Roberto Brodsky--The Uncertain Territory of Memory--

From Roberto Brodsky--Memory and Monumentalization--World World Literature Today

RB: The problem with monumentalization is that something is put in place to later forget it. The best way to forget something, and that which constitutes its discursive power, its sign, is to monumentalize it. It is to erect a building, a statue, a memorial, a symbol that allows us to refer to that monumental tragedy, epic, resistance, or whatever, and, by extension, to pass it into oblivion and to create a new territory. But on the other hand, I think that it is important to create a space for memory and the different representations of the past because they need a space. What type of place is that? That is the question. What place? Is it in the monuments? Is it in the institutions? In civil society? In grassroots groups? Or in art itself? I think that is the question, and I do not really know what place that is. I know that my place, or a possible place, is in fiction—in the sense that it is in fiction that we might represent the presence of memory, working “active” memory, as we discussed—a type of memory that is constantly rearticulated from one day to the next. For me, fiction is the space where it is possible to articulate discourses of memory and of the present that enable us to look at the events of the past in a less deceitful way. In fiction we might voice memories of past epic myths of the resistance, as well as the need to anchor them down in the present. Each of us finds our way, ---
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