Abstract
In Political Memory and the Aesthetics of Care, Mihaela Mihai dwells on an alternative method of looking at history that prioritizes historical continuity over critical ruptures in time. The book is a valuable addition to the Stanford series titled: Cultural Memory in the Present, edited by Hent de Vries, dispensing on the meta-narratives constructed through selective remembrance. Through the case studies of the post-Vichy regime of France, post-1989 Romania and post-apartheid South Africa, Mihai problematizes the ‘ruptures in history’ and dwells on accounts of ‘fragmented resistance’ and ‘dutiful complicity’ against the clear-cut historical story-telling. To aptly theorize resistance, the author borrows from ethicists of care, social epistemologists, sociologists and philosophers of art to emphasize artworks’ ability to portray fragmented and ambiguous resistance enabled by prosthetic remembrance.
Mihai makes the case against the historical meta-narratives by going into the process of double erasure. At first, the communities will be labelled as filled with resistance through the naturalization of inherent valour and saintliness. The practices, relationships and institutions of complicity will be pushed into the margins of the societal vicinity. The second erasure will be ensured through the idealization of the figures and the denial of their relational positionalities. The first erasure absolves the societal guilt and erodes the complicity with the normalcy of the post-war or liberation period. The second erasure is more individualistic in nature, eroding the humanness, the hesitation, the vulnerabilities, the impure resistance, and the unwilling complicity, leaving untouched under the emblem of hero/victim/perpetrator.
Mihai begins with the play ‘Rhinoceros’ by Eugène Ionesco, appraising the notion of choice; with complicity to and resistance against violence. It provokes caricatures of societal and national beliefs that absolve communities of their wilful/unwilling collaboration in the wrongdoing. Mihai’s book seeks to untangle history using the methods of hermeneutical exploration into the affectivity of resistance and cooperation. Here the author is concerned, majorly, with the hermeneutic space of the memory of a society, stiffened and blocked within the binary of victim and perpetrator.
In studying post-apartheid South Africa, Mihai brings out a more gendered and racialized picture of the ‘rainbow nation’, emphasizing that the long apartheid regime could not have been possible without the complicity of the black population (p. 189). The memory entrepreneurs of the post-apartheid regime effaced the black population’s complicity in their collective oppression and gendered oppression. The female resisters were side-lined in the tales of glory by their male counterparts. This narrative shatters the rose-tinted glass of the South African ‘Truth and Reconciliation Commission’. Mihai presents a view that the Commission was incompetent in assimilating narratives that did not fit well with the image of the gendered hero and the ‘forgiver in chief’ Nelson Mandela (p. 199).
Similarly, in the case of the Romanian dictatorships (1947–1989), after 1989, the critical juncture, the communist dictatorships were depicted as aberrations from the norm of the Romanian nation. The new national image was constructed on the image of pre-1945 Romania. However, constructing a pre-1945 image meant erasing the antisemitic past of Romania during the second world war. In such a world, complicity and resistance modalities must be identified through a microscopic lens.
The Vichy regime of France during the Nazi occupation was mystified in the post-war period. The prevalence of antisemitism and a quest for pacifism influenced many French to collaborate with the Nazis. Both men and women participated in resistance and collaboration of various degrees, but a virile male notion of the French nation spread across the nation. In the post-war period, the women of collaboration were humiliated and denigrated. In contrast, the women of resistance were erased from glory. Defeat and collaboration itself were associated with femininity, while resistance became masculine. Through these cases, Mihai portrays a blurred line between complicity and resistance, showing that none is monolithic, unidirectional and cohesive but rather fragmentary. The author uses this process to break down the hero image, the social/personal values and the intellectual life of a resister to reveal the socio-political reality.
The book presents these temporal junctures in popular historiography as fluid and requiring a much-nuanced analysis from academics. Mihai argues that the junctures are transitory phases of one narrative with the other, covering up the violence by perpetuating distorted narratives. Closely examining such junctures would provide a coarse picture of the historical reality.
Throughout the book, Mihai relies on the aesthetics of care to offer what has been lost in the state and social narratives. Incorporation of the artworks of care caters to a much-needed longing for literary ease in academic reading. However, in doing so, Mihai’s project dwells heavily on the romanticization of care aesthetics and, sometimes, loses grip on the political sensibilities of the subjects. Despite being academically thick, this book has a warm feeling for its reader, making it an excellent read for an analytical understanding of history, memories and narratives for established scholars and new researchers alike.
