Politics of Memory

Since identity is predicated upon an understanding of the

past, identity politics inevitably involves a politics of
memory. This is borne out by the fact that since the
campaigns to save the Star Ferry Pier and the Queens
Pier, the term, collective memory, has been very much
in vogue.
Collective memory of some events, such as the fall of
the Berlin wall or the June Fourth Massacre is highly
significant both politically and historically. Anniversaries
of these events are either celebrated or suppressed. But
the politics of memory also operates at the micro or
everyday level.
 Urban Redevelopment
Urban redevelopment is a case in point. Due to the
regime change in capitalism, cities throughout the
developed world have been stripped of their industrial
base. They have to reinvent themselves by (1)
manipulating their physical environment and (2) the
conscious management of signs and symbols.
The manipulation of physical environment is often
conducted with a view to the management of signs and
symbols. Urban redevelopment projects have been
earnestly pursued to create an urban setting conducive
to the development of cultural industries and tourism.
 The Idea of Heritage
In Hong Kong, urban redevelopment has aroused
concern over preservation of historic buildings. The
government has responded with a program of
revitalization of historic buildings, which supposedly
constitute the heritage of Hong Kong.
According to Stuart Hall, the idea of heritage is closely
tied to a particular national narrative. In Hong Kong
buildings that are regarded as historic buildings
originated, with a few exceptions, from colonial times. As
such, a national narrative is not apparent. What is
deemed historic is simply reduced to certain architectural
style. There is no reference to memory, collective or not.
Preservation as Disappearance
Ackbar Abbas thesis of Hong Kong as a space of
disappearance is precisely based on efforts at
preservation before the handover. Citing the example of
three cases, Abbas argues that preservation in Hong
Kong only succeeded in making the history of these
preserved sites disappear.
Effort at preservation in the post-handover era is even
worse. Recent examples like The Pawn and Heritage
1881 blatantly turn heritage sites into theme park for
nostalgia, which is simply memory without pain.
Precisely due to the lack of reference, a politics of
memory is quietly and effectively at work.
 Endless Interpolations
Memory without pain is selective memory. Harping on
nostalgia is simply an easy way out of a complex or even
difficult past. A pawnshop should remind people how
difficult life was. Likewise, the site of the Marine
Headquarter was once a base for opium smugglers.
Harping on nostalgia blights out all the richness and
boundless opportunities that memory can bring since
remembrance is the capacity for endless interpolations
into what has been. (16)
The work of memory is highly intricate. The philosopher,
Walter Benjamin, offers insightful glimpses of the work of
memory in his evocative essay on his youth, A Berlin
Chronicle.
 The Work of Memory
The duration for which we are exposed to impressions
has no bearing on their fate in memory. Nothing prevents
our keeping rooms in which we have spent twenty-four
hours more or less clearly in our memory, and forgetting
others in which we passed months. It is not, therefore,
due to insufficient exposure-time if no image appears on
the plate of remembrance. (56)
More frequent, perhaps, are the cases when the half-
light of habit denies the plate the necessary light for
years, until one day from an alien source it flashes as if
from burning magnesium powder, and now a snapshot
transfixes the rooms image on a plate. (56)
 Immolation of our Deepest Self
Nor is this very mysterious, since such moments of
sudden illuminations are at the same time moments
when we are beside ourselves, and while our waking,
habitual everyday self is involved actively or passively in
what is happening, our deeper self rests in another place
and is touched by the shock . It is to this immolation of
our deepest self in shock that our memory owes its most
indelible images. (57)
Critical phases in ones life often suddenly illuminates
aspects of ones previous life that seem to have been
completely forgotten.
 Memory as Excavations
He who seeks to approach his own buried past must
conduct himself like a man digging. This confers the tone
and hearing of genuine reminiscences. He must not be
afraid to return again and again to the same matter; to
scatter it as one scatters the earth, to turn over it as one
turns over soil. (26)
True, for successful excavations a plan is needed. Yet
no less indispensable is the cautious probing of the
spade in the dark loam, and it is to cheat oneself of the
richest prize to preserve as a record merely the inventory
of ones discovery, and not this dark joy of the place of
finding itself. (26)
 The Reward of Memory
He who has begun to open the fan of memory
never comes to the end of its segments, no
image satisfies him, for he has seen that it can
be unfolded, and only in its folds does the truth
reside; that image, that touch for whose sake all
this has been unfurled and dissected; and now
remembrance advances from small to smallest
details, from the smallest to the infinitesimal,
while that which it encounters in these
microcosms grows ever mightier. (6)
 Cityscape & Memory
In terms of the work of memory, efforts at
preservation both before and after the handover
completely neglected the close relationship
between memory and cityscapes. A city is a
mnemonic device. It stimulates recollection.
A city is the site that provides this dark joy of the
place of finding itself. A scene in Stanley Kwans
Rouge gives a perfect illustration. The female
ghost is delighted as she is able to recall
buildings after buildings that once stood along
the tram route.
 Memory & Consciousness
The secret of a city as a mnemonic device has
to do with the fact that for people living in a city,
optical reception of buildings occurs much less
through rapt attention than by noticing the
building in incidental fashion.
The cityscape as a whole is an object of tactile
appropriation. Objects of tactile appropriation are
not so much stored in memory as forgotten in
memory. With tactile appropriation, there is no
question of out of sight, out of mind.
 Memory at a Street Corner






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 Reclaim the City
Regarding the wholesale destruction of streets,
at stake is not so much collective memory as
whether people can still recall any treasured
memories of the time and place they once
frequented. An adequate understanding of the
work of memory can help to reclaim the city from
its present destructive path.
Memory does not assume the past is left behind
as one moves on, but like spaces in labyrinth, is
continually encountered again, returned to,
though approached from different directions.
 Destruction of the Cityscape
Memory is a labyrinth, so is the city. Memory
helps bringing forth the particular nature of a city.
Only in memory does a city show itself. A
cityscape on the other hand helps to stimulate
the recollection of things forgotten in memory.
Large-scale redevelopment not only destroys the
previous cityscape, it also changes the
labyrinthine nature of the city. A labyrinth is
always lateral. So are streets. A shopping mall
however is a vertical development project
employing the full array of the technology of
looking.
 The Politics of Memory
Large-scale urban redevelopment projects are
destructive of memory in several ways. They
destroyed not so much familiar buildings and
objects as tactile appropriation since the end
result of these projects is often a large shopping
mall, which demands rapt attention.
Urban redevelopment is hence a politics of
memory. In Hong Kong, it is misrepresented and
misunderstood as an issue pertaining to the
preservation of heritage.
 No Monument
As the streets of Hong Kong are deemed not
worthy of preservation, urban redevelopment
schemes tend to erase the hustle and bustle of
streets to provide an illusionary urban setting of
leisure and pleasure.
For those who remember, the city contains
countless bones and remains of those who have
no monument, no landmark to indicate their
passing. The streets of Hong Kong were once
full of the footprints of such people.
 Unfulfilled Promises
Memory of the city is also memory of the
forgotten dead, the thwarted desire of past
generation or unfulfilled promises of the past. In
this regard, the campaigns to save the Star
Ferry Pier and the Queens Pier were highly
significant even though they were unsuccessful.
The focus of the campaigns was not so much
the preservation of certain buildings as the
preservation of memories and records of
struggles by people in Hong Kong for social
justice or simply a decent living.
 The Child & the City
In remembering, one remembers above all as a
child, that is, at a time when the city appears for
the first time. The at first sight of a city is a
special perception untainted by the destructive
power of pre-conceived ideas.
Childhood is a time when things appear larger
than what they are now. A child sees everything
in the city with curiosity and a sense of wonder.
A child reaches out his hand to touch and feel
the things around him.
 Fusion of Past & Present
The most important thing though is that children
enjoy a special relationship with the world of
things. Memory of the city brings us closer to the
city.
Memory of the city brings back a time when the
city is full of wonder. Memory brings back the
past that habits of the present habitually neglect
and even deny its presence. It is the fusion of a
neglected past and a present that does not
always recognize its past. Memory is political.
 More Than Memorable
In remembering, only the actus purus of
recollection itself, not the author or the
plot, constitutes the unity of the text. One
may even say that the intermittence of
author and plot is only the reverse of the
continuum of memory, the pattern on the
back side of the tapestry. (Walter
Benjamin, Illuminations. p. 203)