Against Remembrance
David Rieff
Melbourne University Press
Against Remembrance poses hard questions about the importance of collective memory. Are events like ANZAC Day an essential part of a decent public culture? Can commissions on truth and reconciliation help remedy injustice and prevent it in future-or are they mainly obstacles to peace? Drawing on his experience as a war correspondent and bringing to bear an impressive grasp of history, David Rieff explores the role of memory in the defining events of recent times, including the origins and aftermath of war and ethnic cleansing in former Yugoslavia, the malign inheritance of apartheid in South Africa and the supreme crime of the Holocaust.'---John Gray, author of Black Mass