Blood libel: on the trail of an anti-Semitic myth

“Between memory and forgetting is an active silence, which is not forgetting” (18). “Silence is the memory we fail to hear or see, located adjacent to the expressed and voiced one. It is the realm of the unforgettable or unvoiced, but not forgotten memory” (18). Unforgetting is a way of knowing and feeling that which cannot be shared openly. Thai memory of this event is obscured and complicated by power structures and divisions that endure to this day. Originally, student demonstrators were portrayed as militant leftists, aligned with the Communist Party of Thailand. Violence against them was justified by the need to protect the nation from the spread of Communism. With the end of the Cold War, some reassessment of that day has occurred, but a full reckoning, a full remembering, is impossible when the conservative forces of the military, the monarchy, and the Buddhist sangha keep returning to power. To gain a full understanding of October 6th would force a confrontation with the very myths that underlie Thai nationalism. Moments of Silence builds on previous works on memory and history, from Jelin’s 2003 work on memory as a product of social framing to Gluck’s work on “chronopolitics” of memory, “in which changes in domestic and international politics over time created the conditions for changes in the memory-scape.” In Thailand, memory changes as the political climate shifts over time. “Unforgetting” leaves the protestors of October 6th in perpetual limbo. Their longing in 1976 for justice, accountability, and voice remains unfulfilled, but Thongchai Winichakul’s work is one way of breaking through the silence to begin to fill that void.