The Politics of Regret

by Jeffrey K. Olick

In the past decade, Jeffrey Olick has established himself as one of the world’s pre-eminent sociologists of memory (and, related to this, both cultural sociology and social theory). His recent book on memory in postwar Germany, In the House of the Hangman (University of Chicago Press, 2005) has garnered a great deal of acclaim. This book collects his best essays on a range of memory related issues and adds a couple of new ones. It is more conceptually expansive than his other work and will serve as a great introduction to this important theorist. In the past quarter century, the issue of memory has not only become an increasingly important analytical category for historians, sociologists and cultural theorists, it has become pervasive in popular culture as well. Part of this is a function of the enhanced role of both narrative and representation – the building blocks of memory, so to speak – across the social sciences and humanities. Just as importantly, though, there has also been an increasing acceptance of the notion that the past is no longer the province of professional historians alone. Additionally, acknowledging the importance of social memory has not only provided agency to ordinary people when it comes to understanding the past, it has made conflicting interpretations of the meaning of the past more fraught, particularly in light of the terrible events of the twentieth century. Olick looks at how catastrophic, terrible pasts – Nazi Germany, apartheid South Africa – are remembered, but he is particularly concerned with the role that memory plays in social structures. Memory can foster any number of things – social solidarity, nostalgia, civil war – but it always depends on both the nature of the past and the cultures doing the remembering. Prior to his studies of individual episodes, he fully develops his theory of memory and society, working through Bergson, Halbwachs, Elias, Bakhtin, and Bourdieu.

Genres: History, Criticism, Nonfiction, Cultural Studies

238 pages, Paperback

First published June 1, 2007

Reviews

[V · Rating 4 out of 5]

What stood out to me most about this book is how Olick reframes “regret” into a broader political and historical framework. He’s not just talking about how societies remember the past, but about how they position themselves in relation to it; how apology, accountability, and acknowledgment become part of modern political life. It’s a really interesting shift, and one that makes you realize how specific our current way of engaging with history actually is.

What I appreciated most is how the book deepens that conversation rather than just introducing it. Ideas like “coming to terms with the past” or political apologies are things that come up a lot, but Olick adds a level of nuance that makes you think more carefully about how and why those responses take shape in the first place.

[Tessa]

logging books im reading for my thesis