One of the most fascinating issues culture has invented is how it deals with time. Although everything happens everywhere in present time, language allows us to dispose of past and future, too. This is trivial, but let us forget that. This 3-in-1 distinction is strong enough to admonish us to avert from last year's snow and not to reflect on unlaid eggs to be at the peak of time. And if that was not enough, many languages even construct the past of the past (After he had diligently dissected his wife, he drank a glass of port in the libraray), the future of the past (He assured me he was going to bridle his pyromanic inclinations two days before his death by fire.) just like the past of the future (I shall wisely turn my back to this mean old world after I shall have blown it up) and, albeit less elegantly, the future of the future (In twenty years' time we shall imagine one day we shall not wish to be cloned anymore). This proves a truly infantile joy to dissolve and recombine time units.
This always strikes us somewhat dramatically whenever past and future do not coincide temporally in the present (for this goes without saying) but mentally. That is, whenever we are not concerned with the past, but with the possible effects of a reflection on history - the possible future of the present reflection on the past. This management of time reveals itself in special jubilees and commemorative days, when we are assured there has been no oblivion and will not be. So it is this which makes history ambiguous; in the wide sense it comprises everything that happened prior to the present, the past. In the specific sense which has more impact on present and future it merely covers the remembered past. And it is this impact on the present which sometimes is controversial, for here history does not simply mean (un)known events in the past, but their implications for the present. Meanings and implications always cause dissense, because they result from communicative bargaining. So grammatically speaking history concerns both the past and the present perfect.
Since a few years some people have been reproaching others with instrumentalizing history. Something has happened, and being aware of that is meant to have consequences. This reproach aims at the exact difference between history in the narrow and in the broach sense, thus implying that the narrow aspect, its cultural meaning, is inadmissibly confused with the broader aspect, its mere facticity - for highly present purposes. This - if it only was pointed out that way - marks a crisis resulting from a paradoxical dealing with history. Anyway it is not very constructive, for it has not struggled through yet to advocate forgetting relevant historical knwoledge, that is declaring it as irrelevant. But that can be its only purpose if it is to be more than just diffuse uneasiness.
That kind of uneasiness is largley due to the fact one must talk the more about history the more distant it is - on condition one wants to secure reminder and claim to have learned from history. All the same, this results in an accumulated historical agenda setting in the present which is often considered redundant and uninformative. In the end public opinion will feel disgusted, maybe even inclined to break a taboo. This is what is behind any endeavour to close an issue: We know what happened and that it is over. Of course, this attitude is paradoxical, too. After all, an end cannot be publically decreed. Quite the contrary, it comes to an end by resigning from demanding an end. The other way round: the more avidly a debate is to be closed, the longer it will last. This is because normality is not communicable. It can only become an issue if it is viewed from an anomal perspective. This way the controversy aggravates. This way the newspaper columns are replenished.
It is absurd for historical committers to demand their victims should forget; it is even more absurd for the committers to regard themselves as victims. For in the first case one pretends past has nothing to do with present and future. In the second case it is confused with them. After all, we should remember it is the difference, sometimes the conflict between them which structures time.
This always strikes us somewhat dramatically whenever past and future do not coincide temporally in the present (for this goes without saying) but mentally. That is, whenever we are not concerned with the past, but with the possible effects of a reflection on history - the possible future of the present reflection on the past. This management of time reveals itself in special jubilees and commemorative days, when we are assured there has been no oblivion and will not be. So it is this which makes history ambiguous; in the wide sense it comprises everything that happened prior to the present, the past. In the specific sense which has more impact on present and future it merely covers the remembered past. And it is this impact on the present which sometimes is controversial, for here history does not simply mean (un)known events in the past, but their implications for the present. Meanings and implications always cause dissense, because they result from communicative bargaining. So grammatically speaking history concerns both the past and the present perfect.
Since a few years some people have been reproaching others with instrumentalizing history. Something has happened, and being aware of that is meant to have consequences. This reproach aims at the exact difference between history in the narrow and in the broach sense, thus implying that the narrow aspect, its cultural meaning, is inadmissibly confused with the broader aspect, its mere facticity - for highly present purposes. This - if it only was pointed out that way - marks a crisis resulting from a paradoxical dealing with history. Anyway it is not very constructive, for it has not struggled through yet to advocate forgetting relevant historical knwoledge, that is declaring it as irrelevant. But that can be its only purpose if it is to be more than just diffuse uneasiness.
That kind of uneasiness is largley due to the fact one must talk the more about history the more distant it is - on condition one wants to secure reminder and claim to have learned from history. All the same, this results in an accumulated historical agenda setting in the present which is often considered redundant and uninformative. In the end public opinion will feel disgusted, maybe even inclined to break a taboo. This is what is behind any endeavour to close an issue: We know what happened and that it is over. Of course, this attitude is paradoxical, too. After all, an end cannot be publically decreed. Quite the contrary, it comes to an end by resigning from demanding an end. The other way round: the more avidly a debate is to be closed, the longer it will last. This is because normality is not communicable. It can only become an issue if it is viewed from an anomal perspective. This way the controversy aggravates. This way the newspaper columns are replenished.
It is absurd for historical committers to demand their victims should forget; it is even more absurd for the committers to regard themselves as victims. For in the first case one pretends past has nothing to do with present and future. In the second case it is confused with them. After all, we should remember it is the difference, sometimes the conflict between them which structures time.
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