Remembering (in) the past perfect: Ethical shifts in times

Introduction

On the outskirts of Rotterdam there is a set of modern buildings belonging to the Humanitas Foundation. Humanitas operates in the field of care and wellbeing for older people. It is well known for its innovative approach towards what is called there the art of living at a later age (Becker, 2003; Bendien et al., 2010). At the end of 2006, just before Christmas, Humanitas placed an advertisement in a local newspaper called the Old Rotterdammer, announcing the opening of the first Reminiscence museum at its headquarters. Everybody was invited to visit the exhibition, which was situated in the basement of a large living and care-providing complex for older people.

Six months later, on a summer afternoon, two ladies, both in their mid-60s, headed towards the Humanitas headquarters in order to pay a visit to the Reminiscence museum that they had heard so much about. As they entered the museum premises they stopped abruptly, looking around in disbelief. The place did not remind them of a museum at all. It was much larger than they had expected and it looked utterly familiar. There were no explanatory notes or pointers to follow, but the two visitors did not need any of those. They knew what they were looking at and their memories generously supplied them with more details than they could possibly voice.

The museum strongly reminded them of home, and in fact it was designed like one. In the corner with a true-to-life small grocery one of the ladies pointed at a tin containing brown powder branded Buisman, which was used in many Dutch households until the late 1960s and was said to improve the flavour of coffee. She told how her mother had once made coffee with Buisman powder for her guests, but had totally forgotten to add the coffee itself. Laughing the lady explained how surprised everyone had looked when they first tasted the brown sugared water. But they drank it dutifully without wanting to embarrass the lady of the house. Her companion could hardly wait till the story was over and immediately embarked on one of her own. She had noticed old-fashioned floor-scales that used to be quite common in shops to weigh large quantities of goods. She told that as a child she always loved to step on them in order to weigh herself. Then she added to her recollections a more serious note about her parents, for whom weighing their child had become more a necessity than a game during the war. ¹

In the museum room where the entourage of an old-fashioned kitchen had been reconstructed, one of the ladies enthusiastically pointed at a pan, explaining that it belonged to a famous set, called ‘the secret of the white dot’. Everybody in the direct neighbourhood looked up, intrigued by her remark. The lady, visibly enjoying the attention, told that several decades ago a company producing kitchen utensils had introduced a new set of pans under that name. The handles of the set had been marked with a white dot and, so the advertisement claimed, those pans were unbreakable. Then the lady paused and without trying to conceal her irony she continued: ‘But you know, those handles were the first parts that broke … Very soon all production was discontinued, because “the secret” never worked …’ Everybody laughed and the two friends continued their visit.

In each room of the museum there were objects that attracted their attention. They poured out their memories over everybody, sometimes with surprise and disbelief that they were still able to remember so many details. It seemed as if they were following two parallel tracks of remembering, each of them filled with personal details and yet never arguing with each other about principal differences, rather adding something to the continuously emerging and commonly shared stories of the past that were clearly dear to them. Their humoristic stories were alternated by accounts in which the hardships of domestic labour were described, but the tone of their interaction remained positive. The ladies radiated confidence and authority, and if it were not for a museum volunteer who pointed out that they were already running half an hour late with closing time, they would simply have kept on enjoying their memories about the good old days.

As they were leaving, one of the volunteers asked whether they missed all those habits and activities from the past. It seemed as if the ladies came to a sudden standstill. They looked up almost frightened and then exclaimed, almost in unison: ‘Good God no, not at all!’ Then they said their good-byes and assured the museum staff that they would return to that ‘wonderful museum’ again.

Ambiguous associations: Context and objectives

Older people often dwell on the past, or at least that is what we take for granted when trying to imagine the everyday activities of retired people. Another cliché enunciates that the older generation tends to use the past to illustrate the good old times (see more in Draaisma, 2001, 2008). Those examples of everybody-knows-it wisdom are perpetuated by literature, media and mass culture. One of the most popular presents that are sold in Dutch stationary shops nowadays is a (note)book called Grandmother (or Grandfather) writes about then, for later. That innocent pastime reflects the common opinion that the older generation is worth as much as the past that it can convey. That line of thought was not invented recently. Already in his Rhetoric, Aristotle set the tone for the future debate about remembering among older people that would prevail for centuries to come. He concludes his detailed and outspoken negative judgment about old age by stating that older people ‘live by memory rather than by hope; for what is left to them of life is but little when compared with the long past; and hope is of the future, memory of the past’ (2010: 86).

By the 20th century the negative associations between dwelling on the past and old age had crystallized in the inference that reminiscing among older people is a sign of senile deviation in need of treatment (Butler, 1963). That conclusion rested on the high frequency of remembering activities among older people, and it was clarified by their predominant (= pathological) disposition towards escapism and obsession with the past. In his seminal article ‘The life review: An interpretation of reminiscence in the aged’ (1963) Robert Butler proved such conclusions to be unfounded. His reasoning was based on observations from psychiatric practice, which revealed the healing effects of rethinking and reassessing the past among the elderly, especially in cases of unsolved conflicts and traumatic experiences. By doing so Butler succeeded in invalidating one of the erroneous associations between reminiscing and old age, namely that remembering at a later age is a meaningless activity and even dangerous for one’s mental health. As a result of his findings reminiscing was given a more positive connotation. Reminiscence studies blossomed and reminiscence work became a well-established method for treating depression and dementia at a later age (e.g. Bohlmeijer et al., 2007; Watt and Cappeliez, 2000; Willemse et al., 2009).

The contemporary interdisciplinary field that covers the issues of remembering at a later age has inherited a strong therapeutic bias. It is developing at the intersection of a number of disciplines, but one of the features that unites the various approaches is their interventional character, which can be seen most clearly in the promotion of (semi-)therapeutic treatments and techniques (e.g. Coleman, 2005; Webster and Haight, 2002).

Whereas therapeutic applications of reminiscence work among older patients are regularly scrutinized, the remembering activities of the much larger and healthier part of the older generation do not receive specific attention. The question of why and how older people dwell on the past hardly seems to raise any interest beyond the context of care-providing settings and, whenever it does, the rule of extrapolation takes over. As a result we tend to speak about all older people who like to reminisce and whose health can profit from that activity. Their memories are said to have an instrumental function, like the pleasure of talking, or the transfer of knowledge, or the finding of a solution to a complicated situation.

The main trouble with that kind of interpretation lies in the fact that the memories of older people are treated like ready-made accounts of the past, that can be revived and set to work in a present-day situation. Thus the older generation becomes stigmatized as the guardians of tradition who find some solace and usefulness based on their past. To go along with such an assertion will take us no further, but in fact right back to Aristotle’s view about old age, which lives rather by memory than by hope.

The therapeutic application of reminiscence work aims to use the memories of older persons to bring about a positive change in their mental health. The aim of this article is to show that the memories themselves change continuously, and that the remembering process is not just an instrument but a goal in itself, with a sense-making function at the later stages of our lives. Our main objectives are to demonstrate how change is incorporated into the fabric of remembering and what kind of ethical dilemmas this incorporation entails for older people. In our theoretical elaboration we shall draw on the process approach towards remembering (Bergson, 2005[1911], 2004[1912]) as it has been developed in the studies of social remembering (Middleton and Brown, 2005). To that effect we shall analyse data that contain examples of everyday remembering. Careful reading of the reminiscences of older people will show that the process of remembering at a later age is accompanied by re-evaluation, which allows for an introduction of new meanings into old memories. We shall focus on the entwining of personal and socially shared memories and zoom into the discrepancies in the remembering discourse and also into the ways in which the older people manage them. The analysis of the process of re-evaluation will be supplemented by a discussion on the ethical dilemmas that accompany the remembering process. Using the conclusions of this discussion we shall be able to elaborate on the issue of the authenticity of memories and to connect this to the role that remembering plays in later life.

Remembering as a process of continuous change

Various sociological and psychological traditions have influenced our understanding of how individual acts of remembering are shaped and mediated by social structures and how social settings have a direct impact on the cognitive processes of remembering (Draaisma, 2001; Roediger and Wertsch, 2008; Welzer, 2010; Wertsch, 2002). In The Social Psychology of Experience: Studies of Remembering and Forgetting, David Middleton and Steve Brown (2005) have conducted pioneer work by showing the way in which individual acts of remembering can be seen as socially oriented actions. Another challenge that the authors addressed is to introduce a process approach to the studies of social remembering based on the works of the French philosopher Henri Bergson. According to this approach ‘what is real is change itself’ (Middleton and Brown, 2005: 61). The authors elaborated on the concept of continuous change, which, as Bergson has shown, underlies the process of remembering. In order to grasp change we need another conceptualization of time: not a time as a sequence of moments but a time as a flow, without a subdivision into the past, present and future. The authors came with a new notion of ‘lived experience’, which does not belong to a certain period of time. Lived experience rather spans over time and remains exposed to multiple influences such as the individual changes that we undergo, the cultural and social conditions under which we live, our associations with various social groups, interactions and the means by which our experiences are mediated.

This dynamic and integral presentation of our relation to the past has opened a new perspective in the research on social remembering. The studies that came afterwards have proved this approach to be conducive to a better understanding of how different versions of the past are re-shaped and sustained (Bendien, 2010; Brookfield et al., 2008; Brown and Stenner, 2009; Reavey and Brown, 2006). In this article we shall further develop the notion of continuous change by applying it to the reminiscences of older people, a group that is universally considered to be conservative and therefore hardly susceptible to change. Remembering ² is understood here as dwelling on past experiences. It represents a socially oriented action, as a result of which our past experiences are renegotiated in accordance with the values of the present. According to Sue Campbell we are talking here about the reconstructive model of our memory, which ‘remains uncomfortably positioned against the older storehouse model of memory’ (2010: 177). It means that instead of isolating one act of recollection, this dynamic approach focuses on the process of remembering, which is more complex than a mere enumeration of events that have taken place in the past. Furthermore the process of remembering does not represent a simple sequence of recollections. It is better explained in terms of accumulation, where not one or a group of recollections but the totality of our memories blends with our present, thus creating new versions of old experiences (Bergson, 2007[1946]). ³ The accumulation, as Bergson explains it, is not a numeric but a qualitative notion here. Coming back to the opening example, it would be impossible to explain the final exclamation that the ladies made (‘Good God no, not at all!’), either by their earlier remarks or by simply summing up their memories. Their final response was the result of a specific form of accumulation that is rather based on the merging of their total experiences than on the successive instances.

The accumulative power of our memory is based on the idea of continuous change, which is qualitative by nature and threads each aspect of life. To give another example, it would not occur to us to consider a person who is 65 years old to be a mere sequential version of her/him when (s)he was 64. At 65 that person would still carry along the entire palette of all the previous years mixed together, whereby each new experience still adds new colours and thereby continuously changes the entire picture of her/his life. This continuous change is an intrinsic aspect of our life, which is why it would be almost unnatural for us to notice it taking place. Change can be made explicit as it is done when we count our chronological age. But ageing, as opposed to age, represents a process (Bendien, 2010), where various stages melt together and converge into one single creative movement, which allows us to regard it as constant change as well. Therefore unpredictability and novelty that are characteristic of change do not represent particular hurdles for ageing, because they constitute essential elements of any creative development (Bergson, 2005[1911]). ⁴ That is why a rejection of the wish to reincarnate the good old days is neither a contradiction nor a consequence of what the ladies told about the past during their visit. Their response can be better called a shift in convictions and attitudes, that becomes explicit at the intersection of the processes of remembering and ageing.

To summarize, our changing attitudes, convictions and beliefs of today are rooted in our past experiences, but they are never equivalent to the original ones, because we change continuously and because our later experiences are always marked by an element of novelty. This is one of the principles of the process approach on which the forthcoming analysis is based and which at the same time tears down the assumption that we know what older people are talking about.

Besides its accumulative power and changing nature, also the cultural character of memory influences the way the older generation remembers the past (Assmann, 2008; Erll, 2008). While remembering the details of housekeeping as it used to be about 40–50 years ago, the ladies in our example continuously refer to both generationally shared and personal experiences. In those days almost every Dutch family used Buisman powder to ‘improve’ the taste of coffee. The members of the older generation read the same books, cooked the same food and Monday was the ‘national’ washing day in the entire country. At the same time each personal memory invites us into a person’s private world, which always remains unique. The tension between we and I is a reciprocal theme addressed in studies on social remembering (see e.g. Haaken, 1998; Kansteiner, 2010; Olick, 1999). Neither a strict division (this is my memory and that is ours), nor an opposition (personal versus social memory) can help us to answer the question of why remembering becomes so important later in life and what happens to the perfect past when it is spoken about in the present time. Bearing in mind the process character of remembering, we can assume that there are different movements involved in each act of remembering. One represents moving back and forth along the trajectory of the past–present–future, and another movement is hermeneutic by nature, where socially/culturally shared and personal memories reciprocally feed and enrich each other. Perhaps both movements are goals and not consequences of remembering that takes place at a later age. The following analysis will show that where culturally shared and personal experiences intersect, shifts take place in ethical valorization.

Fine-tuning the image of the guardians of traditions

The present challenges and threatens the older generation with reduced active participation in life, which they usually experience as exclusion (Buchanan and Middleton, 1995). This is partly due to the message dominating the public discourse and claiming that their main field of expertise is limited to former times. Within this social context reminiscing at a later age is associated with an activity of anaesthetic indulgence. It does not have any active reference point in the present, which is why older people are assigned a relatively passive role of ‘guardians of traditions’.

If older people were actually reminiscing only for the sake of the past or as a distraction from the present, a line could be drawn between the past and the present with a gap in between. Memory would be then given a connective function between the past and the present, but this kind of scheme would not explain the shifts in attitudes that occur in the course of remembering. The inconsistency of such a dismissive attitude towards reminiscing is based on the wrong direction attributed to the remembering process. Older people do not head back into the past; it is the past that in its totality approaches them (Bergson, 2004[1912]). The totality of memory represents here the accumulative power of all our experiences, which has been explained earlier on. We could not get rid of it, even if we wanted to, because our memory is ‘always on’, and it takes a sophisticated process of selection to evoke precisely the part that is necessary for the present moment (Middleton and Brown, 2005). That is why a division into past and present becomes dysfunctional when we see how during the reminiscing the present account lends warmth to the ‘lived experience’, enriching and changing it at the same time. ⁵ So remembering at a later age is not a sign of laziness. On the contrary, it indicates action, and action always serves the present. By taking action a person can re-evaluate the past in order to set the record straight, or to come to terms with the ethical standards that are valid now.

Understanding the remembering process as a manifestation of continuous change seems to be at odds with common sense, according to which a good memory is a precise memory. A number of studies have already demonstrated that the factual precision of one’s memories does not impede a simultaneous manifestation of changes (for a detailed bibliography see Haaken and Reavey, 2010). But this aspect of the reminiscences of older people has not attracted much attention so far. While confronting the imaging of an older person as a carrier of unchangeable cultural and personal experiences, we are at the same time consciously stirring up the debate on the authenticity of memories. Memories can never give us a true picture of events as they have actually taken place, because there are no abstract memories, but only memories that enter the framework of the present. Our observations suggest that what the older generation tells us is not a number of facts about the past but an example of renegotiation and reinterpretation of former experiences that takes place in the present (Bendien, 2010).

Methodological choice

Socio-psychological studies on remembering in later life often explore the themes of trauma, abuse and unsolved conflict that turn them into another ramification of the prevailing therapeutic-bound literature about reminiscing among older people (e.g. Burnell et al., 2010; Coleman and Podolskij, 2007). Another important direction in the studies about remembering at a later age addresses the notions of identity forming, isolation, intergenerational relations and family memories (e.g. Bluck and Levine, 1998; Ritchie, 2011; Rubinstein, 2002; Welzer, 2010). Each of the above-mentioned studies deals foremost with structured remembering, i.e. organized reminiscing, such as a reminiscing group therapy, a life review, an autobiography or an interview. What falls beyond that extensive and data-rich scope of research is everyday reminiscing, which the older generation often considers to be an intrinsic part of their lives. The lack of attention for this kind of remembering is noteworthy. Perhaps the research data are more difficult to collect, which turns a place like the Reminiscence museum into an exceptional location for data collection.

The illustrations used in this article were drawn from a recently conducted ethnographic research about the Reminiscence museum in Rotterdam (Bendien, 2010). They are field notes and transcriptions of conversations that were collected in the museum during the three years that the research project lasted. The remembering that takes place there is quite different from structurally arranged interviews and life reviews. It is to a large extent spontaneous, which makes it comparable to the remembering process that occurs on an everyday basis. We shall draw attention to the way in which some singular trivial events are remembered and re-evaluated, in order to show how personal and culturally shared reminiscences are fine-tuned in order to fit together. The interpretation of the data mainly draws on discourse and conversational analysis, which matches the process character of remembering (Middleton and Edwards, 1990). It will help to exemplify how continuous change is achieved and what consequences that has for the values and ethical standards shared by members of the same age cohort.

Our analysis of unorganized remembering will show that recollections of the good old days do not necessarily recreate a perfect past. By a perfect past we can understand both a past that was good, and is therefore in many instances looked upon as a better time than the present, and a past that is unchangeable, i.e. fixed once and forever. Each remembering from the introductory example, be it the joke about the Buisman powder, the recollection of a childhood during the war years or the mysterious white dot, contains a reference to an imperfect past, which in spite of that was referred to in a subtle and non-offensive manner. That period in the past was certainly not better than the present, which the ladies wholeheartedly confirmed at the end of their visit. But each of those recollections shows how the attitude that they once had has in fact changed over the years. Further analysis reveals that at a later age remembering leads to confrontation rather than to a soothing experience. In the course of their lives older people keep facing changes in both private and public domains. This induces them to reconsider and re-evaluate their earlier convictions. What on the surface always seemed to be a well-known fact and for the purpose of self- or public-indulgence just a repeated story about a true-life experience from the past, can upon closer inspection turn into a complicated entanglement of earlier and present beliefs, where the courage to accept changes needs to go hand in hand with loyalty to former convictions of the narrator’s cohort.

Practicing remembering – performing ethics

In the following examples we shall observe how the continuous change that characterizes remembering at a later age is accomplished in practice. On the surface everyday remembering is dissolved within the rustle of small talk. In order to navigate through that successfully we shall concentrate on examples where the older generation deals with ethical dilemmas of remembering. Since those dilemmas thread traumatic as well as mundane experiences from the past we shall present some examples that cover both varieties.

Guardians of change

The process approach towards remembering indicates that there are no unchangeable experiences or even knowledge that is acquired once and for all. Understanding remembering in process terms settles the illusion of the perfectly documented (personal) history, because even the testimonies of eyewitnesses and the records secured by the most sophisticated media technology remain subject matter to continuous re-interpretation in time (Hirsch and Spitzer, 2009; Reavey and Brown, 2006; Welzer, 2010). One of the principles of the process approach towards remembering is that the totality of our memory is dependent on any new experience that is acquired during our life (Bergson, 2004[1912]). We have seen how each new experience will ripple through the totality of our memory, causing sometimes subtle and sometimes decisive shifts in attitudes and convictions. This is what Bergson calls the qualitative accumulative power of memory, which simultaneously preserves and reshapes our views on the past and our convictions about the present. Remembering understood as the producing of new thoughts instead of exhuming old ones helps to dethrone the myth of the perfect past (perfect in a sense of completeness and invariability), because as long as witnesses keep telling us their part of the story, the story itself will keep changing correspondingly.

Many contemporary studies on social remembering show those dynamics (e.g. Brown and Hoskins, 2010; Ost and Nunkoosing, 2010). Research within the interdisciplinary field of memory studies justly demands attention to groups whose (traumatized) memories are especially relevant to the present. Abused children and women, oppressed minorities, victims of violence and wars, and even entire nations each receive their share of attention, but somehow the approach towards everyday remembering among older people has so far been overlooked. It is imperative that we see them as individuals, who are in possession of an active transformative power. The main role that the older generation can play in bridging the past and the present consists not in confirming already-known facts, but in highlighting the fluidity of personal and historical experiences. This inference rests on a particular understanding of the ethics of remembering, which entails renegotiation between what can be called authentic memories and –in a broader sense – on what must be remembered or forgotten.

The discussion on the ethics of remembering is often politically and ideologically charged, because it is conducted in the context of studies about Holocaust, conflict or trauma (Blustein, 2008; Margalit, 2002; Thompson, 2009). Those studies address issues that are sensitive to the people whose memories are at stake, but they are also of direct interest and even professionally important to politicians, historians and medical specialists. Not just the memories themselves but also the rights and the wrongs of too much or too little remembering are scrutinized. The aim of this particular study is to shift the attention away from heavily charged and politically sensitive reminiscences to more mundane aspects in the remembering processes among older people, whose capacity and need to remember is so often misinterpreted and undervalued. After all, the ethical standard of remembering is not a prerogative of a particular group, generation, or related to one particular kind of memories only. It threads each individual recollection and is not dependent on a political aim or theme. As the examples have shown, the ethical shifts in attitudes and beliefs of the older generation can be modestly hidden within the dynamics between culturally shared and personal accounts of the past. We have called the process that underlies those shifts re-evaluation. It occurs each time when former beliefs collide with a changed state of affairs, asking for adaptation and even an adjustment of one’s values. The mastery of ethically responsible negotiation does not lie in total acceptance, let alone in a total dismissal of a former conviction. This would be tantamount to a shallow set of personal values or an emotionally painful rejection of one’s former way of life. The aim is to develop an attitude that reflects a person’s changed views and at the same time leaves room for old beliefs and convictions. The necessity of balanced retrospection has its own logic. For example, not everybody who shared the same experiences is ready to accept change the same way. Or there may be a strong feeling of generational pride, about which criticism from a third party is not always easily accepted. In short, remembering at a later age turns out to be a subtle process of reassessment and fine-tuning, which can include irony, humour and critical accounts of the past, but certainly does not welcome disinterest or a denial of the past, because that would lead to elimination of the source that feeds our identity.

One final example illustrates those contemplations. Two older women are conversing about the details of the washing procedure that was an unavoidable ritual in almost every Dutch household until the second half of the 20th century. Their accounts are very descriptive and include details such as carrying buckets full of hot water along narrow staircases to the highest floor of the house, lifting heavy basins onto stoves, rinsing the washing in ice-cold water and pushing the washing through the wringer. The women are clearly enjoying the opportunity to reminisce together, but the tone of their memories becomes rather bitter every now and then. The hardships of former domestic labour have left them with less pleasurable feelings than the process of jointly remembering the past. Their conclusion about former domestic responsibilities is straightforward: ‘An awful job! Horrible circumstances!’ And then a next statement shows a new turn: ‘But we were so good at it! We did it perfectly!’ This is one of the most explicit examples of balancing between the former and the present attitudes, demonstrating an intricate juxtaposition of the processes involved in re-evaluation. They are measuring the length of the path that is already behind them. They feel caught between their somewhat melancholic feelings towards the past and their dismay at their memories about the heavy domestic labour that they are denouncing. And finally, in spite of all the negative connotations that the past evoked, they take pride in their skills and responsibilities that were so highly appreciated in the past.

At the end of the day it is not surprising at all that an older person who is reminiscing about simple things of the past, finds her-/himself trapped within an intensive re-evaluation process. This takes place all the time and almost each recollection can lead to crossroads regarding ethics.

Authenticity as change

The connection between the ethics of remembering at a later age and the changing image of the past allows me to take a concluding turn in our discussion and elaborate on the authenticity of those memories. Everyday remembering among older people is a peripheral theme for the debate on true/false memories (e.g. Campbell, 2003; Haaken, 1998). This is mainly due to a lack of tension between the factual accuracy and juridical relevance of the recollections on the one hand and the trustworthiness of the remembering person on the other. Nevertheless, it can be instructive to address the issue of authenticity for a number of reasons. Everyday remembering among older adults is seldom politically charged, which gives us the opportunity to concentrate on the remembering process itself, without having to worry about the legitimacy of those recollections. Also, the memories of the older generation contribute to a better understanding of recent history, by filling factual gaps with personal accounts and reflections. Finally, while the debate on false and true memories originates from the necessity to give a voice to certain vulnerable groups within society, the issues of remembering among older adults are applicable to each of us, because sooner or later we shall all become a member of the group called older people. That is why when talking about the authenticity of the memories that the older generation shares with us, we are in fact already talking about the authenticity of our own future memories as well.

As we have seen above, each act of remembering reinterprets past experiences. Two identical accounts of the same event cannot exist, even if they are about the memories of the same individual, because the individual is not a ‘forensic’ entity and will never remain the same (Campbell, 2010; Reavey and Brown, 2006). Understanding identity as a changing pattern instead of a stable substance (Brown and Stenner, 2009) clarifies the fluid character of our memories, but as a result the term authentic memory turns into either a tautology or an oxymoron. Looking into the etymological origin of the word authentic we can see how the meanings of self and doer/being have gradually melted together. So in fact this semantic structure comes close to our description of memory as a continuous accumulative process of qualitative change. Ontologically speaking there is little ground to postulate that memory can be otherwise but authentic. From an epistemological point of view I would not argue against the necessity of ‘literal recall’ that, as explained by Brown and Hoskins, is demanded from our memory on certain occasions, ‘from trivial episodes of mislaying keys to significant moments like providing eyewitness testimony in court’ (2010: 92). But as the authors argue further on, those occasions represent a very small part of ‘our memorial capacities’ and are bound by their narrow purposes. From our everyday experience we know that several accounts of the same event, given on various occasions, can differ in factual details, attitudes and the values attached to them, which proves that memories are influenced by the context within which the remembering takes place. In that sense authenticity cannot be used as a synonym to determinacy of the past, especially when assigned to the memories of the older generation.

And yet older people are often labelled as the ‘guardians of traditions’. In my opinion this can only be justified when we talk about general and collectively shared experiences. For the rest this definition carries a danger of stigmatization and rigidity, in spite of the positive (and somewhat boring) connotation. It assumes that older people can validate the authenticity of a certain epoch. Such an emphasis on the authenticity of memory surely leads to a monophonic version of the past, whereby memories of individuals can become overbearing. By the same token the coherence of those memories with the collectively shared history, which could otherwise be called intra-generational solidarity, is at times misinterpreted as a sign of conservatism typical for the later age.

In actual fact the memories of the older generation show us a very different kind of authenticity, if we choose to stick to that term. They are transient, fluid and flexible. And it is not by means of authentic facts that a true story about the past is told. It transpires through the shifts and moves of the ethical standards accompanying the remembering process. By accepting the possibility of those changes the older generation shows us how to remain authentic and to change at the same time. Therefore the role of remembering processes at a later age consists in bringing the past and the present closer together, as opposed to separating them on the grounds of sanctity and inviolability of the past. The most authentic memories then are memories on the move, mirroring our changing identities and beliefs.

Summary

In this article we attempted to draw attention to the remembering process that is characteristic for the older generation. Older people are comparatively under-represented in the interdisciplinary field of memory studies. At the same time the infiltration of their memories into our everyday life becomes more palpable in the world where this group will soon be one of the largest within the general population. So far the interest for remembering at a later age has mostly emerged within studies that were directed at an interventional and therapeutic approach towards remembering. The association between disease and reminiscing has two main ramifications: older people lose their memory or suffer from depression, and reminiscing therapy helps to defer those processes. Millions of older people with a perfect memory function and an interest for life are disregarded here, while it are their memories that can provide us with a genuine historical insight on the one hand and that can show how their evaluation and regard for former events change continuously on the other. In order to demonstrate how the continuous change is integrated in the process of remembering and what kind of dilemmas it entails we have looked at examples of unorganized everyday reminiscing among older people. Everyday remembering has no thematic limitation. The process of re-evaluation and ethical shifts that are characteristic for the examples presented above are general features of both significant and mundane experiences from the past. We have seen that each act of remembering is characterized by continuous change, because the remembered experience is never chained to a certain moment in the past. Using the process approach to remembering we based our analysis on the notion of lived experience that spans over time by borrowing its substance from the past and its warmth (re-evaluation) from the present. To put it differently, while remembering we are using the accumulative power of all our memory, but what has been remembered is put into the context of our present beliefs and convictions. Those shifts are difficult to catch. The fact that reminiscences of older people are often interactive and explicit by nature offers an excellent opportunity to observe how ethical shifts towards the same events or experiences take place in time. The process is sophisticated and challenging because the older generation finds itself forced to navigate carefully between the feeling of loyalty and solidarity within its own cohort and the necessity to adjust to today’s generally accepted values. As the data analysis has shown, older people can manage that challenge by reconfiguring their past in the present. We can conclude that the image of old people as guardians of tradition only is now definitely out-dated. The fact that remembering at a later age is characterized by continuous change raises questions regarding the authenticity of our memories. Can we trust grandmother’s stories? Is grandfather’s account true to life? The older generation fine-tunes memories within its own cohort. Where shifts in evaluation take place, negotiation becomes especially complex. At those moments we can see most clearly that ‘authentic’ history consists of numerous accounts and is polyphonic by nature.

Remembering processes at a later age demonstrate that there are no right or wrong memories, but there is something that older people could call the honour of remembering. They honour their own lives, in all its heroic and mundane manifestations. They also honour the memory of those who are no longer with us, and in many cases they modestly feel themselves to be the carriers of a certain historical experience they want to preserve for the future.

The least we can do is to honour them back. One of the most important ethical shifts we should promote here is to change our attitude towards the remembering by older people. This can become a true step towards a ‘new memory ecology’ ⁶ with its purifying ethics regarding not only old things and old events, but old people as well.