History between memory and oblivion. A theoretical overview

Abstract

The questions about our links with the past put into play theories that are often based on binomials, such as history/memory or memory/oblivion. The first one characterizes history as a discipline that takes distance from the facts by universalizing them, thus establishing a contrast with a living memory, loaded with emotions and contradictions that emerge from the protagonists of the facts being studied. The second places memory on the side of ethical duty and as a sine qua non condition for the shaping of identities, while oblivion is relegated to purposeful concealment, linked to the search for impunity. This paper recovers those pairs in the light of classic and updated bibliography, in order to retrace the conceptual forms on which many analyses of the field of memory and history are based.