The idea that memory is inaccurate not necessarily groundbreaking. Even without the innumerable scientific studies on the subject, daily encounters make it pretty clear that recalling an event can be influenced by myriad circumstances like mood, subtle (or not so subtle) persuasion, a completely inaccurate initial account, and even the brain’s need to transform a memory into a good story. In August of 2012, however, Donna Bridge, a postdoctoral fellow at the Feinberg School of Medicine, and Ken Paller, a professor of psychology at the Weinberg College of Arts and Medicine, both at Northwestern University, published an article in The Journal of Neuroscience taking memory inaccuracy even further by stating that a memory recalled in the present is as much a result of the initial action being remembered as it is a product of each moment it has been remembered prior. Each time a recent event is accessed, “associative links among cortical networks that specialize in processing and storing particular types of information” are strengthened, but at the same time that this is happening, those forces external to the memory itself listed above are slightly altering the original event as it is recalled in the present. Because “retrieval [of the initial event] promotes storage of retrieved information, memories … come to include information learned during the original event and information activated” via the specific spatiotemporal circumstances of each prior and additional retrieval. Memory is basically the worst game of telephone ever, with your mind repeatedly playing the role of inaccurate transmitter of information.
While deceased well before the publication of Bridge and Paller’s article, Walter Benjamin not only embraces memory and history being dependent on their past and present interpretations, but sees this concept simultaneously as that which allows hegemonic control and crucial to revolution. In his “On the Concept of History,” Bejamin states that “like every generation that preceded us, we have been endowed with a weak Messianic power, a power on which the past has claim.” This weak Messianic power, which he later equates with the power to revolt, is controlled by the past, something that “carries with it a secret index by which it is referred to redemption,” with which “the idea of happiness is indissolubly bound.” As George Orwell (and Rage Against the Machine) famously said, “Who controls the past controls the future; who controls the present controls the past.” Interpretation of history, much like the recall of past events are under control of the current spatiotemporal context in which they are being remembered, is therefore constantly changing based on the ideals of the current hegemon.
What Benjamin sees as furthering this control by the ruling class, of the continual victors, over the working class is that the popular interpretation of the relation of the past to the present to the future is seen as progressive, as something “moving with the current,” moving forward just as technological development does, which he cites as the main reason for the demise of the Social Democrats in Germany, in addition to the leaders of the party casting “the working class in the role of a redeemer of future generations,” as opposed to their own. Instead of each moment of the present being imbued with the potential for change, this change was seen as something that would arrive in the forward-moving future, as long as it is worked hard enough for.
This is where, for Benjamin, the historian can jump in, using dialectical historicism and historical materialism to “become conscious of the constellation in which precisely this fragment of the past finds itself with precisely this present.” This statement implicates a number of past (and future) presents through which a certain fragment of the past can be seen. Instead of understanding history as progressive, which keeps the Angel of History in her place, staring back in terror at the constant destruction created in the name of future generations, understanding interpretations of the past in relation to a specific present allows for the clarification that “the ‘state of emergency’ in which we live [or rather in which we are being told that we live by a class whose true goal is control] is not the exception but the rule.” In order to “bring about a real state of emergency,” by making “the continuum of history explode,” it is necessary to not only acknowledge this interpretation of the present-past, but to apply it to every single moment, to “convert everything that we [experience]…into revolutionary experience, if not action,” instead of waiting for a “revolutionary situation” to appear.
Benjamin posits that the revolutionary moments of the everyday occur when “a memory [or “image of the past”] … flashes up in a moment of danger.” This danger is described as “becoming a tool of the ruling classes.” In a world where “the enemy has never ceased to be victorious,” this danger is constant. It exists as past, present, and future. If memory and history are indeed nomads dependent upon all recollections before them that will continue to morph with additional acquired information at the point of future recollections, the number of potentially revolutionary moments becomes endless; with each slight alteration of relationship between personal and historical past and present, by people who are in a constant state of danger, a new “chance [to find] a completely new resolution of a completely new problem” appears.
The constant inaccuracies of the storing mechanisms of the human brain are thus precisely those internal mechanisms which can entrap us, which are easily manipulated and morphed into a sympathy with the victor of the constant battle of the working class. It is the acknowledgement of this imperfection, the understanding of not only the interpretation of personal history but of historical events as constantly morphing, that can help to spot moments of history-exploding in ourselves and thus lead to at least a moment of possible revolution.
No comments:
Post a Comment