I am looking at how history and memory function, rub against each other, and enrich each other in a context that can be described roughly as postcolonial. The notions addressed in my paper are those of individual and collective memory in regards with the wrongs done in the past, and the possibility of ‘fixing’ those wrongs (pun intended), and where that leaves freedom and happiness—or at least contentment—in situations grounded in the past and lived in an intense emotional way and fashion in the present.
One example is that of the dispossession of the Aboriginal people of Australia and the need or desire for reconciliation and forgiveness on both sides, the Black and the White. The issue I am considering here is how is a person/a people to reconcile with a past of suffering, and how can forgiveness be brought about? And why should it? I am particularly looking at what forgiving implies on a philosophical level.
I contend that history, apart from being a more or less honest and/or evidently biased narration of the events that took place in the past, is also the ground on which a number of (emotional) issues of the present grow. My focus is the transmission of history and the means songs and texts use to transcribe and transmit emotion grounded in the past and in human knowledge, perception and philosophy.