassical Receptions; as well as Settis, The Future of the ‘Classical’; Dyson, In Pursuit ofAncient Pasts; as well as Haase and Meyer, eds, The Classical Tradition and the Americas.The two ‘classic’ (but dated) accounts in the field are Highet, The Classical Tradition (1949);and Bolgar, The Classical Heritage and its Beneficiaries (1954). On antiquity as culturalheritage, recent publications include Cuno, Who Owns Antiquity?; and Waxman, Loot.

37. The legacy of Johann Winckelmann (1717–1768) continues to shape and influence the field ofclassical archaeology. As librarian to the Cardinal Alessandro Albani and papal antiquary(from 1763), Winckelmann exercised a considerable influence in contemporary savant circlesin Rome. His early death elevated him to heroic status, with more influence to followposthumously. Winckelmann proclaimed Greece the source of Classical art, with smallerexpeditions and ‘Grand Tourism’ following the ‘opening of Greece’ in the 1830s. Cf. Dyson,In Pursuit of Ancient Pasts, 2.

38. This commission was contemporary with the King’s decision to move the Ludwig-Maximilians-Universitat from Landshut to Munich in 1826. The monumental stairs leading up to the Walhallaincidentally bear a striking resemblance to the terraces and ramps at the temple complex of theAncient Roman sanctuary of Fortuna Primigenia at Praeneste (Palestrina), near Rome.

39. Individuals who have been dead at least 20 years are eligible for inclusion. Among the 12commemorated women we find Amalie Elisabeth (Countess of Hesse-Kassel); KarolinaGerhardinger (founder of the School of Sisters of Notre Dame); Catherine II of Russia; MariaTheresia (Archduchess of Austria and Queen of Hungary); Sophie Scholl; Elisabeth ofHungary (Saint and Princess); Hildegard von Bingen; Mechthilde (Saint); Veleda (Prophetessduring the Batavian rebellion of AD 69–70) and Edith Stein (Philosopher and Saint). For moreinformation and a comprehensive list of the commemorated persons and events, see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Walhalla_temple; and http://www.walhalla-regensburg.de/deutsch/literatur.shtml.

40. Cf. Dyson, In Pursuit of Ancient Pasts, 135. Dyson discusses the discovery and acquisition ofthe Aegina marbles in the context of the emergence of the ‘Great Museums’ and thecontemporary interest in acquiring Greek art. King Ludwig I arranged his purchases through hisagent, Johann Martin von Wagner (1777–1858). Dyson, In Pursuit of Ancient Pasts, 133–5.See also Friedell, A Cultural History of the Modern Age, particularly Vol. III. Friedell wassadly never to complete his two-volume cultural history of antiquity (Kulturgeschichte desAltertums – published posthumously) before his suicide in Vienna following the Anschluss in1938.

41. Friedrich Nietzsche, the great German Philhellene, believed in ‘the unutterable simplicity andnoble dignity of the Hellene’; based on this he spoke of the ‘ideal antiquity’ (as opposed to the‘real’) as ‘the magnificent blossoming of the Teutonic longing for the south’ (in ‘Homer andClassical Philology’, the inaugural lecture delivered at the University of Basel (Bale), May 28,1869 – see Nietsche (ed. Levy), The Complete Works of Friedrich Nietzsche, Vol. 6).Nietzsche also saw the coexistence of multiple antiquities; even though to him classicalantiquity constituted one integral, and essentially superior, world – in the same lecture (indiscussing the aesthetical dimension of Philology), he argued that ‘from various antiquities atour disposal, it [Philology] endeavours to pick out the so-called “classical” antiquity, with theview and the pretension of excavating the ideal world buried under it, and to hold up to thepresent the mirror of the classical and everlasting standards’. See also Bishop, Nietzsche andAntiquity. For German fascination with ancient Greece and German philhellenism, see forexample Butler, The Tyranny of Greece over Germany; and Breger, “Gods, German Scholars,and the Gift of Greece”, where Breger discusses ‘the legacy of German philhellenism, whicharticulated national identities through the theme of ‘elective affinity’. [Friedrich] Kittler’sGreece occupies the very structural place it had in nineteenth-century German philhellenism:‘It stands in for both the foundation of European civilization and its virtual better self, a realmof sensual culture untainted by modern capitalism and Empire’.

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42. The London Convention explicitly stated that the crowns of Greece and Bavaria would in no casebe joined, a clause undoubtedly of importance to the Great Powers (Britain, France and Russia).These interests were largely ensured by British Foreign Secretary Viscount Palmerston incollaboration with French and Russian diplomats.

43. For the role of classicism and classical archaeology in Greek nineteenth-century nation-building, see Dyson, In Pursuit of Ancient Pasts, 72–3. Ludwig ensured that his son would beassisted by the foremost neoclassical architects Bavaria could muster. Cf. Dyson, In Pursuit ofAncient Pasts, 75–6.

44. Dyson, In Pursuit of Ancient Pasts, 65. Dyson continues: ‘This was the Greece of FriedrichHolderlin, who, never having seen it, went mad dreaming of a pure Hellas, or of Lord Byron,who died at Messalonghi, where he was fighting in a Balkan war whose brutality and ambiguityhad alienated more-worldly diplomats’. Dyson, In Pursuit of Ancient Pasts, 66.

45. Settis, The Future of the ‘Classical’, 69. According to Settis, the declining importance ofclassical studies in European education curricula, and in culture in general, is to be perceived asa profound cultural shift; two distinct definitions of classicism require acknowledgement andidentification in order to answer the question of what the ‘classical’ is: namely (1) the uniformand unchallengeable, and (2) the multiform and changing classicism. The concept of the‘classical’ cannot be fully understood without recognising its static character; it does notfunction without the ‘dynamism of nostalgia or repetition’. Settis, The Future of the ‘Classical’,15–16.

46. The debate following the publication of Black Athena continues to this day. Criticism of thebook was based on accusations of poor scholarship and ideological agendas. See alsoLefkowitz and Maclean Rogers, eds. Black Athena Revisited; Bernal, Black Athena WritesBack; Berlinerblau, Heresy in the University; Said, Orientalism; and Burkert, The OrientalizingRevolution.

47. Jan-Werner Muller, in Muller, Memory and Power in Post-war Europe, 24.48. ‘Ohne solches Vergessen ware Geschichte wohl ebensowenig vorstellbar wie ohne

Erinnerung’. Holscher, “Geschichte und Vergessen,” 14–15.49. In a multicultural reality the binary logic of ‘self’ in relation to ‘Other’ is undermined, with the

self becoming increasingly hard to define. Cf. Heidrun Friese, in Friese, Identities, 3–4; see alsoTheunissen, The Other; as well as Appiah, Cosmopolitanism, 43–44 (on pluralities of values).Gerd Baumann argues that the two ‘legitimacies’ of the past and the future ‘must be balancedconsistently, so that appeal can be made at once to the legitimacy of future purpose and thelegitimacy of tradition. This tradition, however, is always today’s recognition of yesterday’sheritage as the means to reshape a collective tomorrow’. Gerd Baumann, in Friese, Identities,195–196.

50. Lucian Holscher stresses remembrance and forgetting as the integrated core ‘purposes’ ofhistorical writing. According to Holscher, ‘remembering is an act of solidarity’, and functionsaccumulatively from a historical perspective. Holscher, “Geschichte und Vergessen”, 12–13.See also Weinrich, Lethe; and Sturken, “The Remembering of Forgetting.”

51. Assmann, “Memory, Individual and Collective,” 279. Cf. Nietzsche: ‘Was nicht aufhortwehzutun, bleibt im Gedachtnis. Das ist das Gesetz der altesten kulturellen Mnemotechnik.’Nietzsche (ed. Schlechta), Zur Genealogie der Moral, 802. Nietzsche also stressed thenecessity of forgetting in order to live at all: ‘Es ist moglich, fast ohne Erinnerung zu leben, wiedas Tier zeigt; es ist aber ganz und gar unmoglich, ohne Vergessen uberhaupt zu leben’.Nietzsche, from The Use and Abuse of History, in Holscher, “Geschichte und Vergessen”, 4.See also White, Metahistory, 347 (regarding The Use and Abuse of History): ‘Nietzschebelieved that human forgetting is quite different from animal oblivion’ . . . , and ‘often spoke asif man’s ability to act hinges upon . . . the peculiarly human impulse to forget, which is an actof will’.

52. Sturken, Tangled Memories, 5. See also Magnus Rodell, “Monuments as the Places ofMemory,” in Kitzmann et al., Memory Work, 106–7.

53. See for example Assmann, “History and Memory”, 6826. Nietzsche used the metaphor of the‘horizon of memory’, separating the known from the unknown and the relevant from theirrelevant in a process of exclusion. Nietzsche, The Use and Abuse of History, see alsoAssmann, “Memory, Individual and Collective,” 217. In discussing ‘mnemohistory [or] thereception history of history’, and ‘new affinities between memory and history’, Assmann pointsout that ‘the term history is a collective singular; to this concept corresponded the idea

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of history as a universal memory of mankind. To say that history is universal memory may[however] be another way of saying that it is indifferent to memory.’ Memory thus becomes‘the other of history because collective memory tends to bridge past and future, creating ausable past for a changing present’. Assmann, “History and Memory”, 6827–8.

54. Reinhart Koselleck’s ‘veto right of sources’ (‘Vetorecht der Quellen’) is relevant in thiscontext, as historical representation and interpretation arguably has to be compatible with alltypes of sources. Cf. Holscher, “Geschichte und Vergessen”, 7.

55. Ricoeur, Memory, History, Forgetting, 500.56. Settis, The Future of the ‘Classical’, 100.

Notes on contributor

Frederick Whitling is a Doctoral Candidate in the Department of History and Civilisation at theEuropean University Institute, Florence. He has recently been a resident fellow at the SwedishInstitute in Rome (2007–2008) and a Visiting Global Scholar in the History Department at New YorkUniversity, New York (2008). His main academic interests lie in the fields of classical tradition andclassical reception studies, cultural diplomacy and Italian post-war history. His PhD dissertationconcerns the foreign academies in Rome in the context of post-war ‘academic diplomacy’ andinternational collaboration (1944–1948).

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