Physicians of Memory

Historians do not make the periods of history, argues Rosenstock-Huessy (Out of Revolution, 689ff). The seams of history are made by people who experience upheaval, and commemorate those experiences in monuments, memory, and calendar.

Yet the historian has his place, one marked out first by Thucydides: “He corrects Athenian tradition by giving the intentions and purposes of the other side. He writes the history of the war between Greeks in a way acceptable to both sides. . . . History, after Thucydides, can be defined as the bilateral restoration of two unilateral memories. History is corrected and purified tradition, enlarged and unified memory” (695). Historians, in short, overcome the parochialism and xenophobia of collective memories, and so contribute to the unification of the human race.

In this way, “The historian is a physician of memory. It is his honour to heal wounds, genuine wounds. . . . Buried instincts, repressed fears, painful scars, come for treatment to the historian. The historian regenerates the great moments of history and disentangles them from the mist of particularity” (696).

Rosenstock-Huessy doesn’t think that the historical profession of his day pursues this communal service. History has been “emancipated” from communal memory, and has become the sole depository of tradition. He doesn’t fault historians, since he sees this move as “an emergency measure” brought on by the dissolution of tradition. But historians shouldn’t think this situation normal. In normal times, they function as servants of a community, not its masters or the creators of its defining memories – a high calling, to be sure, but not a substitute for the memories of the people themselves.