Pablo Picasso at the beach.
In 2014, I travelled to Russia to study Jewish life during the late Soviet period, and to collect oral histories. Most of my relatives emigrated to the US from the Russian Empire in the early 1900s to escape anti-Semitism, and this project was my attempt to piece together, if not my own family history, then what could have been my family history.
While first-hand accounts of almost any subject are prone to distortion and lapses in memory (intentional or not), the collection of oral history within a Jewish tradition presents a specific set of challenges. Oral history has become a hallmark of Jewish culture and of the attempt to come to terms with the trauma of the Holocaust. Phrases such as ‘never forget’ are ubiquitous, and form the basis for the preservation of memory. The word ‘preservation’ itself suggests an embalmment of a narrative. In a tribute to the victims of oppression and horror, we give voice to those who were silenced.
[Helen Haft, "Telling Memories", Aeon]
Part of memory, of course, is involved in the construction of identity. Who am I and how can I validate what distinguishes me from you? While the personal aspects of memory are easily grasped in a therapist's office, the collective and social nature of memory is fraught with peril. How many times has one uncle's memory of a family event threatened the integrity of the family identity?
"Looking at oneself in the mirror is a self-cancelling phenomenon. Eyes looking into eyes make a hole which spreads out and renders one invisible. I had seen more of myself in that single glimpse of a ghostly image in the pier mirror, not knowing it was I."
[Walker Percy, Lancelot]
As the mother of a child on the ASD spectrum and the daughter of political defectors, I am fascinated by the social boundaries of memory. A person who never met another person would have no reason to speak. He would remain speechless. Our social and physical environment gives us a space and means in which to define ourselves against others of the same type. To be a singular specimen needs no definition-- one grows accustomed to being foreign.
"...It says in the Kabbalah if you can't get off the ground you should stay on the ground. ... unless Adam and Eve face each other, God does not sit on his throne, and somehow the male and female parts of me refuse to encounter one another tonight-- and God does not sit on his throne."
[Leonard Cohen to an Israeli audience at an early concert]
When I jokingly told friends that the rise of Trump killed Leonard Cohen, I discovered a musical distance that sounded political. Those friends who supported Trump had never heard of Cohen-- "Who's that? Was he Jewish? Oh is that the Canadian guy?"-- whereas my liberal, freedom-hungry friends mourned the loss of freedom alongside the loss of the melancholy baritone that carried them through first kisses and break-ups and abortions.
"Why do you like depressing music? That guy needs to get a grip."
[Trump friend after listening to Cohen's "The Gypsy's Wife"]
As a liberal, my tolerance for vast degrees of uncertainty and dissatisfaction reached an apex in this election. I still can't believe the story my Trump-loving friends tell themselves about America. I can't believe how insecure they must be to heed the promise of security frothing from the lips of a rabid nut-job in a stadium. I can't believe I discounted their obsession with football teams as mere entertainment.
Trying to trace a line from November 2016 to the present is difficult. I am limited by my liberalism and tolerance. I am sickened by my own disbelief and desire to find socioeconomic excuses for blatant racism and misogyny. As if I didn't know about the power of the red pill from my days in DC. As if there is friendly ecological co-existence between feminists and pick-up artists. As if a jerk by any other name would smell as sweet.
And yet memory has a fatalistic undercurrent. We need to know why. We need to connect points into a line and say a-ha. We narrate the past as if we had no choice except to wind up at this particular present. Haft again:
Though the Jewish community in Russia today is largely thriving, this family had frozen time for themselves at the moment of emigration. By denying the existence of potential alternatives, they were preventing a re-evaluation of memory, the past, and even the present.
While the desire to validate the tragic decision to leave can prevent a re-evaluation of the past, preclude analysis and definitively stamp out alternatives, the flipside was the re-assertion of a false power over choice, and a downplaying of anti-Semitism and the difficulty involved in making the decision to emigrate.
The tension between narratives that justify and narratives that inspire seems to be related to the power accorded pain. Much of the anti-Trump resistance right now congeals around the pain illiberal democracy brings to our friends and family in minority groups or under-privileged status. Haft observes:
...there was a dichotomy between those who, 25 years after the collapse of the Soviet Union, tailored their memories to dull the pain of their past, and those who shaped their memories to emphasise and hold on to that pain. In many narratives, there was a denial of any memory that diverged from their own, and even denials of their former selves. But while myth-making and a reworking of memory was undoubtedly taking place, that didn’t undermine the validity of what was being said and felt, nor does it mean that the interviewees were intentionally distorting history.
At the Thanksgiving turkey table, many of us were forced to reconcile our narratives of disbelief and horror with the triumphalist perspectives of Trump apologetics. Political theology has never been so complicated and alienating.
The sacredness of memory, and the taboo associated with examining it, can preclude analysis, denying a voice to those, such as Slava, Chlenov and Yelena, who have something legitimate to say that does not fit into a convenient narrative, or suggests one we might not want to hear. It also makes it uncomfortable to identify the faults in what is being spoken by those same people. While facts are not negotiable, our interpretations and experiences are never unanimous, and clashes of narratives lend insight into the deep internal conflicts that each person faced and continues to face.
Memory, by its very nature, is never fully formed. Preservation of memory is vital, but the genre of oral history does not immunise speakers or their words from questioning. Memory is not stagnant, but constantly changing and continually shaped by our present and the stories we tell ourselves. It is fallible, as are our perceptions, interpretations and the conclusions we draw from events. It is unnatural not to question or speak back to the stories we hear. Leaving memory unexamined, and granting it the status of sacred or untouchable history, does memory itself a great injustice.
I leave you to your memories that may or may not MAGA. I leave you to tiny acts of unceasing resistance. I end these thoughts with the shrapnel of a poem by Anne Sexton... the only weapon I use without regret...
And we are magic talking to itself,
noisy and alone. I am queen of all my sins
forgotten. Am I still lost?
Once I was beautiful. Now I am myself.
