4. W.I.H.E. Festival: Re-Member - Andrew Towgood - Plumpton, England

 To Remember you must Dismember - Andrew Towgood

Latin rememorari "recall to mind, remember," from re- "again" (see re-) + memorari "be mindful of," Latin de "take away" (see de-) + membrum "limb"

The act of remembering is a flaky one - unreflexive and often faulty attaching as it does to the ego. To truly remember you must dis-member - a painful process.

At 60 I spend a lot of time dis-memberring my remembering - trying to construct a personally and morally satisfying narrative arc of my life - sometimes, on good days my remembered life seems to have arrived smugly and satisfyingly at a ‘good’ full stop - something I can reflect on as valuable and great. Other times the dis-membering brings cognitive dissonance between where I think I should have arrived and where my examination says I have dissatisfyingly/distressingly/too late arrived at to do any remedial work.

Buddhism and other mindful practices suggest we should not look to the past or the future - rather there should be no ‘bringing to mind’/remembering - that project can only lead to suffering as we rehash and try to perfect what is not perfectable; to consolidate the ego or ‘me’ on a rock of remembrance when all is really a stream of stimuli, impulses, distractions, misconceptions… Buddhism encourages one to let go of the ‘me’ to recognise ‘anatta’ the no self - to realise this is to be released from the endless cycle of suffering and reach Nirvana.

BREXIT, COVID, BLACK LIVES MATTER, #ME TOO - these are moments of distressing dis-membering, remembering and misremembering for both sides of the divide - if one wants to unsubtly see these things as divides - as William Davies in the LRB (Vol 42 - 30 July 2020) suggests in ‘Who am I prepared to kill?’ in a discussion about the philosopher and jurist Carl Schmitt who argued that democracy could be improved if we limited the public’s consent or disapproval; to the simple options of ‘yea’ ‘nay’ or just silence. ‘Public opinion is the modern type of acclamation’ Davies takes the discussion from Schmitt’s 1920’s Germany to the current technology of facebook and its likes and dislikes/Thumbs up or down acclamation of a person's hairstyle or the latest cat antics - or Twitter’s Covfefe or instagram where the aim is, as Websites like ‘History Matters’ who use the Yea or Nay model, to bypass the complexities of history to simplify and prevent a dismembering of ‘a’ remembered history. Williams argues this problem is on both sides of the divide, liberals and conservatives taking the ‘you're either for me or against me’ route of yea or nay. 

This manner of discourse, Williams argues, short circuits the real work of fairly and justly examining the ‘other sides’ beliefs and views consigning them to the ‘basket of deplorables’. Increasingly even the simple examination of another's view has become tantamount to agreeing with it and receiving a huge ‘nay’ of disapproval. I recently fell out with my remainer friends when I suggested that BREXITEERs did have some valid points and arguments - for my friends saying that there were good arguments against being a member of the EU was the same as BEING a BREXITEER. My attempt to dis-member, as they saw it, their remembering of what the EU did for us - remember what the Romans gave us but on balance…..???!!!!

When it comes to black lives matter the dismembering and remembering is even more fraught with the added weight of morality. For many white people, myself included, to find that your ancestors owned slaves throws remembered history into moral chaos and some, rather than stand for the cognitively distressing dismembering of their view of their ancestors and by extension their identity, refuse like a horse at a jump that seems too high. Digging their heels in like my sister inlaw who, when I suggested that New Zealand should rename the port of Picton at the top of the south island where the ferries from Wellington disgorge the goods and people traveling south, replied that:

Typically we have Maori activists defacing a Captain Hamilton statue saying he was a murderer and a rapist which is not true but Hamilton Council removed the statue anyway. It does not change anything, does not change the past. The Maori had slaves, regularly tortured them and quite often ate them. Strange that they seem to forget that and not bring it up at this time. The Africans also took slaves and still do.

I don’t think she said this because she wants to be racist but because she believes she is not. In the dismembering of her history she has to distressingly cognitively see herself as benefiting from our aggressor ancestors that took, with much injustice, Maori land. She would have to consider repayment, restitution, say ‘I’m sorry’ feel like NZ was not justly ‘her country’. This is a lot to ask and it's painful. Of course this does not mean that this hard and painful work should not be done!

In an online lesson thinking about Black lives matter and statues put up to the worthies of the UK - I suggested that Churchill was a racist to the absolute fury of one of my pupils who said they would leave the class and not return ever to my lessons. The myths of a nation run deep and many find their very identity and value challenged.

The Democrates in the US do not have a great history when it comes to black lives matter - When Republican Lincon was shot by Wilkes-Booth Andrew Jackson, a naisant Democrat was elevated to the Presidency and he was vehemently against the ending of slavery - indeed the democratic movement in the US has its roots in popularlism particularly in the south and opposition to equal participation of black people. When reconstruction (1865-1877) began after the civil war the US Constitution was radically altered (amendments 13, 14 and 15) - Eric Foner (How the Civil War and Reconstruction Remade the Constitution) argues it was rewritten making huge strides in equality for black people to participate in US democracy and civil life. Historians post reconstruction in the first half of the 20th century wrote texts that ‘remembered’ the reconstruction period 1865-1877 as one of calamity and a crusade of hate and social equality. The historian Dunning wrote in his book Reconstruction, Political and Economic, 1865-77 (1907)  ‘with civil rights and political power, not won, but almost forced upon him, he [the negro] came gradually to understand and crave those more elusive privileges that constitute social equality ...the demand for mixed schools, ....prohihbition of discrimination between races in hotels and theatres and even in the hideous crime against white woman hood which now assumed new meaning in the annals of outrage.’ This became the ‘remembered’ history that enabled the south to continue/reinstate after the short flourishing of reconstruction the old tropes about black people and prevent them voting and even ensuring conservative interpretations of the new amendments that meant that black people in the south could not vote or attend the same schools as white people.

The dis-membering led by historians like WEB DuBois and Froner means that, like my sister in law, many Americans have to face the pain of the reconstructed history that tells a different story about reconstruction - that it was not a ‘calamity’ indeed it was hugely and revolutionary with huge numbers of black people voting and and 16 new black members of Congress elected but it was a short lived success. And we have our work here in the UK - websites like History Matters using the ‘aye’ or ‘nay’ approbation approach simplify history into good and bad, right and wrong, for or against divide. To remember is to dis-member - its painful but necessary work and it never ends - I suspect that our heirs will look at us with disgust because we enslaved, killed and ate animals.