Blessed acts of oblivion on the ethics of forgetting

This paper explores the ethics of forgetting as a technology of the self. Forgetfulness is a feature of a range of contexts of political conflict and ‘difficult’ heritage. Such forgetfulness is often imagined as an imposition (as when states deny the freedom to remember) or a weakness (as when people are thought to repress uncomfortable or difficult memories). Here by contrast I examine a context of difficult heritage and political conflict in which people forget some things by remembering others, and I highlight the ways in which it is often hard to disentangle which process is primary. Rather than ask whether the point is what you remember or what you forget, alternative and more interesting questions are revealed, I suggest, by asking what kind of subject is the ideal end result.