Damnatio memoriae

A famous photo from 1920 shows Lenin giving a speech to the crowd gathered in Sverdlov Square in Moscow. Next to the podium was Lev Trotsky, the founder of the Red Army, who was later canceled by the censors after losing the duel with Stalin for the succession to Lenin himself. The manipulation of images was a very widespread practice in the Soviet Union and was used by Stalin to erase even the memory of those who had already been physically excluded from the political scene.

The examples of elimination of memory are however numerous and widespread in all latitudes and in all epochs. Among the most recent episodes, we remember the destruction of the Buddhas of Bamiyan, the two large statues of Buddha of the sixth century by the Taliban in 2001, or the explosions inside the archaeological complex of Palmyra in Syria by the isis in 2015. In the United States and the American continent, objects of destruction and cancellation are the symbols linked to the Confederation and the statues of Columbus in the name of the genocide of indigenous peoples.

The Romans called this attitude damnatio memoriae, literally "condemnation of memory" and had institutionalized it in a real sanction inflicted on political personalities who had committed very serious acts such as high treason and hostility towards the Senate. The measure provided for the cancellation of the portraits and inscriptions relating to the characters affected by such a measure. Many personalities, such as Marcus Anthony, Nero, Domitian, have undergone this measure.

On closer inspection, damnatio memoriae is not only a particular institution of the Roman world, it is a real inclination of men and societies of all times. In 2004, a particularly interesting American film was released, entitled If you leave me I cancel you, which tells of two former lovers who, after having entrusted themselves to a memory clinic to erase all memories of their life together, discover each other again and unknowingly in love.
The cancellation of the memory as the cancellation of evil, of the enemy. Oblivion gives us the illusory belief that we are omnipotent, but, in the end, it behaves like an amazing substance that does not solve problems, but simply transports us temporarily to another dimension, unreal however. Deleting the memory cannot delete the object of the memory itself.
Individual and social experience show what negative effects come from the removal and cancellation of our negative memories. On the other hand, we really grow up when we are able to deal with our suffering and our efforts. This principle also applies to society. In the seventeenth century, it recognized the value of freedom and respect for the dignity of others because it experienced the barbarism of the wars of religion on its own skin and was able to overcome them.
After the Second World War, our country was able to write the current republican constitution because it was able to find new foundations for civil life in the rejection of the dictatorship and the repudiation of war. These are processes that are never linear or without suffering. Individual and social life is mixed with profound contradictions, but it is not forgetting what disturbs us that we can face it.


Renato Bonomo
NP March 2022