Memories Matter

We carry stories around in our minds, re-enact, revise and extend them. Mostly this is not a conscious process. Even when it is, our efforts are much less creative than we may like to think. Some of these memories appear to us as individual but even these are mediated by wider memories which are social, shared. Carried forward social memory frames how we think, what we think about and how we act. Its often not even worth trying to untangle or “unpack” much of this - its just about how our species rolls.

But we are not helpless. We are capable of analysing why we think and act as we have and now do, with humility and uncertainty, but aiming to be better than simply victims of our past.

Tony Ballantyne is a scholar of our colonial past and his new book “Captain Cook And The Unsettled Afterlives of Empire” looks at how this social memory process works and what it means about our present. (Bridget Williams Books).

When I got this I confess remarking to a colleague “another book on Captain Cook! Just what we need”. Which shows how shallow I can be. Its not a light read. Not just history as record or story, though some of that is here. But equal parts historiography mapping how historians’ thinking has evolved, commentary on contemporary political use of the social memories at various times, and thoughtful contributions on how we might now regard the colonial experience. Captain Cook is a vehicle as much as sole subject.

I had not recognised how ubiquitous Cook is in our social memory whether in physical or story form. He is, of course, a far from neutral figure if such a thing exists. I could not help wondering (pointlessly I know) which of the many “Cooks” we have created in social memory the man himself might have recognised. The man long since ceased to be as significant as the symbol, probably even before his death.

Professor Ballantyne sticks with Cook in enormous detail, but the process of creating social memory is the message I take. Students and scholars, as well as casual readers like me, will take what they want from it all, folding with other individual and social memory. We absorb a lot of data slop with no substance or sustenance these days, so taking some time for more reflective and nourishing input is worthwhile.

We are still living in the “ unsettled afterlives of Empire” forming new social memories all the time. Influencing such memories may be one of the most important things we can do. And resisting efforts to impose social memories which enslave us to old ideas.