Contested “Amnesias”: Remembering, Forgetting or “Non-Addressing”? The “Victim-Perpetrator-Formula” and the Normative Dimension of Dealing with the Past

In this paper, I will try and take a closer look at the issue of forgetting – what exactly are the implications of a strategy of forgetting for societies in the aftermath of large-scale violence? Strictly speaking, forgetting seems not to be an option at all. Rather, public amnesia means the non-addressing (Nicht-Thematisierung) of memory contents that are formally relegated to oblivion, while the very act of such a declaration implicitly acknowledges their unabated cognitive presence. By the very admonishment to forget, the past is precisely not forgotten; rather, it is not publicly or officially addressed. And by such “non-addressing”, officially repressing memory content from public discourse, ‘dire past’ may become a festering issue. Memory contents remain in fact publicly well known and thus capable to resurface time and again. The paper trys lay some theoretical groundwork for such a perspective.