THE COLONIZATION OF THE PAST AND THE CONSTRUCTION OF MNEMONIC ORDER
THE COLONIZATION OF THE PAST AND THE CONSTRUCTION OF MNEMONIC ORDER

Summary/Abstract: Starting from the assumption that every society develops its own regime of memory to support and strengthen social order, this paper analyzes the content of 26 Romanian history textbooks in order to unfold how mnemonic order is assembled through these ideological vehicles. Furthermore, the purpose of this paper is to empirically test the evolutionary model of societal memory, which holds that each socio-political revolution triggers a major process of reconfiguring the socially promoted image of the past. Textbook analysis support the advanced hypothesis, in that the historiographical discourse through which the nation-state shapes societal memory underwent a succession of stages, each fracture that broke the linearity of the discourse closely following the major socio-political changes produced in the structure of Romanian society. Thus, a first “mnemonic revolution” occurred due to the emergence of national consciousness, favored by the introduction of compulsory primary education. The next major break in the structure of societal memory occurred after the communist takeover, which led to the overthrow of the monarchy. Then, along with the progressive independence from Moscow, the textbooks reflect the production of an intrasystemic mnemonic revolution, through the ethno-nationalism twist. Finally, the revolution of 1989 led to the shattering of the monolithic character of the previous historical discourse, engaging now in various directions. However, despite the liberalization of the field of historical production, the nation state continues to intervene in a corrective vein into the work of historians when the image of the past proposed by them cast doubt upon the naturality claimed by the state.

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