Memory politics in the future tense: Exceptionalism, race, and insurrection in America

Abstract

The grounding myth of American collective memory is built on the idea of America as a promise, what it shall be. Crises place futures in doubt. Against these two considerations, this article examines how the future can be used to shape the past. In the American context, the future as a general promise is invoked in times of crisis to reassure a nation by way of laundering difficult pasts so as to fit a narrative of progress in spite of the continued presence and recursive nature of these pasts. In the immediate wake of the 2021 Capitol Insurrection, another crisis (itself a harbinger of crises to come), the 2000 Bush v Gore decision, was rewritten as an exemplar of American exceptionalism rather than a stain on it. Beyond displaying the intricate relationship between future and past in collective memory, the case highlights how this operation only works to further neglect the racism and unresolved pasts entrenched in the myth of exceptionalism that motivated the Capitol Riot.

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“…It is rooted in 'an unwavering belief in the uniqueness of the US' and a 'superiority that is self-evident and beyond reproach ' (2009: 260). Furthermore, Szpunar (2021) argues that US exceptionalism is framed as 'a promise, a perpetually unfinished project ' (2021: 1273) and that the 'the myth functions not to affirm empirical reality but to reassure Americans in spite of empirical reality' (2021: 1274). As such, US exceptionalism works to maintain a certain sense of national identity and pride, in addition to justifying its foreign policy and interventions abroad.…”