An ethically responsible approach to history requires neither amnesia nor permanent entrapment in grievance
DR ZULFI MAJID
Introduction
The question of how societies remember violent and unsettled pasts has long occupied historians, anthropologists, and political theorists. In contexts marked by deep social divisions or recurring conflict, the issue is not only what is remembered, but who remembers, in what manner, and to what ends. In such settings, the idea of history cannot be reduced to dates, treaties, or political milestones. History operates as a field of contestation in which states, political movements, and ordinary people struggle over meaning.
As a result, history cannot be located solely in school textbooks or official commemorations. It also resides in more intimate spaces: in family stories, photographs, shared silences, and the everyday practices through which communities recollect and transmit experiences of loss, displacement, and endurance. To speak of history, therefore, is to speak simultaneously about knowledge, power, and ethics.
This article explores three interrelated dimensions of the idea of history: history as power, history as responsibility, and history as identity. It then considers the competing impulses of forgetting and remembering and concludes by suggesting what it might mean to “remember differently” in ways that can sustain a more honest and dialogic future.
History as Power
Modern states and political actors have long recognised the utility of history as a tool of governance and persuasion. Through curricular design, public monuments, museums, and media narratives, they seek to produce particular versions of the past that legitimise present arrangements of power. Official histories frequently highlight themes of order, progress, and national unity, while minimising or erasing forms of everyday violence, exclusion, or structural inequality.
This instrumentalisation of history is not confined to states. Opposition movements, civil society groups, and other actors also mobilise selective memories of injustice and resistance to consolidate support or to contest dominant narratives. Certain events are elevated as foundational, while others are forgotten or muted, depending on their usefulness in sustaining a particular claim.
When history is treated only as an instrument of power, its critical function is undermined. The idea of history as open-ended inquiry—allowing for doubt, revision, and the inclusion of marginal voices—comes under pressure. An ethically defensible conception of history must resist efforts to close the narrative or render it beyond question. Instead, it must remain receptive to competing testimonies and emerging evidence, especially from those whose experiences have been historically silenced or distorted.
History as Responsibility
The notion of responsibility introduces a moral dimension into historical work. It suggests that recounting the past is not merely a technical exercise in assembling facts, but an ethical obligation toward those who lived, suffered, and acted before us.
In societies marked by conflict, discrimination, or systemic injustice, multiple layers of suffering coexist. There may be trauma associated with state repression, civil war, communal violence, displacement, or economic marginalisation. Different groups carry different wounds and memories, often emphasising their own experiences while overlooking the pain of others.
A responsible historical practice must acknowledge this multiplicity of wounds rather than privileging a single narrative of victimhood. This does not mean erasing power imbalances or creating a false equivalence between all forms of violence. Rather, it insists that no group can claim a monopoly over suffering or over truth.
Collective memory tends to highlight injuries inflicted by others while neglecting harms in which one’s own side may have been implicated. A history grounded in responsibility requires a willingness to confront uncomfortable aspects of the past, including internal exclusions, prejudices, and failures.
History, Youth, and Identity Formation
For younger generations in many societies, history is not confined to the classroom or to archives. It is present in daily life: in public symbols, commemorative rituals, media representations, and in the absences left by those who are no longer there to speak. Under such conditions, historical consciousness is shaped as much by lived experience and inherited stories as by formal instruction.
These experiences and narratives play a central role in identity formation. They provide a sense of continuity and belonging, especially through stories of endurance, struggle, or achievement. At the same time, when identity is anchored exclusively in narratives of injury, it can produce a narrowed horizon. To view oneself only as a victim may obscure forms of agency and possibility; to view one’s community as entirely righteous can make it difficult to acknowledge complicity in harm.
A more expansive approach to history would seek to recognise both vulnerability and agency, both suffering and creativity. Even under conditions of constraint or crisis, people continue to teach, study, write, cultivate land, build institutions, create art, and form relationships. These practices of living and hoping amid difficulty are also part of history and should not be overshadowed entirely by episodes of open conflict or dramatic political change.
Forgetting, Remembering, and the Politics of Silence
In societies fatigued by difficult pasts, calls to “move on” or “let go of the past” often emerge, sometimes promoted by official narratives of reconciliation, development, or national unity. The desire to turn away from painful memories is understandable; remembering can be heavy, destabilising, and politically risky. Yet a politics of enforced forgetting—especially when large segments of the population still await acknowledgement or justice—can amount to a second form of violence.
Where unresolved questions surrounding past abuses, disappearances, discrimination, or dispossession remain central to people’s sense of identity, urging them simply to forget may be experienced as a demand for self-erasure. At the same time, there is a contrary danger: public life can become locked into an endless rehearsal of grievance, in which the past is invoked only to reinforce fixed identities and antagonisms, leaving little room to imagine shared or alternative futures.
The challenge, then, is not to choose between remembering and forgetting as absolute options, but to develop ways of remembering that neither deny the weight of suffering nor condemn societies to perpetual paralysis. This calls for a shift from memory as accusation alone to memory as a basis for critical reflection, learning, and possible transformation.
Remembering Differently: Towards Plural and Reflexive Histories
What might it mean, in more general terms, to “remember differently”? First, it entails recognising that history is never a single, closed narrative. It is composed of overlapping and sometimes contradictory perspectives, shaped by location, class, gender, ethnicity, and political position. A plural approach to history would preserve and juxtapose these multiple voices rather than collapsing them into a single authorised account.
Also, remembering differently involves broadening what counts as historical evidence. Official documents and policy statements must be read alongside oral testimonies, letters, diaries, literature, music, visual art, and everyday practices. Cultural traditions, languages, rituals, and social customs form part of a longer historical continuity that exceeds moments of crisis. To attend only to episodes of violence or high politics is to reduce a complex social world to its most dramatic chapters.
Furthermore, such remembering requires vigilance against nostalgic reconstructions of an idealised past—whether of national harmony, community unity, or moral purity—that gloss over internal hierarchies and exclusions. Romantic images of an unproblematic “before” can obscure patterns of discrimination or marginalisation that predated the current moment. A truly critical history must be prepared to interrogate not only the actions of external forces but also the dynamics within communities themselves.
Finally, remembering differently calls for institutional and cultural spaces that can sustain this work: archives that protect fragile records; universities and research centres that support independent scholarship; museums and memorials that invite reflection rather than dictate a single message; and public forums—ranging from literary circles to community dialogues—where sensitive questions can be raised without immediate polarisation into rigid camps.
Conclusion
The idea of history cannot be separated from contemporary struggles over identity, legitimacy, and justice. When history is monopolised by states, movements, or particular groups as a tool of persuasion, it becomes a closed script that deepens resentment and mistrust. When it is treated instead as a shared, though contested, space of inquiry, it can contribute to the slower work of understanding and repair.
An ethically responsible historical practice would combine courage and humility: the courage to document and speak uncomfortable truths, and the humility to acknowledge that no single narrative can exhaust the complexity of the past. Between the poles of enforced amnesia and obsessive dwelling on injury lies a more demanding path—one that insists on honest remembrance while refusing to allow history to function only as a burden.
Such a reconfiguration of the idea of history does not, by itself, resolve political conflicts or material inequalities. It can, however, reshape the terrain on which these conflicts are understood and addressed. By transforming history from a weapon or a weight into a reflexive mirror, societies may gain greater capacity to imagine futures that neither deny past suffering nor remain forever imprisoned by it.
(The Author is a lecturer and columnist)
