‘Memory must be defended’: Beyond the politics of mnemonical security

Abstract

Abstract. This article supplements and extends the ontological security theory in International Relations (IR) by conceptualizing the notion of mnemonical security. It engages critically the securitization of memory as a means of making certain historical remembrances secure by delegitimizing or outright criminalizing others. The securitization of historical memory by means of law tends but to reproduce a sense of insecurity among its contesters. To move beyond the politics of mnemonical security, two lines of action are outlined in the paper: (i) the desecuritization of social remembrance in order to allow for its repoliticization, and (ii) the rethinking of the Self-Other relationship in mnemonic conflicts. A radically democratic, agonistic memory politics is called for that would cease from the knee-jerk treatment of the issues of identity, memory and history as problems of security. Rather than trying to secure the insecurable, a genuinely agonistic mnemonic pluralism would enable to question different interpretations of the past, instead of pre-defining national or regional positions on legitimate remembrance in ontological security terms. IntroductionJust like families should have the right to complete their own photo albums, such a right should also be reserved for states and nations. Otherwise we would be asked to undress ourselves completely, so that our identity could be utterly destroyed. ...attacks on the identity [are] targeted in the first place [at] ...the most important part of our identity Ð its core part. The core part is made of our inheritance. Of what we are and what is our inherent being like. That is precisely why all states, nations and people hold dear the story of their origins and inception...We should not deceive ourselves that our perseverance could be guaranteed exclusively with the sword of truth (Aaviksoo, 2011). Besides raising major ontological and epistemological questions about determining the limits of a collective 'self', anthropomorphizing the state and its collective 'memory', we are presented with a vision of the world where war serves as a key for understanding politics. 'Our memory must be defended' emerges as a variation of the omnipresent security-discourse, as yet another ringtone of the familiar 'society must be defended '-logic (see Foucault, 2003). Pursuing the security of the biographical self-narrative of the state (Berenskoetter, 2014) (of which mnemonical narratives occupy a central place) 1 as part of the state«s security policy invites us 1 Cf. the concepts of ontological narratives (which are used to define who we are, which, in turn, can be a precondition on knowing what to do) and public narratives (Somers, 1994:618-619).

Remains of the Soviet Past in Estonia

“…The paradox, however, is that the securitisation of 'memory' and identity (making certain historical remembrances secure by delegitimising others) leads to new dilemmas and a reduced sense of security (Mälksoo 2015). Also, the interpretation of the past and the framing of the inherited becomes a geopolitical battleground.…”

Postcolonial bordering and ontological insecurities

“…As Mälksoo insists, '[t]he perils of collapsing ontological security and the securitization of identity should thus be recognized whenever 'historical memory' is summoned in discourses and practices of security policy'. 18 Mälksoo is here concerned with the depoliticising effects of assuming that individuals, groups and states seek ontological security on the same terms.…”

The Holocaust: Commemorated but not remembered? Post‐colonial and post‐traumatic perspectives on the reception of the Holocaust memory discourse in Poland

“…People remember not in order to record the past events (which is the task of historians) but largely “in order to seek stability and purpose in existence” (Törnqvist‐Plewa, : 158). While doing this, they tend to silence those episodes of history that form a threat to their feeling of security (Bauer, : 40) which can be called a policy of mnemonic security that secures certain forms and contents of memory by delegitimizing or even criminalizing others (Mälksoo, : 221).…”

“…The encounter with the (“cosmopolitanized”) discourse of the Holocaust in the 1990s, advocated by a part of the nation's intellectual and political elite, meant for many Poles an invasion of an entirely different approach to memory. Instead of the antagonistic pattern in which a group's memory serves as a resource in the process of building ontological security through marginalizing or erasing the past of other groups, they had been proposed an agonistic pattern, in which the memories of others have legitimate place within “mnemonic pluralism” that “would enable different interpretations of the past to be questioned, in place of pre‐defining national or regional positions on legitimate remembrance in ontological security terms” (Mälksoo, : 221).…”