Public Forgetting
Forgetting is usually juxtaposed with memory as its opposite in a negative way: it is seen as the loss of the ability to remember, or, ironically, as the inevitable process of distortion or dissolution that accompanies attempts to commemorate the past. The civic emphasis on the crucial importance of preserving lessons from the past to prevent us from repeating mistakes that led to violence and injustice, invoked most poignantly in the call of “Never again” from Holocaust survivors, tends to...
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"Reconsiders the negative status attributed to forgetting in both academic and popular discussions of public memory. Demonstrates how a community may adopt idioms of forgetting in order to create new and beneficial standards of public judgment concerning the lessons and responsibilities of its shared past"--Provided by publisher.
Contents\ Acknowledgments\ Introduction\ Part 1. Forgetting in Public Life: An Idiomatic History of the Present\ 1. The Two Rivers, Past and Present\ 2. Forgetting Without Oblivion\ Part 2. Public Forgetting: Alternate Histories, New Heuristics\ 3. Hallowed Ground, Hollow Memory: Rhetorical Form and Commemorative Politics on September 11, 2002\ 4. Historical Forgetting: John W. Draper and the Rhetorical Dimensions of History\ 5. Cultural Forgetting: The “Timeless Now” of Nomadic Memories\ 6. Moral and Political Forgetting: Abraham Lincoln’s Gettysburg Address and Second Inaugural\ Conclusion\ Notes\ References\ Index
