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Jeffrey K. Olick, The Politics of Regret: On Collective Memory and Historical Responsibility (New York: Routledge, 2007)
Jeffrey K. Olick's valuable collection of essays is a significant contribution to the literature on collective memory. Olick, like many other theorists of social memory and nationalism, maintains that recollection plays a central role in defining and legitimizing national identities. What people choose to remember and the affective tone of the remembrance is framed by context. The present, with its concerns and needs, influences the way we remember the past. Private memories and private actions in response to memories occur as a reaction to, and are constrained by, the larger societal scaffold of publicly accepted narratives of memory. Therefore, the question that Olick poses is very important: at what point should or does a past pass away? To answer this question, the author focuses on post-Holocaust Germany, because he rightly considers that the past weighs heavily on that country's development as a democratic nation. The book combines empirical essays about events and narratives that shaped West German political culture, with a theoretical discussion of the meaning of collective memory and its relevance in politics.
Indeed, the transition to democracy in the Federal Republic of Germany is an ideal case to study the role of narratives about the past in the creation of a new symbolic universe. Managing a transition to democracy implies reshaping the way people view their past behavior under the previous regime, as well as their relationship to it. How does a new democracy deal with the legacy of the immediate past? How should the issue of collaboration with state violence be handled? Transitions inevitably raise questions of responsibility and atonement, and this implies the reexamination of national narratives and the redefinition of collective identities. The issue of attributing guilt and responsibility loomed large in postwar Germany, since culpability could be restricted to Hitler and his entourage, or extended...