Anti-Amnesia: Our memories are resistance
Capitalism and colonialism thrive on the erasure of our memories, that function as a type of amnesia of the working class. It is crucial to preserve our histories, victories, and struggles; by remembering, we combat dominant narratives that benefit those in power. By consciously recollecting, we practice hope – a discipline that works to disrupt capitalist and colonialist ideologies. The process allows us to invest in the belief of systemic alternatives. From this memory work, we learn and develop the revolutionary practices that it will take to get us there.
Amnesia is an imperfect metaphor for this phenomenon, as we are not blaming the working class and other oppressed people for their own forgetfulness nor pathologizing amnesia. The deliberate erasure of memory of working-class and anti-colonial histories serves the interests of those in power who claim capitalism and inequality are inevitable and deny the existence of viable alternatives. Historical amnesia is not an individual disease to be ‘treated’ with a pill: it is a dominant political tactic to be combatted collectively by actively recovering and sharing memories of resistant movements.
When we forget that people’s movements are responsible for any of the comforts, privileges, and rights we have today, we more readily believe that these have always existed. In the labour movement, for example, many things we take for granted as workers in Canada today like the eight-hour workday, weekends, paid parental leave, gender-inclusive spousal benefits, basic health and safety – really any labour standards at all – were not gifted to workers by magnanimous capitalists or by democratically-elected state rulers. When politicians intervened to create favourable legislation, it was always only a response to power from below. Typically, legislation included compromises that suppress working class power to alleviate the fears of capitalists and business owners. Despite this dynamic, dominant ideology reinforced by mainstream media, accompanied by frequent state-led strikebreaking, would have us believe that labour action is useless and even counter-productive to industrial relations and workers’ interests.
The many workers in Canada today who do not enjoy the same standards, largely because of racism and xenophobia, might end up in historical records but risk being expunged from collective memory unless we push back and insist on recording their struggles.
History is never objective or impartial, and the past is used in highly ideological ways. Histories are interpreted, disputed, and often politically pacified. Anti-amnesia is about challenging the deliberate erasure of histories that results in collective ‘forgetfulness’. It begins with the preservation of memory for the working class and for oppressed people whose histories are threatened by dominant institutions. The powerful forces who promote deliberate forgetting always have the same vested interests, everywhere – from Nakba denialists in occupied Palestine to post-dictatorship historical revisionists in Latin America to the far-right politicians across Turtle Island who deny the lived realities of Indian Residential “School” survivors and their descendants – the erasure of people’s histories always serves colonial power and capitalism. As anti-caste activist Dr. B.R. Ambedkar said, “they cannot make history who forget history.”
Selective political amnesia prevents us from making meaningful change. Those in power – the bourgeoisie – have their memories preserved in institutions, colonial law, and statesmanship, and they use this power for immeasurable hypocrisy while attempting to repress power from below. Recovering, recording and sharing our memories allows us to see further as we stand on the shoulders of the gigantic movements of common peoples who preceded us. When we become aware of the memories of our past struggles, we are inspired to commit to change in the way those before us did. We awaken to the fact that another world is possible. Most importantly, we recognize that as workers together with allied movements, we are the primary agents for this change.
Antler River Media Co-operative is committed to this struggle of anti-amnesia through our collective remembering. We look forward to helping preserve the memories of working class struggles and anti-colonial movements, starting with and focusing on the stories of community members in London and the surrounding areas.
Written by Morgan Oddie, Vieno-Nour Kniivila and David Heap, with thanks to Chava Finkler for her input on an earlier version. This editorial is unanimously endorsed by the ARM Board.
