Tuesday 14 September 2010

history and its memory... memory and its history

While talking to people about the limitless possibilities of delving into aspects of memory... while some said it is scientifically proven that we do not remember things before the age of seven, to some one narrating their earliest memories as a child of eighteen months being pushed along in the parks of crystal palace... to observations on 'political dementia' - as in memories being methodically erased by rewriting of histories... i chanced upon an article that dr.meenu gaur had written sometime back and published in a Sarai post... shared below is an extract from it

No body talks about things such as the supply of electricity in the camps, for instance, which might be many times better than in Kashmir, where one may get electricity for merely an hour in a whole day in the bitter winters.

The Kashmiri migrants carry a miniaturized, idealized Kashmir in their hearts. The memory of Kashmir is also a ritual of remembrance. Some of these narratives stemming out of personal experiences might seem suspect when measured up to certain facts about the life of these migrants in Kashmir but nonetheless they hint at a complex reality. A complex reality which involves
a rejection of what the French historian Pierre Nora calls “the terrorism of historicized memory”.

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