A diversity of (post)memories

When schools visit the Nationalmusée um Fëschmaart’s exhibition about the Portuguese Carnation Revolution, La révolution de 1974, the participants, including most teachers, are too young to have memories of their own of that time. Nonetheless, many pupils with a Portuguese-speaking background bring not only some knowledge about the events, but they react and comment in a way that is personal, bringing true emotions to the visit. These emotions are triggered by memories that are not their own, but “second-hand” memories of their parents or grandparents relating to events the older generation(s) experienced. And yet, they come across as real and strong, as if they were the children’s and grandchildren’s own memories. These second and third generation memories are often called post-memories.

Why memories?

Memory, and post-memory even more so, are often deemed unreliable because they are subjective and there are seldom historical sources to back them up. Adding to memory’s bad reputation are the contradictions we find in different accounts of the same event. Each person remembers differently, even when the different “rememberers” are all being truthful. Still, society relies on mnemonic accounts, for example in witness statements in court or in truth commissions. What contribution can memory make when looking at the past and the way memories relate to historical accounts?

When a pupil of Angolan descent reveals that his father was imprisoned despite not having committed any crimes, just because “that’s how things were” in Angola, and then leaves it at that, there are indeed facts that are missing. There is no date, no specific region or city, no context to explain why this man went to prison. He could have been a combatant of one of the factions in the 1975–2002 civil war, an opponent of the dictatorship that governed the country, or merely randomly denounced for personal reasons. What we do know is that he was locked up, not for a crime he committed, but because he was deemed undesirable or dangerous.

In a group visit it is not possible to follow up on such observations and therefore they must stand on their own. They are spontaneous and unverifiable snippets, and yet they are an important contribution to the study and understanding of the events they refer to. The most important contribution of this personal story lies not in its (missing) facts, but in what it tells us about what abuse of power looks like in concrete terms, what arbitrary persecutions in a war-torn or in a dictatorial post-war Angola meant in practice and how they shaped people’s lives.

More importantly, we learn how this event impacted the father and the next generation(s): it was handed down and made a strong impression in the son’s mind. This post-memory is so vivid that, when confronted with the history of post-colonial Angola on the museum walls, he spontaneously shared it with his classmates, who apparently had never heard it before. By sharing this family memory during the visit, he added to a different kind of knowledge about that place and time. The confessional nature of memories can contribute to a more concrete knowledge about what it feels like and how it is to live and be caught in the politics of war and dictatorship that arbitrarily persecutes and imprisons people.

My memory invites your memory

At the same time, the memories shared by one person prompt others to share their memories too. “I know my grandfather was a prisoner in a Gulag, but he never talked about it,” an adult confided, proving that memories of one injustice do not overshadow or compete with other traumatic memories, but may even help to bring them back to life. Thus, the violence in Angola creates space for a violent memory of the Soviet Union to surface that still lives in a grandchild’s mind.

Personal mnemonic accounts can challenge and even contradict an established narrative about historical events. Memories that relate to silenced, unacknowledged, even denied suffering can shed additional light on history. This is often the case with the memories of individuals belonging to a group, ethnicity or nation who were the perpetrators or at least certainly not victims. “We were born and lived all our lives in Africa. And then they kicked us out!” We often hear this or similar statements from the so-called returnees from Portugal’s African colonies. Individually, some may think they have done no harm, but they are still implicated in the exploitation and racism of the colonial project. They, too, have traumatic memories, as they had to leave their lives and possessions behind, fleeing the violence that erupted during the process of decolonisation. These individual memories complicate the historical decolonisation narrative.

As personal memories and post-memories add new layers and illuminate hitherto unexplored aspects of the past, the line that separates the categories of victims and perpetrators becomes blurred. It is, however, important to frame these memories in a way that avoids historical revisionism but rather invites us to look more closely and listen more carefully to the information we have about a given event.

Remembering is about the future

One of the many positive outcomes of memory studies is the impact this engagement with the past has on the present, and even on the future. When we take an interest in how historical events impacted the lives of everyday people on both sides of a divide, and how they remember and narrate these events, we learn to look beyond our personal, group or national circumstances. Because memories and remembering affect us in the present and the way we think, memories also help shape the future.

This futurity of memory gains yet another dimension when we consider memories of happy and hopeful moments. Happy memories often relate to and re-enact moments of hope: “When my father heard I’d be coming to this exhibition, he spent the weekend talking about the Revolution. We also listened to songs from that time.” This father is most probably too young to have memories of the Carnation Revolution himself, but the memories of the previous generation have nourished his perception of the sense of joy and hope associated with this event. His daughter’s visit to the exhibition triggered his memories of his parents’ memories of revolutionary hope that he now shared with his daughter.

The exhibition La révolution de 1974. Des rues de Lisbonne au Luxembourg is on view at the Nationalmusée um Fëschmaart until 5 January 2025.

Text: Vera Herold - Photos: Éric Chenal / MNAHA

Source: MuseoMag N°IV 2024