Psychoanalysis, Reparation, and Historical Memory

In this paper, I will argue that remembering is a form of reparation and that there is a traduced form of remembering-as-manic-reparation.1 They look the same, but reparation is based on concern for damage to the other, while manic reparation is based on narcissistic aggrandizement and contempt for the other. Remembering as reparation includes an awareness of an attack upon an object, which drives a reparative process. By contrast, remembering as manic reparation controls memory, one form of which is to recast it into a defensive, narcissistic memory organization.

Reparation is driven by guilt. To remember as reparation is to suffer guilt. It is also to be drawn into falsifying memory in order to avoid guilt: reparation can then take on a manic reparative coloring and symbols of reparation can become ambiguous as they become foci for different, conflicting groups. They can become enclaves of memories that differ from each other and depend on these differences. Each enclave can remember in its own way because another remembers differently, at the expense of a convergent memory. Symbols of remembering, such as memorials, are sites of ambivalence, representing both reparative and manic-reparative intentions, as well as intellectual, emotional, and political conflict.

I will address the problem of remembering and repairing through an analysis of ambivalence in German memory of the Nazi period, which is expressed through reparation distorted by its apparent near-kin, manic reparation. Sites of remembering portray this ambivalent reparative intention and gather