2023-11-12 07:31:50
Professor and expert in memory studies, Marta Marín-Dòmine directed the Born Center for Culture and Memory for two years. With “I’ll say I made it up” he won the BBVA Sant Joan Award “for the brilliant and poignant way of dealing with mother-daughter relationships”
Did he make it all up?
Some things.
Is he talking to me about his book or his life?
I’ve made up my life a few times. In the book, I made up the first part.
It is not obligatory to love parents, if the Ten Commandments tell us to love them, it is precisely because we do not always love them
Is it obligatory to love parents?
Definitely not. The relationship with parents is highly mythologised, it does not necessarily have to comply with what society expects. You don’t have to love them. If the Ten Commandments tell us to love our parents, it is precisely because we do not always love them.
Should Freud have added the mother, when he said that the father must be killed?
We must learn to shake off the burden of our parents. Freud also said that at the end of an analysis we encounter something impossible, which is precisely the weight that the mother has had on us. Which doesn’t mean making her guilty.
Is it obligatory to love children?
Children must be cared for, protected and do everything possible to live. But I don’t think it’s mandatory to love them either.
Children must be cared for, protected and do everything possible to live. But I don’t think it’s mandatory to love them either
Was the feminism of the eighties, which appears in the book, the same as today?
No! Now women talk about what they feel, in a much more open way. Not just about sexuality, but about everything they like or don’t like. Feminism today touches things that had not been touched. Like for example, having to accept relationships you don’t like, from work to home. Eighties feminism had addressed this, but had not achieved this massive response
“Rage at being forced to forget,” he says in his book, I don’t know if he’s also referring to today’s society.
Rather than being forced to forget, we are accepting experiences that we don’t like but that we have to accept because of our role in society.
The ones in the book are two women who run away.
When someone is forced to leave their country, they are forced to forget. But rabid. Anger is very important.
Anger is very good. Do you know why? Because it calls for action. Anger is saying: I live and I do
is she good
very good Do you know why? Because it calls for action. I don’t mean it has to be a violent action. Anger is saying: I live and I do.
There is memory in the book, and you have dedicated yourself to it professionally. Really interested, the memory, or is it posturing?
I don’t know, because a memory center in Barcelona has just closed.
That you directed.
This makes me ruminate a lot. It is interesting that it was closed so quickly, without debate or discussion. And that he didn’t make a fuss. All of this makes me think that there are many elements to consider. What we should be interested in is the memory of humanity, and this is what I wanted to do in Born. Do we care about memory that is not ours? Sadly, I would say no.
Do we care about memory that is not ours? Sadly, I would say no
Are we only interested in 1714 here?
And it is a little far away, 1714. Moreover, this is not memory, but a history reinterpreted and updated every year. The other is always the enemy, we are always the victim. This myth, without any critical point of view, should be rethought.
Do we look at ourselves and is that enough?
We do not care much about the memory of humanity, and when we care it is to reinforce our role of saying “we are better than others”. I am not interested in this memory.
We don’t care much about the memory of humanity, and when we care it’s to reinforce our role of saying “we are better than others”
Does this happen everywhere or are Catalans special?
Some countries have done exercises in humility, recognizing what they have done wrong as a society. This is the case of Germany, although in this humility it is also necessary to see some political interests: the desire to show itself as a democratic country after the war and the Holocaust. Or that of Canada, and other countries.
Tired of dealing with politicians?
“Oh, yes”! I’m tired of it. And I would add, “unfortunately”, because the function of the politician is to represent us. Losing trust in politicians is a failure of the same policy that, instead of exhausting us, should make our lives easier, make public life possible, come on.
#memory #history #reinterpreted #year