A RIGHT TO REMEMBER, A RIGHT TO FORGET

THE RIGHT TO MEMORY AND PUBLIC SPACES

Resumo

Major events, important historic and contemporary figures are vital for the creation of national identity, and thus often become immortalised in public spaces in the form of monuments – places of memory. But what happens when these places are reminders of a corrupt memory, a past that many would rather forget? Should they be removed, as if the people and the events they commemorate never existed, never took place, or should they be kept as sites of conscience, present-day reminders of a painful past? What may be their new role in the cityscape? And, ultimately, who has the right to be remembered, and who has the right to be forgotten within a city’s network? Do the monuments themselves have any rights? The purpose of this paper is to present the author’s perspective on the right to memory (perceived as a two-faced, Janus right: the right to remember and be remembered, and to forget and be forgotten) in the context of recent changes to the cityscapes all around the world. In the first part of the paper the author introduces the concept of places of memory, showing how monuments become carriers of collective memories within the city. The second part of the paper is devoted to the author’s proposed understanding of the right to memory, which he uses to provide an understanding for conflicts emerging in a city when various groups are lobbying for the right to be remembered at the same time (while some individuals would rather be forgotten). In the third part of the paper the author uses his idea of the right to memory to critically analyse recent case studies of decommunization and decolonisation, asking whether they could have been conducted better had the right to memory been understood and properly applied.