Rescrierea istoriei la Milan Kundera
Rewriting History in Milan Kundera

Summary/Abstract: The novels of Milan Kundera trace the possibility of rewriting history at both the individual level and within collective memory. The erasure of history in totalitarian society sets off with the erasure of the individuals’ social and professional identities, both in the present and in the past. This abusive practice carries on at the level of the whole collectivity by the manipulation of the present by means of censorship and distortion of information. It eventually moves backwards to rewrite large swathes of history.The massive encroaching of totalitarian practice onto the individual and collective indentity ends up with a systematic control of memory. This is why one of the main duties of those who fight totalitarianism is the so-called devoir de mémoire (duty of memory), viewed as an instrument of one’s struggle to reinstate Truth.

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