Reimagining Communities: Opening up History to the Memory of Others

Abstract

There comes a time when transmitting the history of a national past fails the context of the political present. France and Germany have shared tortuous historical experiences, yet the two are at the forefront of an unprecedented pedagogical development: for the first time ever, two nation-states have created a common history textbook that is used in their senior secondary schools. As such, each country, to borrow Ernst Gellner’s formula, has abandoned – qua this textbook – its monopoly of legitimate education. Histoire/Geschichte detaches history from its exclusive national past and introduces the learners to a post-national present. It speaks in a tone that is demanded by a different time and by the new conditions of peoples who are living in a common political space. This article reflects on the meaning and reach of this precedent by first analysing the explicit political and pedagogical explanations inherent to the book. It then identifies and investigates some of the less evident effects of the textbook relating to rethinking war and history, rethinking the monopoly of education, rethinking national identity, and to offering another path to rapprochement.

School textbooks, peace and conflict: an introduction

“…They, however, can also be part of peacebuilding and reconciliation processes and strategies. While the work of bilateral and multilateral textbook commissions has largely been acclaimed 42 , studies on curricula and textbook reforms in the context of post-civil war peacebuilding efforts have been much more critical. The analysis of school textbooks can also enrich constructivist peace and conflict studies, as textbooks are indicators of and means for reproducing dominant discourses and important societal cleavages.…”

Postnational memory: Narrating the Holocaust and the Nakba

“…In fact, international deliberations on memory already take place in historical bilateral commissions where historians from warring nations review each other's textbooks and issue recommendations for change. The work of these commissions is often qualified as 'postnational' because the deliberating parties abandon their monopoly to legitimate education and detach their history from its exclusive national mould (Durand and Kaempf 2014). As I will show later, this is true only when considering the communicative dimension, but not necessarily when considering others.…”

Plotting stories after war: Toward a methodology for negotiating identity

“…Nations mourn their dead, not the other’s, and the narration of their death is meant to strengthen unity and encourage sacrifice (Renan, 1990), not to express regret and ask for forgiveness. This is perhaps why acknowledging past atrocities and opening up one’s national narrative to the other’s suffering is said to indicate a shift from nationalism toward post-nationalism (Durand and Kaempf, 2014; Habermas, 2001; Pappe, 1997; Pupo, 2008; Ram, 1998).…”

“…Like war, peace is negotiated twice: the first time to stop the bloodshed on the battlefield; the second time to reconcile the resentful memories that flow from this bloodshed. We observe these negotiations when historians meet in bilateral historical commissions to review their respective nations’ textbooks (Barkan, 2009; Durand and Kaempf, 2014; Falk, 2008; Karn, 2006), when rival governments discuss conflicting interpretations of the past (Lustick, 2014; Rosoux, 2001a, 2001b), and when members of divided societies deliberate about their traumatic past (Torpey, 2001).…”