
Collective Forgetting: Permission to Forget
The editorial tracks the dual axis on which the issue rests: remembrance and forgetting. When erasure will never be complete, and forgiveness is not possible, what can collective forgetting offer?
From the letter of Michal B. Ron, guest editor of the special issue of Tohu, inviting contributions:
In the context of memory culture, commemoration propaganda, war, trauma, grief and mourning, we ask about forgetting. What is forgetting? What does remembering forget? How does remembering forget? What do we forget when we remember, and what do we forget to forget? What can art imagine in terms of the destructive aspects of forgetting as erasure, and the potentially positive power of forgetting towards a different reality?
Where would thinking about re-get and for-mind lead?
The special issue rests on a dual axis: remembrance and forgetting. When erasure will never be complete, and forgiveness is not possible, what can collective forgetting offer?
The editorial tracks the dual axis on which the issue rests: remembrance and forgetting. When erasure will never be complete, and forgiveness is not possible, what can collective forgetting offer?
Imagine, dear reader, waking up each day without a memory of those around you. Amir Nassar’s literary navigations meander between the total recall of Borges’s Funes the Memorious and the complete forgetfulness of diving into Lethe, river of the underworld. Is a life where one never forgets worth living?
Matt Hanson reviews how, during the summer of 2024, a trio of contemporary art programs in Turkey evoked the passion of historical dispossession, as it has claimed lands, cities, and homes from the Anatolian heartland to the Mesopotamian plain. The critic follows a tension between global art-world tourism that forgets localities and a reclaiming of the right and the freedom to forget by retaining the sovereignty of remembrance to preserve the root of histories and identities.
Large piles of rubble that remain after acts of destruction and forced displacement appear like temporary, monumental manifestations of “Contemporary Colonialist Sculpture.” They stand out in stark contrast to the lightweight and versatile construction used by the Bedouins, which it seeks to supplant, and as a tangible embodiment of the violent act of erasure and enclosure. The Common View collective learns from the Naqab/Negev Bedouins’ adaptability and resilience towards an alternative, equitable futures.
Three skulls: the one that does not speak, the one that does not hear, and the one that does not see. The years 1948, 2024, and 1967 are inscribed on their foreheads. They are adorned with wigs made from British maps of Mandatory Palestine, updated in Hebrew after the establishment of the State of Israel. Between them, a blazing fire rises toward the sky.
The word “Zerstört” (destroyed, in German) is inscribed into the concrete floor. Shira Wachsmann tries, in vain, to eliminate it. The words “ort” (place) and “stört” (disturbing) are still visible. The destroyed is still present.
Victoria Heifetz argues that in the dialog with Käthe Kollwitz, the artist’s fear of death, bereavement, and nothingness has been forgotten. Is forgetfulness an erasure? Like Kollwitz’s child clutching a mother who struggles with death, Heifetz holds on to herself and her drawings. Still, she says, to rebuild a present and a future, to change – you must let go.
For Mahmoud Darwish, while memory serves as a tool of resistance against the erasure of existence, it also represents another form of symbolic death for identity and history. This is because it enforces a kind of stagnation and immersion in old pain, trapping the individual in a cycle of grief and reflection on past losses. In his reading of "Memory for Forgetfulness," Ra'ad Abu Sa'ada questions, as a Gazan, the role of memory in the ongoing Palestinian struggle and in the collective Israeli identity, with a view toward the Holocaust, the besieged Beirut of 1982, and Gaza today.
For Palestinians living in historic Palestine and for those referred to as "Palestinian refugees," the Nakba (Catastrophe) of 1948 never ended. This memory shapes Palestinian identity, but is it a lack of narrative that has existed for decades? Nour Saed analyzes factors inhibiting Palestinian society from investing in the arts while emphasizing the importance of storytelling and documenting a national experience versus forgetfulness.
Have we ever heard anyone speak of collective forgetfulness? While the term "collective memory" exerts its power over us, it places a whip in our hands against our attempts at personal forgetfulness.