“Mnemonic Turns” in Historical Context. How Cultures of Memory Influence the Modern World

Theses about the “living” nature of the past, its ability to “return” and influence the present and the future have defined the contours of the so-called turn to memorial culture, which has been observed in Western humanities since the 1980s. The “memorial turn” marks the transition from the future-focused modernity to a new “regime of historicity” focused mainly on the past. The article argues that the memorial turn of the late 20th century itself should be viewed historically, as one of the stages of the valorization of the phenomenon of collective or historical memory in the times of modernity and after them. The specificity of each of the stages was determined by the change in the perception of historical time as a complex mutual relationship of the temporal dimensions of the past, present and future. Depending on this, memory performed the functions of temporally overcoming gaps and balancing accelerations, the source of which was the future (1), processing traumatic historical experience and the emancipation associated with it (2), constructing the future as a field of lost or unrealized possibilities of the past (3). Each of these functions gives a special shade to the constitution of collective identity. The memorial turn of the end of the last century was associated, first of all, with the processing of traumatic memory, regarding the crimes of former totalitarian regimes, as well as violence against oppressed and marginalized groups, communities, and peoples in the past. It took place against the background of a specific Western understanding of the conceptual implementation of the key tasks of liberal democracy, which was articulated in the discourse of the "end of history". This led to the projection of the agenda of liberal-democratic justice onto the past, as a result of which the historical-didactic concept of “negative memory” was developed and numerous discourses of memory, which became a form of emancipation from the traumatic burden of the past, emerged. Currently, the meaning and function of the past in relation to the present are changing radically. The absence of universalist or more or less inclusive projects of the future, the alienation of the future itself, articulated in the concepts of trans- and post-humanism, lead to reconstructivist projections of historical memory onto the present and the future. From a critical elaboration of the past, they move to the embodiment of its lost and unrealized possibilities, which results in the flourishing of historical revanchism. Against the backdrop of an alienated future, the European culture of negative memory, on the one hand, and various forms of historical reconstructivism, on the other, determine the face of the modern world. Their coexistence forms a complex picture of the multitemporality of the present despite economic, technological and communicative globalization. Projecting into the political sphere, they lead to tension and open conflicts between societies committed to the international legal status quo and the revanchist encroachments of collective actors of the "new world order", which also implies a new history.