Indiana Law Journal Volume 80 Issue 3 Article 2 Summer 2005 In Search of a Theory of Public Memory: The State, the Individual, and Marcel Proust Brian F. Havel DePaul University College of Law, [email protected] Follow this and additional works at: https://www.repository.law.indiana.edu/ilj Part of the Evidence Commons, and the Public Law and Legal Theory Commons Recommended Citation Havel, Brian F. (2005) "In Search of a Theory of Public Memory: The State, the Individual, and Marcel Proust," Indiana Law Journal: Vol. 80 : Iss. 3 , Article 2. Available at: https://www.repository.law.indiana.edu/ilj/vol80/iss3/2 This Article is brought to you for free and open access by the Law School Journals at Digital Repository @ Maurer Law. It has been accepted for inclusion in Indiana Law Journal by an authorized editor of Digital Repository @ Maurer Law. For more information, please contact [email protected]. In Search of a Theory of Public Memory: The State, the Individual, and Marcel Proust BRIAN F. HAVEL* This Article posits the existence and pervasiveness of an official public (or State) memory that is primarily constructed using public law devices and statements of official policy. While official public memory serves the purposes of social control and stability, it also seeks to mask contestation and is, accordingly, neither complete nor authentic. Using philosophical, scientific, and literary sources, this Article demonstrates how the affective (emotional) memory that is unique to individuals creates a permanentpotential for contestation and authenticity and therefore sets a natural conceptual limit to the power of officially managed memory to contrive the past. To help establish this Article's initialclaim, PartI provides as an illustrationof the phenomenon of official public memory the legal and policy means by which the Austrian government sustainsan officialpublic memory ofAustria as a victim State of Nazi aggression. PartH builds upon the Austrian illustrationas well as examples from other States to expose the characteristic patterns-selectivity, constructivism, mythmaking (mythopoesis), incorporation, and presentism-by which government elites create and maintain a contrived ideological account of the past. It shows how States exploit law and the legal process in this task. In response to Partsl and I, the remainderof this Article (PartsIlI-V) is a searchfor a concept of public memory that provides a more contested (andauthentic) account of the past,and thus a challengeto the law-sustainedcontrivance of official public memory. Others have sought to open up contestation by proposing actions that occur entirely within the construct of law and legal institutions. This Article broadens the inquiry by seeking to support contestation (andauthenticity) using the work of other disciplines.Part III begins this quest for an alternative discourse by exploring the discipline of history, which is characterizedby archivistic efforts to discover the "true" past. History's unending revisionism, however, makes it unlikely to serve the purposes of social control and stability that give official memory its power. And history's relativistbiases makes it no more likely than official memory to create a broadly accurateportrait of the past. Part Professor of Law, Vice President of the International Human Rights Law Institute, and Director of the International Aviation Law Institute at DePaul University College of Law. I am grateful to a number of colleagues who read draft versions of this Article and contributed comments and suggestions. In particular, I would like to acknowledge my colleague M. Cherif Bassiouni (who will empathize with the Realpolitik cast of the final version), Andreas von Arnauld, faculty member at the law school of the Freie Universitat Berlin (for many insightful comments on German and Austrian official memory), and Graeme B. Dinwoodie, Chicago-Kent College of Law (for his patient readings of many drafts). My debts at DePaul include the Faculty Development Fund, for supporting my research, and my research assistants Kristina Waldron, Asif Sayani, and Shane Nix. I am grateful also to Francis J. and Vida Y. Ditter, English translators of Maurice Halbwachs's La Mmoire Collective (The Collective Memory) for graciously providing me with a copy of their translation, and to DePaul law librarian Daniel Ursini, who provided special acquisitions services in this regard. Finally, I am indebted to David Pellauer, Professor of Philosophy at DePaul University, for arranging for me to obtain an early viewing of the galleys of his joint translation of Paul Ricoeur's recently published, magisterial work, La Momoire, L'Histoire,L'Oubli [Memory, History, Forgetting]. INDIANA LAW JOURNAL [Vol. 80:605 IV considers whether social philosophy offers a more accessibleparadigm of public memory, one that is grounded in the lived experience of individuals. In particular, Part IV draws on the concept of non-official "collective memory" expounded by French social philosopherMaurice Halbwachs as an alternativeaccount of public memory. But this, too, is deficient as an authentic counterpoint to official public memory, because Halbwachsfails to exclude the effects of that very contrivancefrom his theory. Nor, importantly, does he account in his social theory of memory for a unique feature of individual lived experience, the scientifically verified condition of emotional or affective memory. Part V seeks to use literature, and in particularthe theory of transcendentmemory offered by Marcel Proustin In Search of Lost Time, to meet the ontological challenge of demonstrating how affective memory is the feature of individual lived experience that is most likely to sustain a reconceptualizedpublic memory. By representingaffective memory as an autonomous condition, this Article sets a cognitive, definitional,and even scientific limit to the power of official memory. Rather than finding a discourse to displace official public memory, therefore, this Article reaches the reassuring conclusion that affective memory allows an understanding of official public memory as intrinsically confronting a potentialfor contestation, and thereforefor authenticity. INTRODUCTION: POSITING AN OFFICIAL PUBLIC MEMORY .................................... 608 I. CLAIMING SOVEREIGNTY OVER THE PAST: AN EMPIRICAL STUDY ............... 620 A . Introduction ......................................................................................... 620 B. Austria After 1945: The Mantle of Victimhood .................................... 621 1. A New Legal Category: The State Treaty ..................................... 622 2. More Legal Invention: Adopting Permanent Neutrality ................ 625 C. The 2000 Forcedand Slave Labor Negotiations: Redefining Responsibilityfor the Past................................................. 626 D. Conclusion ........................................................................................... 629 II. CLAIMING SOVEREIGNTY OVER THE PAST: EXPOSING THE CHARACTERISTIC PATTERNS OF OFFICIAL PUBLIC M EMORY .......................................................................... 631 A . Introduction ......................................................................................... 631 B. From Case Study to CharacteristicPatterns ....................................... 631 1. A Summary of the Characteristic Patterns .................................... 631 2. Derivation of the Characteristic Patterns ...................................... 632 a. Selectivity .............................................................................. 632 b. Constructivism ....................................................................... 635 c. M ythopoesis ........................................................................... 638 d. Incorporation ......................................................................... 647 (1) Reflections on the Empirical Study ................................ 647 (2) The Incorporative Devices of Public M em ory ............................................................... 652 e. Presentism .............................................................................. 665 C. Official Public Memory and the Power of Law ................................... 667 D . C onclusion ........................................................................................... 669 2005] IN SEARCH OF A THEORY OF PUBLIC MEMORY III. EXPLORING AN ALTERNATIVE MODEL OF PUBLIC MEMORY: THE DISCIPLINE OF HISTORY ........................................................................ 670 A . Introduction ......................................................................................... 670 B. History as Chronique ........................................................................... 671 C. Weaknesses of the Chronique Model of History................................... 675 1. History and Contestability ............................................................ 675 2. The Interpretive Fallacy ........................................................... 678 D. History on Trial: An EmpiricalStudy .................................................. 680 E. Conclusion ........................................................................................... 684 IV. RESTORING THE INDIVIDUAL TO THE REALM OF PUBLIC MEMORY: MAURICE HALBWACHS AND A NOTION OF COLLECTIVE MEMORY ............... 685 A . Introduction ........................................................................................ 685 B. The Mediated Past of Official