Memory as a categorical imperative and as a trap

I beg your indulgence, because I would like to begin with a quote that might give the impression of departing at first sight from the debate on how to remember and, above all, how not to remember the fiftieth anniversary of the coup d'état in Chile. It comes from the great British scientist and resounding Marxist Desmond Bernal. "There are two futures," Bernal wrote, "the future of desire and the future of destiny, and human reason has never learned to separate them." The desired future, he continued, is the "compensation and effective realization of all that has been lacking in the present and the past." Bernal at the same time insisted, as one might expect from a Marxist who therefore sees history as a kind of narrative of progress, that, while our desires will never be sufficient to determine the future, paradoxically those same desires are often the main agents of social and historical change.

How does this relate to Chile in this solemn and complicated commemoration? First, especially since most of us believe that how a society remembers the past will largely determine its future moral and political trajectory. In that sense, memory, which might at first seem retrospective, is actually the powerful agent of social change that Bernal had in mind when he referred to the positive uses of desire. And during the more than three decades since the end of the dictatorship in 1990, in Chile the institutionalization of memory and the institutionalization of democracy have been explicitly proposed as one and the same project, a conception that shaped all the governments of the Concertación, which was not strictly questioned by President Sebastián Piñera. and that recently was summed up in the limpid phrase of President Gabriel Boric: "Democracy is memory and future."

However, as Ricardo Brodsky has argued in a brilliant recent article in which he questions the devotions of what, with minimal honesty, we should call the memory industry in Chile – and let it be clear: this is how I see it; I do not know whether Brodsky would agree or not—memory is in itself neither good nor bad "and only serves us to the extent that it educates ourselves, that we are able to consider the facts in an exemplary way, that is, that they serve us not to repeat the same mistakes or the same horrors, and, above all, to judge ourselves with the same yardstick that we judge others."

I agree. In fact, in my own work, especially in my book In Praise of Oblivion. The paradoxes of historical memory, I go much further and argue — and I am convinced that Brodsky would not agree with this — that there are times when it is better to forget than to remember, when memory actually serves as an incentive for the commission of more horrors, not to leave behind the atrocities. And while I know that at first glance opposing memory may seem like the moral and social equivalent of twisting the necks of swans, I still think I'm right about conflicts like those in the Balkans and Israel-Palestine. But I have never thought that it is applicable to Chile. In this I agree with Brodsky when he writes that oblivion is not, or at least should not be, a way out.

However, since the period of 2019 and the social outbreak in Chile, those who believed that the majority of Chileans had reached a consensus on how to remember the dictatorship were clearly wrong. José Antonio Kast's victory in the first round of the 2021 presidential election, and even after Boric's victory in the second round, the Frente Amplio's inability to win enough seats in Congress to push his party's program was the first sign of this. The resounding failure of the plebiscite for a new Constitution made it impossible to deny the reality of the division that continues to prevail in Chile, even with respect to the dictatorship. Indeed, in the plebiscite, 62% of Chileans made it clear that they preferred Pinochet's Constitution to the "plurinational" Chile that the proposed Fundamental Law was going to materialize. And just as the Constituent Convention revealed that it was much more to the left of the Chilean people it thought it represented, the fiftieth anniversary of the dictatorship has revealed that even on this issue there is no consensus.

As you all know, the survey data is compelling. According to the September 6 Pulso Ciudadano poll, one-third of Chileans believe Pinochet's coup was justified. And more than half of Chileans, including obviously many for whom Allende's overthrow was unjustifiable, believe that, at least in principle, a coup against a democratically elected government would be permissible under certain circumstances. Perhaps the most irrefutable thing is that just under three-quarters of Chileans are hardly interested in the commemorations of the fiftieth anniversary or declare that they are not at all interested.

I need not dwell on the shock this has brought to the cultural, academic and intellectual elites of this country, realizing that the consensus they believed had already been established either never existed or at least was much more fragile than they had thought. The rejection of the new constitution was emblematic of this, although at least after the failure it was possible to rationalize the defeat by arguing – as many centre-left people hastened, even within the Boric government – that the Convention had been too radical and that a more moderate draft, devoid of identity extremism, had been would have been approved. But the fact that all the center-right and hard-right opposition in Congress refused to support the resolution condemning him for human rights violations, in the historical context of the fiftieth anniversary of the coup, made it clear that Chile remains a country in which there is no consensus on memory. The right's refusal to even attend Monday's official commemoration ceremony only rubbed salt into the wound.

Is it true, as Roberto Mardones argues, that in the last 33 years the commemorations of the coup have become above all acts that interest the academic and cultural elites, but that no longer have an echo in the whole of Chilean society? To be sure, the rise of the hard right in Chile surprised these elites, but they are far from alone in it: their rise is a global phenomenon, as amply demonstrated by Trump, Bolsonaro and now Milei in Argentina. And some on the left continue to argue that the reason the memory wars have ended so badly in Chile is due to the insufficient education of young people about the horrors of the dictatorship. A museum, a monument, a commemoration, they argue, is not the same as a determined, patient and long-term program of enlightened (and hopefully enlightening!) pedagogy.

I confess that I find this argument unconvincing. No country, with the possible exception of South Africa, has been more determined to confront the horrors of its past than Chile. If the moral and political commitments summed up in the expression Never Again have not retained their full force here, it is difficult to know how they could be maintained anywhere else (and South Africans have fared no better, by the way). To speak of more education or the harmful influence of the so-called hegemonic media is nothing more than repeating the old Marxist dogma of false consciousness in new clothes. But this is preferable, I suppose, than finally facing reality: there is no Chilean consensus on the past, nor – as Kast's rise has shown – on the present and the future. The enraged high school students I saw demonstrating near La Moneda the day after the vote rejecting the new constitution at least did not add rationalizations to their righteous anger: "Before a people without memory, we continue fighting," they shouted.

Have we misunderstood our own societies? And by that I do not mean those students, nor the entire Chilean left, but rather the people who work in the cultural industries, among which, of course, I include myself. Have we allowed — here let me return to Bernal's distinction — our desires for a future that we better imagine to distort our judgment and, above all, blind us to the opposing desires of many fellow citizens? I think so, and that is what the current crisis of historical memory consists of, not only in Chile, but throughout the world.

To affirm the above is not, I say it emphatically, to argue in favor of oblivion. As I pointed out earlier, although I think that it can, in fact, be defended in some societies and historical junctures, I do not think that it should be raised with respect to Chile. But, instead, it is to affirm that we have to moderate our expectations about what memory can achieve in a divided society, and currently few societies are not. We expect too much from memory, and we rely too cautiously on its ability both to lecture us about the past in a lasting way and to transform society so that the atrocities of the past are not repeated.

I want to make this very clear: I strongly believe that remembering is a categorical imperative in Chile today. But we would also do well not to expect too much from such a process, the main mistake, it seems to me, that people of conscience in Chile have all too often made. I am not referring here to the tragic fact that sooner or later everything will be forgotten. That we, as individuals, societies, civilizations, and everything that disturbed, inspired, oppressed and redeemed us will ever disappear – "the oblivion that we will be," says the extraordinary phrase of Hector Abad. Rather, I appeal to humility about what historical memory can achieve, and argue that exaggerated expectations are a trap. That this is indeed the case in practical terms should be evident after what has happened in this country since 2019. But I also argue that this is so in moral terms. We must insist on the necessity of memory, but not expect too much from it. And, without a doubt, the rejection in the plebiscite showed the risk of a policy that takes its wishes for realities.

Finally, I would beg you to beware of easy devotions, and for those of you in the audience who are not young, not to mention the many very old like me, to be very careful not to confuse generational concerns with eternal ones. This generational aspect is key. I was 18 when the coup took place, and I don't need to be reminded of its horrors. But I ask a serious question: what does an 18-year-old Chilean remember today? In a literal, individual sense, nothing, but at least that person knows people who lived through the dictatorship. Devotions are not likely to move them easily, any more than a European born in 2005 is likely to be moved by the horrors of the Shoah. In Europe we have witnessed the decline of this type of piety over the decades. The same will happen here, however much we may wish otherwise.

Young people do not respect devotions, and they should not respect them. Isn't that the very nature of being young? If they are to remember, as we all wish, it must be in their own way. Devotion is the worst way to do it and, frankly, so is other history lessons in high schools. I remember Buñuel's last great film, The Phantom of Liberty. In the first scene, a Spanish guerrilla is led to his execution by a firing squad of French soldiers led by one carrying a banner on which is written "Liberté, Égalité, Fraternité". When the platoon is about to shoot, the guerrilla shouts: "Die freedom." We must ensure that this is not the reaction we provoke in defending historical memory.

David Rieff is a journalist and writer. This is the text of the speech he gave at the international seminar Democracy and Memory, organized by the Diego Portales University on September 12, in Santiago, Chile.
Translation by Aurelio Major.

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