Challenged Histories and Collective Self-Concepts: Politics in History, Memory, and Time

Abstract

Societies, like individuals, strive to have positive self-concepts. They endow stories of their origin and associate their course through history with ethical principles that attest to who they are and how they want to be seen. Such principles define the society for its members and for the world at large. But all societies must at some time confront evidence of actions undertaken in their name that violate their fundamental principles and conflict with their desired self-image. Following a glance at the basic elements of the politics of history and identity, the author suggests two sources of the tensions between “bad acts” and positive self-concepts. Both relate to shifts in developmental time. First, actions not considered wrong when they were undertaken in the past are inconsistent with current expectation. Second, transsocietal differences in normative frameworks lead to cross-boundary criticisms of behavior in which the critics' societies likely engaged at an earlier time. Accusations or criticisms generally meet with defensive, often hostile responses. Hypocrisy tends to rule in most cases, with little or no normative learning.