James V. Wertsch - How Nations Remember: A Narrative Approach

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Oxford University Press 2021

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Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Names: Wertsch, James V., author.

Title: How nations remember : a narrative approach / James V. Wertsch.

Description: New York, NY : Oxford University Press, [2021] |

Includes bibliographical references and index.

Identifiers: LCCN 2020044249 (print) | LCCN 2020044250 (ebook) |

ISBN 9780197551462 (hardback) | ISBN 9780197551486 (epub)

Subjects: LCSH: NationalismPsychological aspects. | Collective memory. |

International relations.

Classification: LCC JC311 .W453 2021 (print) | LCC JC311 (ebook) |

DDC 909dc23

LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2020044249

LC ebook record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2020044250

DOI: 10.1093/oso/9780197551462.001.0001

To Zadie Morgan Roberts Wertsch

Anyone who has ever been in a family knows that individuals can disagree over the past. Who hasnt heard something like, But Dad, it just didnt happen that way!? Disagreements over the past also occur between entire groups, including large groups like nations, and these can encourage dangerous tension and conflict. This begs questions such as: How do members of a group end up with such striking agreement among themselves about the past? What happens when one group believes something about the past that another rejects out of hand? What if no amount of evidence produced by one group can dislodge the other groups belief about the past? And what happens when one group uses memory to encourage violence against another?

These questions take on special significance with the resurgence of nationalism around the world. After decades of assuming that globalization would continue its inexorable rise, nationalist and populist movements have sprung up in places ranging from Russia and Hungary to India and China. Of course, the United States qualifies as well with its recent calls for America first, decoupling, and the like. The reasons for these developments are puzzling, as are their consequences, but one thing that is clear is that they can impede forms of cooperation needed to deal with major global issues. As I write this, for example, the world is in the midst of the COVID-19 pandemic, and scientific inquiry that would normally and productively flow across borders has been stymied by disputes between American and Chinese leaders.

An even more unsettling case is climate change, where global cooperation is needed both for research and policy implementation. But here again, cooperation has been hampered as nationalist leaders insist on furthering local interests. Young people from around the world get it with regard to climate change and fully understand that carbon emissions have no regard for national boundaries. Many of them even see this as a debate between generations, rather than nations, but even in such cases where it is obvious that we are all in this together, nationalism has retained its power to pull people back into local communities and pit them against one another.

Scholars have long struggled to understand the hold that group identity can have over us. At an abstract level, discussions sometimes turn to a primordial tribalism that stems from our evolutionary origins, but if we wish to understand concrete cases, it is clear that shared memories about particular pasts must be taken into account. Memory plays a particularly important role in such cases because in contrast to attitudes and values, where we recognize group differences and can agree to disagree, memory is assumed to be about truth, which is a recipe for trouble when different groups have different accounts of the past.

The groups at issue may be religious, ethnic, generational, or familial, but my specific focus is on nations.