Steven Knapp

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Collective Memory and the Actual PastAuthor(s): Steven KnappSource: Representations, No. 26, Special Issue: Memory and Counter-Memory (Spring, 1989),pp. 123-149Published by: University of California PressStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/2928526 .Accessed: 22/11/2013 05:47

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STEVEN KNAPP

Collective Memoryand the Actual Past

PROBABLY NO ONE DOUBTS that ethical and political dispositionsdepend on narratives.' Having a sense of what ought to be done is inseparable,if t s even distinguishable, rombeing committed o certain patterns f action-that s to say, o certain repeatable narratives orms. Whether being committed oa pattern f action necessarily nvolves commitment osome specific arrative-for nstance, to the narrated acts of a particular hero and not ust to a generalstyle of heroic action-is an interesting uestion but not one I will pursue. Itseems clear that specific narratives t least sometimes play a role in shapingpeople's dispositions, whether hey do so directly if t happens, for nstance, hata Christian s disposed to imitate ome particular ct and notjust a type of actionimputed to Jesus) or by giving rise to vague stereotypes f right ction. And ifdispositions are at least sometimes connected with specific narratives, thensocially hared dispositions re likely o be connected with narratives reservedby collective memory, for example by oral tradition or a canonical literature.Beyond the causal role they play in influencing eople's dispositions, he narra-tives preserved by collective memory ometimes play a normative ole-that is,they may n various ways provide criteria, mplicit r explicit, y which contem-porary models of action can be shaped or corrected, r even by which particularethical or political proposals can be authorized or criticized.2 or convenience,will peak of a narrative hat possesses such normative tatus s bearing collectiveauthority.

The question that concerns me, then, s this: why hould it ever matter, f tdoes, that an authoritative arrative orrespond to historical ctuality? What isthe relation between narrated ct's paradigmatic uthority nd that ct's ctuallyhaving taken place at some specifiable moment, r anymoment, n the past? Thequestion sounds abstract, but in fact numerous concrete projects in variousinterpretive isciplines eem to involve heclaim that historical ctuality matters;that, for nstance, he political role played n the present bycanonical texts ughtto be connected n some wayto an unmasked or demystified ccount of the actualhistorical conditions under which those texts were produced. Sometimes thisclaim finds expression in an attempt o use the exposure of social origins as ameans of emptying canonical text of its traditional restige; n other cases, the

point is not simply o reject the canonical narrative ut to transfer ts authority,

REPRESENTATIONS 26 * Spring 1989 C)THE REGENTS OFTHE UNIVERSITY OFCALIFORNIA 123

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once its historical alsity as been exposed, to politically esirable features f theactual past that he text has either distorted r suppressed. Either way, n assump-tion mplicit n a number of current ritical endencies, isible n a range of fem-

inist, Marxist, nd what have come to be called New Historicist reatments fcanonical texts, s that the truth bout the actual collective past has a necessaryor intrinsic elevance to ethical and political action in the present. My aim inwhat followswillbe to explore the grounds and implications f this assumption,first y examining the role it plays n three recent proposals, two from the fieldof biblical criticism nd one from the criticism f secular canonical literature.While my treatment f these proposals willbe critical,my purpose in consideringthem s not primarily olemical; I will be using these examples mainly o suggestthe difficulty f accounting, n any very simple or straightforward ay, for an

investment n the actual collective past as such. After that I will consider onepossible way of understanding his nvestment, amely via an analogy betweenpersonal and collective relations o the actual past; the brief oncluding sectionwill then turn from these somewhat keptical xplorations o a series of modestbut more positive uggestions bout the ethical and political relevance of histor-ical revisionism.

Historical Reconstruction

and Scriptural AuthorityThe practice of basing revisionist ccounts of the Bible on a recon-

struction f ts origins s not, of course, a recent development; for more than twocenturies, historically minded biblical cholars have attempted orecover he ostreferents f the biblical texts by reconstructing he stages of oral and writtencomposition upposed to lie behind the texts s we have them. Mainstream he-ology since the Enlightenment as been characterized y succession of attemptseither to neutralize the corrosive force of such criticism r, more remarkably, oturn lleged discoveries f the Bible's historical naccuracies o positive heologicaland apologetic uses.3One prominent trategy arlier n this century, ssociatedwith such terms as neo-orthodoxy,ialectical heology,nd biblical heology, as toconcede the historical contingency of the Bible's origins, only to insist withrenewed vigor on the universal uthority f its theological ontent or at least tsexistential esonance). Since the collapse two decades ago of what had seemed tomany observers a neo-orthodox consensus, theological nitiative has passed topolitical heologies that seem on the whole indifferent o the specific indings fhistorical riticism. ndeed, Third World nd feminist iberation heologians reoften reproached, even by sympathetic ritics, or making highly elective nduncritical use of the Bible-emphasizing politically ttractive pisodes, such asthe Exodus or the Magnificat He has put down the mighty rom heir hrones,

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and exalted those of low degree; he has filled he hungry with good things, ndthe rich he has sent empty way ), without onsidering heir historical eferentsor their precise deological functions.

Recently biblical criticism as seen the rise of a tendency whose explicit imis to bridge the gap between critical cholarship nd political theology. Behindthis tendency s a belief that two obstacles currently tand in the way of libera-tionist ttempts o appropriate historical riticism: irst, he elitist nd andro-centric biases of the major historical-critical cholars; second, the deological dis-tortions f social and political realities ntroduced nto the Bible by the biblicalwriters r redactors themselves. The only way to correct for such distortions,according to proponents of the current endency, s through he rigorous ppli-cation of social-historicalmethods. Hence the call for shift f critical fforts wayfrom nalyses of the biblical text nd toward a reconstruction f the social con-

ditions presumed to lie behind it.Myaim in this ection willnot be to endorse or criticize he methods cholarsare using to reconstruct he Bible's socialorigins; am neither biblical scholarnor a social historian. Nor am I concerned here with he broader epistemologicalquestion of whether nd in what ense historical esearch an ever hope to recon-struct he actual past. My nterest s n the reconstructive mpulse tself r, moreprecisely, n the mpulse to go behind the officialmemories ecorded n canonicaltexts, eligious or otherwise, oget at the social facts hose memories have alleg-edly suppressed or forgotten. he current ociologicalor materialist endency

in biblical criticism onstitutes n especially telling nstance of this mpulse, notsimply ecause it s revisionist r reconstructive old-fashioned historical riticismalready was that) but because the explicit urn from ext to social reality makesthe break with traditional memory unusually stark. After ll, their focus on lit-erary r quasi-literary tages of composition for nstance, he oral traditions up-posed to have preceded the successive states of the text) enabled the olderhistorical ritics o think f themselves s elaborating, ather han correcting, hememory preserved n the canonical texts. They could treat he texts s memorytraces that were at least metonymically ontinuous with he compositional tages

criticismeconstructed. Hence the

greatcritical cholar and biblical theologian

Gerhard von Rad could still view the writing own of an oral tradition not asabrogating but as preserving story's elation to its specifichistorical unction:When the material was written own, t became fixed t a phase of its develop-

ment n which certain religious ransformation ad already occurred, but when,notwithstanding, he historical lement was preserved undissipated nd with hefull mport f uniqueness. 4 But sociologicalreconstruction-at east as practicedin the salient examples I will consider-involves a conception of the canonicaltexts not as partial memories but as forms of more or less willful mnesia. Myexamples, the titles f which lone would make them rresistibly pt for my pur-poses, are Norman K. Gottwald's massive tudy TheTribes fYahweh: Sociologyf

Collective emory nd the Actual ast 125



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the eligion f iberated srael, 250-1050 B.C.E. and Elisabeth chussler Fiorenza'sIn Memory fHer: A Feminist heological econstructionfChristian rigins.5

Gottwald's ubject s the surprising mergence of Israelite ociety s an inde-

pendent intertribal onfederacy n an environment ominated by oppressivecity-states. is main historical hesis s not itself riginal but consists n his en-dorsement of the so-called revolt model, a hypothetical xplanation of Israel'sorigins hat was introduced by George E. Mendenhall n 1962.6 n contrast o theviews that srael was established n Canaan either by gradual immigration r bythe direct military onquest narrated n the Book of Joshua, the revolt modelsuggests hat srael first rose as a coalition of oppressed and disaffected eoplewithin r on the margins f the Canaanite city-states. remonarchic srael is thus,according to Gottwald, most ppropriately onceived as an eclectic omposite n

which various underclass and outlaw elements of society oined their diffusedantifeudal xperiences, entiments, nd interests, hereby orming single move-ment that, through trial and error, became an effective utonomous socialsystem TY, 491). Once again, the model is not itself riginal; what is original,apart from the methodological tenacity with which Gottwald pursues Menden-hall's hypothesis, s Gottwald's ransformation f the revolt model into a totalexplanation of Israel's distinctive heology.According to Gottwald, srael's theo-logical uniqueness is an expression of its singularity s an egalitarian, retribal-ized society, established through constant revolutionary pposition to thehierarchical tructures nd interests rom which t emerged and that constantlythreatened to reabsorb t. The religion of Yahweh, though not a mere reflectionof this egalitarian social order, s best conceived as a symbolic projection orideological formation esigned to promote galitarian ocial relations. The sal-

vation narrative hat formed the core of Yahwism functioned, o use Gottwald'smetaphors, s a kind of feedback oop or servomechanism, einforcing ndregulating the social practices by which t was produced (TY, 646-47). Conse-quently-and it is here that the scope of Gottwald's evisionism ecomes fullyvisible-all the major distinctive eatures of Israelite theology an and must betranslated nto socialterms. In brief, Gottwald writes,

the hief rticles f Yahwisticaithmay e socioeconomicallydemythologized s follows:Yahweh s the historically oncretized, rimordial ower o establish nd sustain ocial

equality n the faceof counter-opposition romwithout nd against rovincial nd non-egalitarian endencies romwithin he ociety. The ChosenPeople s the distinctive elf-consciousnessf a society f equalscreated n the ntertribal rder nd demarcated roma primarily entralized nd stratified urrounding orld. Covenant s the bonding fdecentralized ocialgroups n a larger ociety f qualscommitted ocooperation ithoutauthoritarian eadership nd away f ymbolizinghe ocus f overeigntyn such societyof equals. Eschatology, r hope for he future, s the sustained ommitment f fellowtribesmen o a society f qualswith he onfidence nd determination hat his way f ifecan prevail gainst reat nvironmental dds. TY,692)

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Gottwald's econstruction pplies not only to theological oncepts but to the nar-ratives n which those concepts are imbedded: the early biblical narrative para-digms, uch as Deliverance from Egypt nd Conquest of the Land, all possess,in his view, single proper and immediate eferent . : contemporary iberatedand retribalized srael in Canaan. If this referent as fallen out of the collectivememory f the numerous societies n which hese narratives ontinue to exerciseethical nd political uthority, hat s because it was argely uppressed during themonarchic period beginning n the ate eleventh entury .C.E.), when liberationand retribalization as [sic]frustrated nd in major respects ut short by the socialevolution of Israel into a centralized state with internal social stratification,although the premonarchic endencies to some extent persisted, or nstance nthe prophetic movement TY, 698).

Schussler Fiorenza's aims and findings re in striking ways similar o Gott-

wald's; her book has the added advantage here of making n explicit onnectionbetween politically motivated historical econstruction nd the notions of collec-tive memory nd amnesia. Her historical hesis s that Christianity riginated na sequence of two ocial movements: n egalitarian Jesus movement within irst-century Palestinian Judaism and a movement of Christians properly so calledthat merged in the decades followingJesus' eath and spread rapidly o Hellen-ized Jewish ommunities hroughout he Mediterranean region. Unfortunately,according to Schtissler iorenza, our primary ccess to the social reality f thesemovements s through pologetic documents whose deological function was pre-

cisely to domesticate the radical thrust f early Christianity-above all, to neu-tralize the threat Christian galitarianism osed to the patriarchal tructures fMediterranean societies, Jewish nd Gentile alike. In Schussler Fiorenza's view,the New Testament documents display a pervasive and systematic endency tosuppress the evidence of egalitarianism articularly n regard to women, whosecrucial leadership roles were all but erased from the Church's official memory.

In some cases the evidence of distortion s obvious. Paul's etters, or nstance,frequently mention women as coworkers, with the same role and authority sPaul himself MH, 169). But in the ater-written ucan history f the missionary

movement, he so-called Acts f the Apostles, eadership s concentrated n thefigure f Paul and several male colleagues, whilewomen are restricted o the rolesof either auxiliary supporters or influential opponents of Paul's mission(MH, 161). In other cases, correcting or the androcentric ias of the New Tes-tament writers nd redactors means using the full panoply of historical-criticalstrategies, hough these strategies eed to be supplemented by methodologicalrules for a feminist ermeneutics f suspicion MH, 108). But in every ase, thedirection of Fiorenza's revisionism s clear: it seeks to move, as she succinctlyputs t, from ndrocentric exts opatriarchal-historical ontexts MH, 29).

Perhaps the most ompelling xample of Schtissler iorenza's pproach isher




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treatment f the Gospel episode that suggested her title, n Memory f Her. Allfour Gospels include the story f a woman who anoints Jesus with costly int-ment. n two Gospels (Mark and Matthew) he woman anoints Jesus' head; in the

other two Gospels (Luke and John) she anoints his feet. chtissler iorenza arguesthat the first f these versions of the anointing s the earlier one, and she recon-structs he story's riginal point accordingly: Since the prophet n the Old Tes-tament nointed the head of the Jewish king, he anointing f Jesus' head musthave been understood immediately s the prophetic recognition f Jesus, theAnointed, he Messiah,the Christ. According o the tradition t was a woman whonamed Jesus by nd through her prophetic ign-action. ut this, chiissler Fior-enza notes, was a politically angerous story MH, xiv). Its original point wasconsequently uppressed by the Gospel redactors, who sought, he reasons, to

make the story more palatable to a patriarchal Greco-Roman audience (MH,xiii). By the time the story ppears in Luke-in its most famous and dramaticversion-the woman has been changed from prophetic disciple nto a sinner,a woman of the city, ho wetsJesus' feet with her tears nd wipes them with her

hair Luke 7.36-50). In Mark, the version SchiisslerFiorenza considers closest othe original, the unnamed woman is one of three disciples who play importantroles in the passion narrative. The other two are Judas, the betrayer, nd Peter,the denier ofJesus. When the woman anoints him,Jesus promises hat whereverthe gospel is preached in the whole world, what she has done will be told in

memory of her (Mark 14.9). To which Schussler Fiorenza pointedly responds:Wherever he gospel is proclaimed and the eucharist elebrated nother story stold: the story f the apostle who betrayed Jesus. The name of the betrayer sremembered, but the name of the faithful isciple s forgotten ecause she was awoman MH, xiii).

What consequences do such reconstructions ave for he authority f biblicalnarratives? t is obvious that criptural uthority, or Gottwald nd for SchtisslerFiorenza, shifts rom hetexts hemselves othe historical vents mainly omplexand inconclusive ocialstruggles) f which he texts re, once again, severely is-torted reflections.7 chiissler Fiorenza especially is insistent on the need toabandon all attempts o make the texts hemselves source of iberating uthority.Her opening chapter sharply criticizes he neo-orthodox model of feministinterpretation, hat s, the attempt o isolate a special canon within he canon,such as a set of iberationist rinciples xpressed by so-called prophetic hemesand patterns MH, 14-21). In contrast o this pproach, her own model refusesto identify evelation with the androcentric ext, but maintains hat such reve-lation s found in the ife and ministry f Jesus as well as in the discipleship om-munity alled forth y him MH, 34).

What may seem surprising n such proposals s the wayrevisionists ike Gott-wald and Schtissler Fiorenza, in relocating the Bible's authority, top short ofsimply ejecting t. On the face of it this move may seem logically dd; for what

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sense does it make to cling to a tradition, he handing down of an ancientauthority, hen the grounds and content f that uthority ave been so drasticallyreconceived? will return to this problem in a later section; for now, wish toconcentrate n a somewhat different mplication f the proposal to shift he ocusof scriptural uthority rom n officially emembered o a reconstructed arra-tive. The intriguing uestion raised by Gottwald's nd Schiissler iorenza's recon-structions s not whether t makes sense to revise traditional aith ut why ocialevents n the distant past should matter o us at all-let alone claim the authorityof scripture. t's one thing, fter ll, to grant uthority o a text hat one supposeswas written, irectly r indirectly, y God; on the assumption that God's mindhasn't changed since the text was written, ne reads the text o find ut what God(presently) wants. But the same thing cannot be said about historical vents-unless one supposes that God providentially manipulated the events to produce

a kind of dramatic or moving-pictorial riting. oubtless this notion has tradi-tional warrants, ut it obviously ollapses the distinction etween text nd eventso completely hat turning rom ne to the other, s the revisionists ecommend,would be no different, undamentally, rom shifting ne's attention from onepassage to another, s interpreters ave alwaysdone. In any case, reading socialevents as divinely nspired hieroglyphs an hardly be what Gottwald nd Schus-sler Fiorenza have in mind. A major point of social-historical econstruction spresumably o demystify he notion that God intervenes n history n anythinglike the manner suggested by the image of divine pictography. Gottwald n par-

ticular s expressly hostile to that sort of supernaturalism; n an essay reflectingon his work n TheTribes f Yahweh, e writes f having carried hrough radicalsocioeconomicand religiocultural econstruction f early srael without eavingany remainder to save traditional heology y means of the ever-convenient godwho fills he gaps.' 8

Where then, f not in their status as signs of (unaltered) divine intentions,does materialist riticism ocate the scriptural uthority f ancient events? Theanswer seems to lie in a peculiar combination of two kinds of relation betweenthe present and the past: a combination f, on one hand, the relation of analogy

and, on the other hand, sheer historical continuity. pecifically, he presentauthority f Israel's or of the Church's ctual social origins s presumed to derivefrom the intersection of two relations: first, he perceived analogy betweenancient nd modern social struggles; econd, the nfluence, oweverremote, hatthe ancient struggles have exerted on the struggles n which participants n thetradition re, or should be, presently ngaged.

The principles of analogy and continuity, while not explicitly named bySchussler Fiorenza, are implicitly ombined n her nsistence n the essential roleof feminist memory. Biblical contexts re relevant o present feminist trugglesbecause they provide the roots and beginnings f the continuous history fwhat Schussler Fiorenza calls women as the ekklesia f God (MH, 350). But




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ancient struggles re not merely arly steps in a historical equence that even-tuates n modern feminism. hose struggles re also similar o present ones, sothat remembering hem not only keeps alive the suffering nd hopes of Chris-

tian women n the past but also allows for universal olidarity f sisterhood withall women of the past, present, nd future who follow he same vision MH, 31).The crucial point, once again, is the coincidence of continuity, hich connectspast and present via historical equence, and analogy, which connects past andpresent via a property ommon to both-namely, the vision hared by ancientand modern feminists.9

Gottwald eems somewhat essconfident han SchUssler iorenza that ncientand modern participants n the biblical tradition hare the same vision. Theversion of sociology Gottwald favors assumes that ideological products like

visions are closely bound to the contexts from which they emerge. Hence,according to Gottwald, To purport to believe the same things n different ocialand intellectual onditions s in fact not to believe the same things t all (TY,704). In general Gottwald eems less ready than Schiissler Fiorenza to supposethat we really an continue to derive symbolic esources from he biblical tradi-tions TY, 705). But if this s possible, then the basis of the possibility urns outonce again to be a coincidence of analogy nd continuity. hus Israel's powerful,evocative symbolism elped it, Gottwald writes, o strive for iberated ife of asort realizable under the socioeconomic nd intellectual-cultural onditions pecu-

liar to its time and place. Nevertheless, similar truggles n great variety havepunctuated the ong history hat onnects s with arly srael (TY, 705; emphasisadded).

Similarity nd connection or, again in my terms, nalogy and continuity.Everything eems to hinge on the possibility f making these two relations oin-cide. Neither one by tself eems sufficient o ustify sense that the truth boutancient struggles s intrinsically elevant o present ones. If an event n the pastmerely resembles ne in the present, t may indeed provide us with symbolicresources -ways of representing ur present values and intentions o as to shapeand motivate ur present ctions. But n that aseour sense of what ssymbolicallyuseful n the past willdepend on our present enseof what matters, nd the valuesrepresented by what we borrow from the past will only be the ones we alreadyhave. Aspects of the past that fail to match up with our present dispositions willnecessarily eem irrelevant. When it comes to analogy, n other words, the linesof authority un from present to past and not the other wayaround.

Another way to get at this point s to ask whether t matters, xcept for con-venience, that the narrated events providing the symbolic resources shouldactually have occurred in our own collective past-or, indeed, that they houldever have occurred at all. If the value of the analogy lies in the fact that someother situation provides opportunities or representing ur own udgments anddesires, why not turn o other people's histories-or to fiction-for symbolic ar-

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ratives s good as or better han the ones our own tradition appens to provide?Why aren't narratives f events n our actual past simply replaceable by othernarratives hat meet our criteria f symbolic elevance?

There is one obvious reason, however, why other people's pasts-and fic-tional narratives-may strike us as less useful than our own histories: hey areincapable of satisfying ur curiosity bout our own origins; they fail to provideexplanations f how we got where weare. When t omes to explanation, n contrastto analogy, he lines of force that matter re indeed those that run from past topresent, nd that do so following particular nd irreplaceable ausal chain. Butwhy should the fact that a past event has explanatory elevance to the presentendow it with ethical or political authority ver present agents-unless, onceagain, it happens to correspond to the values those agents already have? Thehistorian Edmund S. Morgan argues convincingly, or nstance, hat American

ideals of freedom and equality can be traced n part to an ideology that arose incolonial Virginia, where the possession of even a few slaves gave a modicum ofindependence and social prestige osmall andowners; equality hus meant sol-idarity mong slaveholders.'0 f Morgan's explanation s correct, t s hard to seehow such causal roots nd beginnings f egalitarian values collectively ffirmedin the present can function usefully s a means of symbolically romoting orreinforcing hose values. Certainly the explanatory significance f the socialreality Morgan reconstructs oes not confer any present authority n that pastreality; t'snot as if one feels nclined, fter eading Morgan's ccount, o advocate

slaveholding s a wayof ivingup to one's egalitarian ommitments. I willreturnto Morgan-and to the question of what kinds of relevance the actual past mayhave even if t acks ntrinsic uthority-in the ast two sections.)

As this example suggests, he locus of authority s always n the present; weuse, for promoting nd reinforcing thical and political dispositions, nly thoseelements of the past that correspond to our sense of what presently ompels us.In fact, not even a belief n the divine manipulation of history r the inspiredinerrancy f scripture would really hift he ocus of authority rom he presentto the past. Conservative believers imply ssume that the power that expressed

itself n divinely nspiredtexts r events s the same power that presently eigns

over them-and that his power has not, n the meantime, hanged its mind. Evenfor conservative believers, t is the supposed permanence of God's intentions-not a source of authority ocated in the actual past as such-that keeps the pastalive and gives t a derived authority ver the present.

If these points by now seem obvious, t s crucial to recognize how persistentlythey are obscured in current attempts to give revisionist nterpretation nintrinsic thical and political significance. The programmatic remarks haveexcerpted from he writings f Gottwald nd Schfissler iorenza exemplify whatI take to be a primary ogicalmechanism by which wide range of such attemptsare sustained. For f the past smerely source of analogies, particular ast events




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may provide models for present ction but are in principle xpendable; they anall be replaced by analogies borrowed from other traditions r from fiction. fthe past is merely source of explanations, t may well be irreplaceable there s

no other way to explain how we got where we are), but ancestral ractions f thegreatest explanatory nterest may express values remote from ny we can nowembrace. Hence the pressure o focus on historical henomena whose combinationof symbolic esonance and explanatory uniqueness will make these two benefitsseem mutually dependent. But the fact that some events can function both assources of authoritative mages and as explanations of a present situation doesnot mean that seeking explanations and seeking uthoritative mages amount tothe same operation; t does not mean, n other words, hat specialethical mpor-tance attaches o the actual as distinct rom he remembered r the magined past.

In the next section will turn from he criticism f particular evisionist ro-grams to a conceptual analysis of (some features of) our relation to the actualpast. But first t s worth pausing to notice that the impulse to bridge the logicalgap between analogy and explanation s not confined o biblical studies. n ThePoliticalUnconscious, redric Jameson attacks what he considers he twin forms fdecadence in current iterary riticism: he antiquarian pproach of traditionalliterary istory nd its dialectical ounterpart, which s, Jameson writes, ulti-mately no more satisfactory; mean the tendency f much contemporary heoryto rewrite elected texts from he past n terms f ts own aesthetic nd, in partic-ular, in terms of a modernist or more properly post-modernist) onception oflanguage. ' In the terms used above, what Jameson dislikes s the division ofcritical ttention etween continuity nd analogy, between the mere reconstruc-tion of historical equences and the use of past texts o stand for present values.The domination of iterary tudies by hesetwoopposing tendencies presents, orJameson, n unacceptable option, or ideologicaldouble bind, between ntiquar-ianism nd modernizing relevance' or projection. ut this dilemma only testifiesto the ack of a genuine philosophy f history hatwillbe capable of respectingthe specificity nd radical difference f the social and cultural past while dis-closing the solidarity f its polemics and passions, ts forms, tructures, xperi-ences, and struggles, with those of the present day (PU, 18). In the past such aphilosophy was provided by Christian ypological hinking; ameson's andidatefor modern replacement for Christian hermeneutics s Marxism. Only throughMarxism, he writes,

can we glimpse hevital laims ponus of uch ong-deadssues s the easonal lternationof he conomy f primitive ribe, hepassionate isputes bout he nature f he Trinity,the conflicting odels f the olisor the universal mpire, r, pparently loser o us intime, hedusty arliamentary nd ournalistic olemics f the nineteenth-century ationstates. hese matters an recover heir riginal rgency or s only f hey re retoldwithinthe unity f a single reat ollective tory; nly f, n however isguised nd symbolic

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form, hey re seen as sharing a single fundamental heme-for Marxism, he collectivestruggle o wrest realm of Freedom from realm of Necessity; nly f they re graspedas vital pisodes in a single vast unfinished lot. PU, 19-20)

The wish behind this xtraordinary cenario s not only related but I suggestidentical to the wish that motivates Gottwald nd Schtissler iorenza, and Jame-son's program uccumbs o the same dilemma. f anything he dilemma sheight-ened by his rigorous nsistence n reading canonical literary works as productsof the dominant deologies in each period he analyzes. f the single great collec-tive story Jameson envisions s not in fact a divinely onstructed narrative butmerely causally related sequence of disparate deologies, then ts relevance tothe present an only be established byone or another version of the modernizingprojection ameson attacks. Otherwise t remains unclearjust what ort of value

a modern reader is supposed to derive from work produced under radicallydifferent onditions nd in the service f someone else's deology.

In his conclusion, Jameson takes up precisely hisquestion, which he recog-nizes his book has so far eft unanswered: How is it possible for a cultural textwhich fulfills a demonstrably ideological function . . . to resonate a universalvalue inconsistent with the narrower imits of class privilege which inform tsmore immediate deological vocation? PU, 288). His surprising nswer s thatthe expression of any class interest whatsoever, y the sheer fact hat t expressesa collective olidarity, owevervile or destructive, an be said to stand for a class-less Utopia. In this sense, according to Jameson, all class consciousness-or inother words, all ideology in the strongest ense, including the most exclusiveforms of ruling-class consciousness ust as much as that of oppositional oroppressed classes-is in tsvery nature Utopian PU, 289).Jameson's elaborationof this formula makes unmistakable ts proximity o the kind of projection heearlier rejected:All class consciousness of whatever ype s Utopian insofar s it expresses the unity f acollectivity; et t must be added that this proposition s an allegorical one. The achievedcollectivity r organic group of whatever kind-oppressors fully s much as oppressed-is Utopian not in itself, ut only nsofar s all such collectivities re themselves igures for

the ultimate oncrete ifeof an achieved Utopian or classless ociety.Nowwe are in a betterposition ounderstand how even hegemonic or ruling-class ulture nd ideology are Uto-pian, not in spite of their nstrumental unction o secure and perpetuate class privilegeand power, but rather precisely ecause that function s also in and of tself he affirmationof collective olidarity. PU, 290-91)

To say that all literary works can be read as embodying he same vision, hesame universal value, simply ecause they re all equally the products f collectiveinterests, s to say that they an be read analogically: hey an all be used as sym-bols of present Marxist values, provided only hat we focus on the point of resem-blance (namely, ome affirmation f solidarity) nd ignore everything hat gives

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them their pecific istorical dentity. nce again, explanatory nterest nd ethicalor political value come apart. Jameson's program oscillatesbetween explanationand analogy or, in his own harsher terms, ntiquarianism nd projection, nd

thus remains fixed n the double bind he deplores.

Collective Punishment

So far my argument has shown the error nvolved n a certain way ofconstruing he present relevance of events n the collective ast-the error, hatis, of treating he coincidence of analogy and continuity s if t were an identity fthose relations. The mere fact hat omething n the past can stand in a relation

both of resemblance ndof

historical ntecedence to present valuessnot enoughto give it an intrinsic thical or political mportance. But surely the widespread

intuition hat the actual collective past is intrinsically elevant o present actioncannot be reduced to the abstract erms n which the issue has been formulatedso far. After ll, even outside the sphere of academic criticism ne encounters hedemand that people be held accountable for heir pasts, s well as the expectationthat they willproperly xperience guilt, pride, regret, r a sense of obligation sa result of certain actions they once performed. Given the ubiquity f our prac-tices of connecting people-and connecting urselves-to what we think ctuallyoccurred in the past, what can it mean to deny hat the past has ethical claims onthe present? And if t ever makes sense to nsist n the nescapability f an agent'srelation to her personal past, does it make equal sense to bind her to the past ofthe collectivities n which she participates? What, in short, s the differencebetween personal and a collective ast, nd why sn't he atter t east as relevantto present action as the former?'2 he following eflections re not intended asan elaboration of the polemic in the previous section but as a new and largelyindependent attempt o address these questions.

Consider, then, socialpractice hat, perhaps more obviously han any other,assumes that past events have an intrinsic elevance o present ction: the practiceof punishment. By selecting this example, I do not mean to suggest that revi-sionist nterpreters re committed o the value of collectivepunishment, houghsome of them may be. Nor do I wish o attack r defend the notion of punishmentas such, let alone any specific se of punishment, ollective r otherwise. n onecrucial respect, to which will return t the end of this section, he example ofpunishment may be positively misleading. Nevertheless, ome of punishment'speculiar logical features may enable us to isolate the sources of the broader intu-ition that the past has an irreducible laim on the present. 3 I assume throughoutthat the results of this analysis would, with djustments, e applicable to other,

less dramatic ways of connecting people to the actual past, such as rewarding

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them for past deeds performed by them or their ncestors, r holding them topersonal or collective promises.

Reference to the actual past seems built nto the notion of punishment romthe start. At least this s the case where punishment s intended to count as ajust

or ethically ppropriate esponse to a reprehensible ction. Where punishment spracticed without egard to ustice and simply s a means of nducing obedience,actual guilt-and consequently ny connection to actual past events-is plainlyirrelevant.)'4 f the (ethical) point of punishing omeone is not in some sense torepay the actual agent for some actual past act but merely o discourage peoplein general from performing ertain actions n the future, t would not seem tomatter whether the punishment itself was actual. Actual war criminals, forinstance, ould be replaced by ctors who would then pay ngeniously aked pen-alties, being replaced, perhaps, on the scaffold r in their cells by mannequins.

But someone who found out that the actual criminals were still iving happilysomewhere would no doubt feel unsatisfied.'5 he question s, would this feelingof dissatisfaction e ustified f t turned out that thically motivated punishmentcould have no other object but deterrence? f the aim of punishment s only toinfluence present nd future ehavior, why hould we care about anyone's ctualpast behavior, given that t is obviously o late to deter an act that someone hasalready performed?

Apparently, hen, punishment nvolvesmore than merely nfluencing res-ent and future behavior; we seem to want to make certain hat the actual agents

are somehow affected y their past crimes. What would bother us, if we discov-ered that the war criminals had been replaced by actors, would be a vision of theactual criminals iving happily after ommitting heir heinous crimes. The pointof our desire to punish them, on this ccount, s that punishing hem s the onlyway to guarantee that they will experience the badness of their bad actions.Punishment f the actual agent makes sense on this ccount precisely ecause itis not a futile ttempt o alter the past but is meant to produce a change in theagent as shenow xists; he now experiences pleasure or insufficient ain in relationto her bad action, and we want that experience replaced by something moreappropriate.

Unfortunately, owever, the apparent discovery hat what matters s thepresent state of the agent only raises a further uestion. For if what matters sthe present tate of the agent-if having n interest n the agent as she now existsis the only way to make sense of doing something o her now-then why shouldit matter hat he action n question s one she actually erformed? Why houldn'twe be equally ready to punish someone who takes pleasure n a crime he mistak-enly believes (mistakenly remembers ) he committed? Or someone who takespleasure in someone else'sbad action? Why isn't taking pleasure in bad actionsufficient y tself o warrant unishment? And why top even there? Why not say




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that taking pleasure in anything ad-for instance, natural disasters-is equallydeserving of punishment? Why should the past occurrence or nonoccurrence ofthe act matter at all if what one is really nterested n is producing desirable

changes in the present tate of the person n question?Consider the defense of retributive unishment n Robert Nozick'sPhilosoph-ical Explanations. ccording to Nozick, An act of retribution s responsive to awrong act as wrong. t effects connection f the wrongdoer with orrect valuesby being fully esponsive to his wrong act in its character s a wrong act. Mererehabilitation would be inadequate:

To leave great wrongdoing nresponded o as wrong, ubstituting nstead beneficialtransformation f the wrongdoer nrelated o the wrong n ts ontent, s to gnore ndbe blind in one's actions) o this ignificant ortion f moral eality. t stake n addition

to the punisher's esponse owrongness s wrongness sthe wrongdoer's esponse. un-ishment inks he wrongdoer ith orrect alues, nd s a vehicle whereby henature ndmagnitude f his ct'swrongness as a correspondinglyignificant ffect n his ife.'6

Nozick stops short of asking, however, why he magnitude of the act's wrongnessshould have its effect pecifically n the life of the wrongdoer. Why shouldn't thave an equally significant ffect n the ives of all who approve he wrongdoer'sact, if all that matters s that wrongness be appropriately responded to? Thewrongdoer snot, fter ll, now ctively flouting orrect alues n Nozick's ense;the fact that he now takes pleasure in the bad act, if n fact he does, in no waydistinguishes im from nyone else who shares his reprehensible ttitude. Why,then, hould he be singled out for punishment?

Nozick's ccount seems to require a peculiarly trong notion of personal den-tity.'7 o make sense of Nozick's theory, ne has to conceive the act itself-itsactual performance nd notjust its having ccurred-as persistent eature f theagent's dentity; nly n that ase would the agent's present relation o his past actdiffer in kind or degree of wrongness) from hat of someone who did not per-form the act but merely shared his attitude toward it. But this would meanthinking f the agent as presently-if not eternally-performing he act he onceperformed; n what other way could the performing f the act (and not simply tshaving been performed) remain a continuously ignificant eature of the agent'sidentity?

The question, then, swhether t makes sense to treat person existing n thepresent as still the appropriate object of attitudes ppropriate to an action sheperformed n the past. Taken seriously, his an only mean thinking f her as stillperforming he act in question. For unless she is thought of as still performingthe act, she may be in many respects the same person as the person who per-formed t, but she is in at least one crucial respect not dentical o that person (as

she then xisted), since she no longer has any control over the act's occurring ornot occurring; hehas no more power over t than anyone else. Nor does it matter,

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bility or i.e., identify with) some past act with which the agent fails to identifyin the appropriate way. On this view we don't punish people because we believethey re in some mysterious ense metaphysically dentical o the self that xisted

in the moment the bad act occurred-because, for nstance, we literally hink fthem as eternally erforming t. nstead, we punish them n order to make themidentify with the act in a way that will constitute heir taking responsibility or t.We do this n part because we think t is a good thing, n general, for people toidentify with their pasts n wayswe deem appropriate; we want them to think fthemselves s having responsible elves.We want them o dentify ith heir eth-ically ignificant) ast acts, to take their pasts with what we consider appropriateseriousness, ither for their benefit r for that of others or ourselves. And sincewe want them to become responsible n this ense, t matters how they espondto acts they actually ommitted, ince being responsible n this sense preciselymeanshaving a disposition oidentify with ne's own actual past, to think f one-self as inseparably bound to it, even as if one were presently erforming ne'spast acts and therefore ppropriately iable, n the present, o the experience ofaversion that should have accompanied the bad ones or the experience of plea-sure that hould have accompanied the good ones.

Why, however, would it ever make sense to encourage people to identify nthis way with heir past acts? n the case of punishment, resumably because wewant certain ctions to be taken seriously, ndeed with he kind of seriousness hatis only possible f the agents who contemplate performing hem expect the guiltor shame appropriate to such acts to become a permanent part of their wn self-identification-that s, of their own attitudes oward the selves with which theywill ater have to identify.2' We want to cause people, in other words, o anticipatethat they will be unable to deny heir dentity with the selves they re when theycommit whatever rime they ontemplate ommitting.22

If the point of punishment s to make people anticipate that they will beunable in the future to avoid identifying ith the selves they re now, then weend where we began: with he consequentialist motive of deterrence. This time,however, eterrence has been elaborated n a waythat defeats he nitial ounter-example: we would not feel that ustice had been done if an actor pretended tosuffer he punishment owed a war criminal because what interests s is deter-rence that proceeds not simply y wayof fear but by wayof each agent's disposi-tion to take seriously he effect hat her actions will have on her future relationto herself.

If this analysis of punishment s plausible and whether r not it s sufficienttojustify ny actual exercise of punishment-nothing said here, after ll, impliesthat the use of punishment o force an agent to identify with her past actions slikely o succeed),23hen it seems to make sense in principle to foster omeone's

disposition o treat herself n the present s literally nswerable for ertain vents

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in the past-presumably for those events hat count as actions performed by theorganism she shares with the self that existed then. But if it makes sense toencourage people to take responsibility orpast acts performed y the ndividualorganisms with which hey most ntimately dentify hemselves,might t lso make

sense to get them to take responsibility or he acts of groups o which hey elong?Why would it be any less rational, necessarily, o get them to experience shameor guilt, pride or pleasure, in relation to acts performed by other members oftheir families r classesor nations? Why not encourage them, for nstance, o feelliable in some degree or other to the penalties ncurred by the crimes of theirancestors? Perhaps such identifications re not psychologically ecessary r inev-itable n the way that dentifying ith t least some events n one's personal pastappears to be; but t wasn't henecessityf the disposition hat alled for nterven-tion n the case of punishment. On the contrary, unishment eemed called for

precisely when a desirable dentification as not being made. Even if there wereno preexisting isposition o dentify neself with ny actsperformed y omeoneelse in a person's collectivepast, why not try o create uch a disposition n orderto force people to take collective uilt-and therefore ollective bligations-withappropriate seriousness? Why not try oproduce persons whose attitudes owardtheir presently xisting selves would in part be determined by their attitudestoward the acts performed by other members of their collectivities, nd whoseown actions might herefore be guided in part by a desire to alleviate the guiltoccasioned by the unjust acts of their ncestors?

The trouble with punishing someone for an act committed y an ancestorcannot be that she stands in a different metaphysicalelation to the acts of herancestors han she does to her own past acts. n both cases the act-as well as thestate of the organism s it existed n the moment f action-is no longer present;in both cases, in other words, the ustification f punishment annot be meta-physical but can only be normative. But remember he main point of using pun-ishment to make people identify with their own actual past actions: we do sobecause we want people to anticipate, s they onsider performing ertain acts,that the disapproval merited by those acts will become a permanent part of theirown attitudes oward the selves with which they will ater have to identify. heaim of punishment, on this account, is to enforce a sense of identity hat canbecome (if not in the agent herself hen n others who witness her punishment)the basis of what might e called proleptic guilt. But this requires that the act forwhich an agent is punished be an act that she might have avoided performinghad she taken seriously nough its consequences for her ater relation o herself.Yet no amount of proleptic guilt could have caused her to avoid performing nact that was never hers to perform.

Punishing someone for the acts of her ancestors does not seem promising,then, s a means of giving omeone a disposition ofeel proleptic guilt n relation




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to an act she contemplates performing; n the contrary, he very notion of col-lective punishment nvolves separation f accountability nd action, ince at leastsome of those held accountable are by definition ot the agents who performedthe reprehensible act. If anything, ollective punishment seems calculated toweaken n agent's disposition to connect her present actions with the self sheexpects to become.

Suppose, however, hat what matters n the case of collectivepunishment snot first f all the agent's relation o her own future elf but to the future f hercollectivity. n that case a practice of collectivepunishment might make sense ifrationalized along the following ines: we punish someone today for an act pre-viouslyperformed by other members f a group to which he belongs. The pun-ishment orces her or others who witness t) to anticipate, ot that ach individualwillbe held accountable for cts she herself erforms, ut that, n general, mem-bers of the group will be treated-more important, will treat themselves-as ifthey were still performing he acts once performed y other members f the samegroup. Prospective wrongdoers re thus encouraged to expect that their ctionswill make a permanent difference ot to their own elf-identification ut to theself-identification f others who belong to the same collectivity.

Such a practice of punishment, n other words, s intended to cause an agentto anticipate, s she considers performing ertain cts, that the disapproval mer-ited by those acts will become a permanent part of the wayother members of hergroup evaluate the selves with which they will have to identify. he point is tomake her anticipate not her own guilt but the guilt that others will nherit f sheacts badly. Presumably his xpectation will erve as a deterrent nly to the extentthat the agent s inclined to feel guilty bout imposing guilt on other members ofher group. The logical structure f collective punishment hus turns out to bemore complex than the structure f individual punishment, ince t nvolves wodistinct orms f guilt: the guilt that n agent's ct will mpose on others nd theguilt t will mpose on her by virtue f what t does to them. For that reason, thelikelihood of success in the case of collective punishment may well seem moreremote one might ay, venmore remote) than n the case of individual punish-

ment. Apart from such practical difficulties, here no doubt remain seriousgrounds for skepticism egarding the ustice of collective unishment; bove all,perhaps, t s hard to see how one might go about ustifying he criteria genetic?geographical? deological?) by which punishable collectivity ould be defined.willreturn o these difficulties ater; my im in this ection has only been to deter-mine whether the logic of punishment bears out the intuited nalogy betweenindividual and collective elations o the actual past. The foregoing nalysis ug-gests that the answer is yes, and that the ethical relevance of the actual past inboth the ndividual nd the collective ases derives, paradoxically, rom n agent's

imaginative elation to the future onsequences of some contemplated ction. tis what we want her to imagine about the future, nd not a debt owed to the past

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as such, that ustifies, f anything oes, our sense that an agent's present ethicalstatus may properly e affected ydiscoveries bout the actual content f her ownor a collective past.

Indeed, the discovery hat what matters s the agent's relation o an imaginedfuture hows that punishment, ollective r otherwise, s finally eside the point.Collective punishment, n the foregoing ccount, s an attempt ocause peopleto identify with a collective future by forcing hem to identify with a collectivepast. What matters, ormy purposes here, s not the feasibility rjustice of forcingpeople to identify with collective past but the ogic of the dentification s such.The central point that has emerged from his ection s that the ethical relevanceof the actual collectivepast depends on an agent's disposition o identify ith nimagined collective future.

The Limits of Collective Identity

At the beginning of this essay advanced the presumably uncontrov-ersial thesis that ethical and political values are essentially elated to narratives,and that shared values are likely obe connected to the narratives reserved bycollectivememories, whether r not such memories re embodied in a canonicalliterature. The question was whether the dependence of collective values onshared memories mplied an equivalently trong elation o the actual as opposed

to imagined or mistakenly emembered) events of the collective past. If so, thenresearch imed at recovering he actual social realities uppressed by he dealizednarratives f collective memory would have a powerfuljustification: t could claimto play an irreplaceable role in present political ife.

The preceding sections have addressed this question in two very differentways: first, y analyzing the rhetoric of certain programmatic tatements byscholars engaged in revisionist esearch; second, by exploring he ogicof a prac-tice that necessarily epends on the assumption hat present gents are, or oughtto be, inescapably bound to the actual past. Results o far have been mixed. One

way of establishing the relevance of the actual collective past indeed proveduntenable; the fact that a past phenomenon might both resemble and help toexplain a present phenomenon proved insufficient o give the past any intrinsicclaim on present action. On the other hand, the analysis of punishment uncov-ered a way n which t might make sense, at east n principle, oencourage peopleto think of themselves s inheriting he guilt or shame (or merit r obligations)created by what actually happened in a collective past. What remains to be seenis how this second outcome bears on the chief concern of this essay,namely, heethical or political relevance of revisionism.

If the analysis f collective unishment wascorrect, hen t seems possible fora present gent to stand n the same relation o actions performed yother gents




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as she stands n relation o actions performed by the self she earlier was. Sincewhat finally matters n ascriptions f responsibility or past actions is the self'sdisposition o dentify ith he consequences of ts future ctions, neither rganic

identity continuity f body) nor psychological dentity continuity f memory)seems to be a necessary condition of responsibility. f this s true, there is noreason to deny that an agent might have the same kind of ethical nterest n dis-coveries bout her collective past as an amnesiac would have in discoveries boutforgotten vents n her personal history. he might e more than curious, wantingto know what punishment r reward she unwittingly eserves, or what forgottenobligation he ought to fulfill. erhaps we should think f the readership of revi-sionist nquiry s a collection f amnesiacs, ach awaiting he next disclosure withan appropriate mixture f excitement nd dread.

At this point, however, he special difficulties ssociated with ollective pun-ishment begin to reassert hemselves. Remember, irst f all, that he rationale ofcollectivepunishment nvolves desire to make an agent consider what her ownactions might do to the ethical tatus f other members f her collectivity. ut thiswillonly work f she cares about their uture dentity n the same way that he maybe expected to care about her own. There is of course no guarantee that he willcare very much about the future n either ase, but at least n the case of her ownidentity we can fall back on the fact that ome endency o identify with the pastand future tates of one's own organism eems built nto the structure f humanagency. That maybe one reason why t seems difficult o magine that n amnesiacmight be simply ndifferent o information bout her past dentity, hile there ssomething slightly omical about the image of a scholarly readership eagerlyawaiting new disclosures bout crimes n the collective ast.

The trouble with ollective dentifications cross time, however, s not simplythat they may be less inevitably made or intimately elt han identifications iththe organism's own past and future tates. Another difficulty ies in the fact hatthey re far easier to deny.24 his problem emerged earlier n the form f a ques-tion about the ustice of collective punishment given the absence of clear criteriaas to what should count as a punishable collectivity. ut its mplications xtendbeyond the perhaps anomalous case of collective unishment oother, esspecu-liar expressions of collective responsibility. onsider, for example, the notion ofcollective ccountability ecently efended by Alasdair MacIntyre n the courseof an eloquent attack on the ideology of individualism. After observing, ncon-trovertibly, hat we all approach our own circumstances s bearers of a particularsocial identity, MacIntyre makes the somewhat stronger laim that I inheritfrom he past of my family, my ity, my ribe, my nation, variety f debts, nher-itances, rightful xpectations nd obligations. his thought, e acknowledges,

is ikely oappear lien nd even urprising rom he tandpoint f modern ndividualism.From he tandpoint f ndividualism am what myself hoose o be. I can always,fwish o,put n questionwhat re taken obe the merely ontingent ocialfeatures f my

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existence. may biologically e my father's on; but I cannot be held responsible for whathe did unless I choose implicitly r explicitly o assume such responsibility. may egallybe a citizen of a certain country; but I cannot be held responsible for what my countrydoes or has done unless I choose . .. to assume such responsibility. uch individualism sexpressed by those modern Americans who deny any responsibility or the effects fslavery upon black Americans, saying I never owned any slaves. t is more subtly hestandpoint f those other modern Americans who accept a nicely alculated responsibilityfor such effects measured precisely by the benefits hey themselves s individuals haveindirectly eceived from lavery. n both cases being an American' s not n itself aken tobe part of the moral dentity f the ndividual. And of course there s nothing peculiar tomodern Americans n this attitude: he Englishman who says, I never did any wrong toIreland; why bring up that old history s though t had something o do with me? r theyoung German who believes that being born after 1945 means that what Nazis did to Jewshas no moral relevance to his relationship o his Jewish ontemporaries, xhibit he sameattitude, hat according to which the self s detachable from ts social and historical olesand statuses.25

MacIntyre's irony toward the liberal assumption that guilt for collectivecrimes is somehow voluntary s no doubt justified. What interests me at themoment, however, s not the cogency of MacIntyre's ttack on liberalism but acurious inconsistency n his account of collective guilt. Modern Americans,according to MacIntyre, should acknowledge responsibility or the effects fslavery not when they feel so inclined or to the extent hat they have individuallybenefited from t but simply nsofar s they belong to the American collectivityand thus partake of an American dentity. ut if modern Americans utomat-ically inherit this morally tainted collective dentity, hould we conclude thatmodern black Americans nherit t s well?Or do the disadvantages f belongingto the collectivity black America cancel out the guilt that one would otherwiseinherit s a member of the collectivity America ? To say that disadvantages canoutweigh collective guilt s presumably o exhibit he same sort of nice calcula-tion that MacIntyre perceives n Americans who measure their guilt for slaveryby the benefits heyhave received from t. But what alternative oes MacIntyre'sargument llow? If present benefits nd ongoing njuries re beside the point; ifcollective guilt for the past is taken seriously n its own right nd is not ust a

figurative ay of referring opresent nequities; hen t s hard to see why modernblack Americans re any essresponsible for he effects f slavery han Americansgenerally. Are black Americans themselves hus guilty or the effects f slaveryupon black Americans ?26

The dilemma posed by MacIntyre's account merely dramatizes a generalweakness, at least in modern liberal societies, f ascriptions f (morally ignifi-cant) collective dentity. he difficulty an be stated succinctly: ollective denti-ties, unlike individual ones, frequently verlap. In this sense the voluntarismMacIntyre criticizes s a product of liberal ndividualism merely describes a fea-

ture of large-scale collectivities s such. Citizens born into a nation that hascommitted rimes an always laim nnocence based on their membership n addi-




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tional collectivities: otjust an American but a black American, r a recent mmi-grant; not ust a German but a socialist, European, a Christian, n intellectual.Of course there s no guarantee that n agent will ucceed n disowning ollective

guilt bydenying hat hecollectivity n question defines her dentity r determinesher ethical status more powerfully han does some other collectivity o which healso belongs. No doubt there are cultural ituations n which membership n onecollectivity-for xample, clan membership n a tribal ociety r early Christianmembership n the body of Christ -counts as sufficiently mportant o rendercompeting memberships negligible y comparison.27 n such cases it may even beeasier, thanks to initiation r conversion, or an agent to repudiate her personalpast than t s for her to deny her connection o the past of the collectivity. encethe problem of deniability, hough possibly ntractable n our present ocial con-

text, does not amount to a logicallynecessary bstacle to all practices f bindingpeople to actual events n their ollective asts.Perhaps revisionism hould be understood, then, precisely s an attempt o

restore preliberal mode of identity, o that membership n some privileged ol-lectivity ill once again override he plurality f dentifications hat tends, n ourpresent context, odefeat ascriptions f collective esponsibility. Something ikethis s what Fiorenza seems to envision when she calls, n a passage cited earlier,for a universal olidarity f sisterhood with ll women of the past, present, ndfuture who follow the same vision ; MH, 31.) But if this s a plausible way toconstrue an important im of revisionism, hen revisionism tself may in manycases turn out to be curiously elf-defeating. or a central tendency of currentresearch designed to replace collective memories with an account of the actualpast s surely omultiply hegrounds for denying ollective dentity f the sort hatseems necessary for ascriptions f collective esponsibility n the strong ense wehave been exploring. f collective dentity f the preliberal ort s based, at leastto an important xtent, n the possessionof common narratives, hatever nder-mines those narratives will nevitably end to qualify, ven if t does not destroy,one's sense of belonging to the collectivity hose past has been revised. n gen-eral, the precritical arratives hat connect us to a collective ast tend to presup-pose that our ancestors argely hared our beliefs nd values, for only n that asecan our actions readily be seen as continuations f theirs. uppose, recalling nexample from n earlier ection, hat modern American ccepts a responsibilityto promote egalitarianism ecause she believes that she has inherited this obli-gation from her colonial ancestors. Presumably he does so in part because of anassumption derived from ertain ollective narratives: he assumption hat theseancestors understood egalitarianism n roughly he way she understands t. Shenow learns, by reading Edmund S. Morgan's account, that a crucial componentof what they meant by egalitarianism wasslaveholding. Nothing n principle pre-vents her from imply mbracing this nformation s a discovery bout the truecontent of her inherited obligation, and thus from taking up the banner of

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slavery. ut a more likely utcome would seem to be uncertainty hat transhis-torical American dentity-and thus a body of inherited American obligations-really xisted n quite the way she used to think.

The Relevanceof Historical Revision

The burden of this essay has been skeptical. My reflections havetended, on the whole, to raise doubts about the ntrinsic thical r political mpor-tance of new discoveries about what actually took place in a collective past.Indeed, my arguments o far might plausibly be taken to imply hat considerrevisionist istorical esearch ethically nd politically rrelevant-mere antiquar-

ianism, n Jameson's ense. The purpose of this section s consequently o pointto several ways in which revisionist esearch might ndeed prove relevant topresent values, even if not quite for the reasons magined by the critics reated nthe opening sections.

My argument to this point has assumed that people's ethical and politicalvalues take the form of commitments o doctrines or images that are in turndependent on imagined or remembered patterns f action. Suppose it turns ut,however, hat at least some ethical values held by some people involve commit-ments not to a pattern f action but to whatever ctually ccurredn some designated

segment of the past or whatever as actually oneby some designated ancestor.Suppose, in other words, the ogicof ethical values is at least sometimes ndexical,so that disposition o act n an ethically ppropriate way s a disposition oact inthe way some designated person or group acted, whatever hat may have been.28Thus (to return oan example from he opening paragraph) a Christian elieverof a certain kind might be disposed to act in the wayJesus acted, whatever Jesus'actions turned out to have been and whether r not they matched the receivedaccounts. n that case, a historical iscovery hat revised he traditional ecord ofJesus' actions would necessarily hange the content of the believer's values, andnothing lse could change it n the same way. Presumably here would be a limitto how far revision ould go before the believer repudiated the value of acting nwhatever wayJesus acted-for instance, f the historical econstruction howedthat he was a murderer or a Roman spy. The limit n this ase would be set by theother values, perhaps nonindexical ones, to which the believer was also com-mitted. Nevertheless, whether or not she remained committed o the value ofimitating esus, the content f that value would have changed, necessarily, longwith he historical nformation.

The question is whether nyone's values really take this indexical form-that s, the form of a commitment o act in whatever way t turns out that somedesignated person acted, or perhaps of an intention o mean by ome ethical erm




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whatever some designated ancestors meant by it. Might there really be, forinstance, n American whose commitment o equality as in fact commitment owhatever the Founders meant when they affirmed t? Possibly there is no onewhose ethical dispositions ould be understood primarily n these terms, houghsome egree of ndexical commitment may play a role in the normative ife of anyagent or collectivity.

The second kind of relevance have in mind is less interesting heoretically(since t stops short f givingdiscoveries bout the past a necessaryelevanceto thepresent) but perhaps more plausible psychologically s an account of howsomeone might be affected y revisionist nquiry. uppose one discovers that avalue one presently olds has been linked n the past to motives r consequencesthat now seem repulsive; suppose this discovery reates suspicion that he valuein question is still inked to something ne would like to repudiate. (Conversely,research might how that value one no longer holds has been linked to benefitsone still finds attractive, nd this might ead one to ask whether the neglectedvalue deserves a revival.)Perhaps, once again, I am convinced by Morgan's claimthat the notion of equality was connected n colonial Virginia to a slaveholdingideology. As has been suggested, this s unlikely o persuade me to revise myconcept of egalitarianism long colonial Virginian ines. But I might begin towonder whether galitarian dvocacy n certain ontexts n the present might notend up serving similar ends, for instance by reinforcing he solidarity f onegroup at the expense of another.

The fact hat omeone might e led to question her present ommitments nthis way would not show that historical esearch was necessary o the correctionor more careful application of present values, since the potential use of egali-tarian principles by oppressive interests ould in principle have been demon-strated by fictional xamples or by logical analysis. Still, t was useful, and inpractice may have been invaluable, o have the historical recedent to work with;novelists nd political theorists might never have invented an equally revealingexample. In this sense, historical nvestigation f the origins of present valuesmay serve as a means of gathering xamples that provoke reflection n the pos-

sible social consequences of certain deologicalcommitments, hough, nce again,there would be no necessary connection between the historical ctuality f theexample and its utility. n fact, he historicity f the example might be positivelymisleading, f for nstance the alleged status of the Virginia deology as the truehistorical rigin of American egalitarianism were nterpreted via genetic fallacy)to mean that the connection between egalitarianism nd oppression was a nec-essary one.29

The last kind of relevance wish to mention has less to do with nformationthan with motivation. n the previous section, imagined a reader of Morgan's

history who began to wonder whether n American dentity eally xisted n quitethe way he previously hought. To say,however, hat uch a discoverymight aise

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questions about the precise character of an American dentity s not to say thatthe reader's commitment o what she perceived s American values would there-fore be weakened. On the contrary, ecognizing he fragility nd contingency fAmerican egalitarianism n its earliest moments might ntensify er sense of anobligation o preserve nd foster his nherited alue, despite or even because ofits ambiguous lineage.

Notes

1. This essay s a much revised and expanded version of a lecture delivered at the 1985meeting of the English Institute. Among the many people whose suggestions ndcriticisms ave affected he shape of the argument, wish specially othank MargaretFerguson, Catherine Gallagher, Stephen Greenblatt, effrey napp, Walter Michaels,Robert Post, Christopher Pye, Michael Rogin, Elaine Scarry, Randolph Starn, andBernard Williams. But they are not responsible, collectively r otherwise, for myerrors.

2. The precise manner n which canonical narrative erves o authorize particular ro-posals can be extremely ubtle and varied, as is amply shown, for example, by DavidH. Kelsey n The Usesof cripture n Recent heologyPhiladelphia, 1975).

3. On the post-Enlightenment nteraction etween theology nd historical riticism, eeVan A. Harvey, The Historian nd theBeliever: heMorality f Historical nowledge ndChristian elief Philadelphia, 1966); and Hans W. Frei, TheEclipse fBiblicalNarrative:A Study n Eighteenth- nd Nineteenth-Century ermeneuticsNew Haven, 1974); for anoverview f the most recent phase of this history, ee Norman K. Gottwald, heHebrewBible:A Socio-Literaryntroduction Philadelphia, 1985), 16-20.

4. Gerhard von Rad, Genesis: Commentary,rans.John H. Marks, revised d. (Philadel-phia, 1972), 19n.

5. Norman K. Gottwald, TheTribes f Yahweh: Sociologyf heReligion fLiberatedsrael,1250-1050 B.C.E. (Maryknoll, N.Y., 1979); and Elisabeth Schussler Fiorenza, InMemory fHer:A Feminist heological econstructionfChristian rigins NewYork, 1983).These works willhenceforth e cited n the text s TY and MH, respectively.

6. George E. Mendenhall, The Hebrew Conquest of Palestine, heBiblicalArchaeologist25 (1962): 66-87.

7. In observing hat Gottwald nd Schtissler iorenza have in one sense merely hiftedthe locus of scriptural uthority, am not mplying hat the authority hey onfer onthe biblical events s necessarily he same in kind or degree as the authority moreorthodox interpreters mpute to the biblical texts. Schussler Fiorenza, for nstance,rejects the notion that the counter-voices nd visions she uncovers constitutenorm to be obeyed or a canon to be observed ; their value lies instead in their

capacity to give iberating ision, ourage, hope in iberation truggles oday ;Protocolof the Colloquyf theCenter orHermeneutical tudies n Hellenistic nd Modern ulture 3(1987): 54. In that case, my question is still why t should matter hat such benefitsderive from he actual) past.

8. Norman K. Gottwald, The Theological Task After The Tribes f Yahweh, n The Bibleand Liberation: olitical nd Social Hermeneutics, d. Gottwald Maryknoll, N.Y., 1983),198.




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9. Readers familiar with tructuralist erminology ill notice resemblance between myuse of the terms nalogy nd continuity nd the structuralist abit of contrasting meta-phor nd metonymy. his suggests hat there may be a connection between tendenciesto essentialize he actual past and a certain formalist manner of essentializing iterary

language (i.e., by privileging igures n which metaphoric nd metonymic elationshappen to coincide). But I will not pursue the suggestion ny further n this ssay.10. Edmund S. Morgan, American lavery American Freedom: he Ordeal fColonialVirginia

(New York, 1975), chap. 18.11. Fredric Jameson, The Political Unconscious: arrative s a Socially ymbolic ct Ithaca,

N.Y., 1981), 17; henceforth ited n the text s PU.12. To ask whether personal and collective asts have similar laims on the present s not

to imply ny endorsement f a philosophical or an ethical or political ndividualism.am in no sense questioning he view that persons are socially onstructed-that, n thewords of George H. Mead, the self, s that which can be an object to itself, s essen-tially socialstructure, nd it arises n socialexperience ; Mind, Self, nd Society: rom

the tandpoint f Social Behaviorist, d. Charles W. Morris Chicago, 1934), 140. Noram I questioning he numerous other ways, part from elations o the past, n whichpersonal and collective dentities an be treated as homologous. For a discussion ofsuch homologies, see Jurgen Habermas, Communicationnd the Evolution f Society,trans. Thomas McCarthy Boston, 1979), 106-16. Finally, oconclude that gents arenot accountable for their collectivepasts would not be to absolve them of collectiveresponsibility or their ollective resents nd futures.

13. For a recent critical urvey f theories of punishment, ee C.L. Ten, Crime, uilt, ndPunishment: Philosophical ntroduction Oxford, 1987). Important earlier studiesinclude H. L. A. Hart, Punishment nd Responsibility:ssays n the Philosophy f Law(Oxford, 1968); and George P. Fletcher, ethinking riminal aw (Boston, 1978).As a

glance at any of these works will show, my argument ddresses only a very narrowrange of the questions associated with what s in fact bewilderingly omplex subject.14. As the National Socialists well knew n controlling nmates n slave abor camps, occa-

sionallyhanging an innocent person effectively eters disobedience byother nmates ;Fletcher, Rethinking riminal aw, 415.

15. Of course even deterrence would collapse if more than a few people knew about thedeception.

16. Robert Nozick,Philosophical xplanations Cambridge, Mass., 1981), 387.17. It is stronger, or one thing, than the notion of personal identity Nozick himself

defends n the first hapter of the same book.18. The precise relevance of metaphysical ebates about free will and determinism o

theories of punishment s unclear in any case. See Derek Parfit, easons nd Persons(Oxford, 1984), 323-26.19. In a lucid chapter on collective responsibility, oel Feinberg distinguishes etween

vicarious iability nd vicarious guilt. According to Feinberg, Even though criminalliability an transfer r extend vicariously rom guilty o an innocent party, t cannotliterally e true that guilt transfers s well. For guilt to transfer iterally, ction andintention oo must ransfer iterally. ut to sayof an innocent man that he bears anoth-er's guilt s to saythat he had one (innocent) ntention nd yet nother guilty) ne, aclaim which on analysis urns out to be contradictory ; oing nd Deserving: ssays ntheTheory f ResponsibilityPrinceton, N.J., 1970), 232. The question I am asking hereis whether t makes any more sense to transfer ction and intention from past topresent states of a single person than it does to transfer hem from one person toanother. f not, then all guilt, not ust some cases of collective uilt, s vicarious.

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20. As this sentence indicates, am not advancing a skeptical or reductive account ofpersonal identity s such. My claim s not that emporal uccessiondeprives the agentof any continuous dentity; t s nstead he narrower uggestion hat ime has removedthe past act from the agent's present control, nd that this makes it hard to see whyresponses to the agent that would have been ustified while she was performing hebad action remain ustified fter he has performed t.

21. There is, however, no guarantee that any actual practice of punishment will n factcause people to avoid certain ctions because of the effects hose actions will have

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