History, memory, identity

The present paper examines certain salient features of the history-memory-identity relation. The common feature underpinning most contemporary manifestations of the memory craze seems to be an insecurity about identity, an insecurity that generates an excessive preoccupation with 'memory'. In the face of memory's valorization, what should be the attitude of the historian! At the present moment there is a pathetic and sometimes tragic conflict between what 'memory' expresses and confirms, namely, the demands made by subjectivities, and the demand, essential to any scientific discipline, for proof. The paper explores this conflict and argues that neither term can be reduced to the other. It suggests that one needs to conceptualize the field of history as involving inevitable limits to historical knowledge, such that both history and memory are seen as inadequate. In this way one avoids both the arrogance of a would-be definitive history and the 'arrogance of authenticity' that all too often accompanies claims for memory.