Public Memory: The Politics of Remembering and Forgetting

ABSTRACT The theoretical and practical relationship between memory and forgetting are often separated as rhetorical acts of history. However, this separation may fail to account for the important interconnectedness of the two terms. Public memory and forgetting raise significant implications for philosophy of communication. The increased and “unprecedented politicization of memory” increasingly bears witness to a “complex” interaction and “public engagement with memory”. Understanding the human role in public memory, this project seeks to review scholarly work that frames remembering and forgetting as a dialogue situated in the public sphere.