Column | Cultural memory determines your morality

After rather hundreds of employees and students stated in an open letter that the board of the University of Amsterdam (UvA) should condemn the “genocide by Israel” and the “colonial violence”, this week nineteen Jewish employees and students from various universities also demanded that universities “stand against the devastating war that Israel is waging.” They demand, among other things, that collaborations with Israeli institutions be stopped and that governments “actively combat a climate of threats, polarization and discrimination.”

In itself it is commendable that the letter writers want to guard against a climate of polarization, but they themselves do not provide the best example of a dialogical attitude. In fact, the first letter states that they will record the conversation because they suspect others will misrepresent or interrupt it. The UvA board announced through the chairman of the board that their task is not a political one, but that it is “from our scientists to outline the historical context of this conflict”. Taking a stand would fuel polarization, Geert ten Dam added in an interview Folia to it. This attitude seems justified to me.

Last week I saw a wonderful example of this. Astrid Erll, professor at Goethe University in Frankfurt, held on the occasion of an honorary doctorate a public lecture about the field of which she is one of the founders: cultural memory studies. She studies how people based on ‘cultural core-events‘, cultural key moments, quickly arrive at their moral positions. With reference to How Nations Remember (2021) by James Wertsch, she talked about how the Second World War is the most important pillar for thinking about morality in Europe. Books, stories, films and texts in education are formative. This cultural baggage is activated and deployed in contemporary conflicts. But this cultural memory is also lost in times of war and fast media manipulated and used as propaganda.

I thought about my own cultural baggage when it comes to Israel and Palestine. How is it formed? At home I was given ‘neutrality’ as the most important and immediate moral value. If you want to keep things together, it is best to temper your opinion a bit. You are not that special and your opinion is certainly not that special (Kierkegaard: “We already have freedom of thought, why does everyone want freedom of expression?”). This Scandinavian education – related to traditional stories about survival through neutrality in world wars – was supplemented with a completely different perspective when we moved to the Netherlands. That was a narrative of taking sides, speaking out, of resistance, with Jan Terlouw’s book War winter as key text.

I also received ‘demanding’ as a form of expression in many other ways. During my first club day at the Y sailing club in Durgerdam, someone asked if there was any dessert coming. That was the signal for all the children to bang the cutlery on the table and chant: “We demand ice cream!” That day, as a five-year-old, I learned an important lesson about the Netherlands: if you want something here, you have to demand it loudly. Because that works (we got ice cream).

Later I discovered that the Dutch were culturally spoon-fed with this demand. We demand ice cream comes from a cheerful story by Annie MG Schmidt that has been around for generations. It’s about Floddertje who cuts off her hair out of rebellion, and tells the other children to do the same. Then they demand ice cream, and they get it!

With their scientific research, Astrid Erll and her colleagues show how important cultural and national narratives are in shaping your moral position during conflict and war. Attaching political consequences to this is not her job. But I concluded that a rich and versatile range of culture (education) is of great importance. We are succumbing to absolute morality and compartmentalization these days; culture, research and knowledge are the oxygen to keep talking to each other.

Writer Abdelkader Benali recently started a great initiative on social media by sharing which books and films have enriched his ideas about Palestine and Israel. He named Waltz with Bashir, I thought of the films of Hany Abu-Assad. Benali argues for more knowledge, and intellectual and cultural wealth, that is missing in the debate. At sometime!

I thought I should sound out Benali… shouldn’t we send a high-profile letter just before election time… to all politicians…? We demand intellectual wealth! We demand knowledge! We demand culture!

Stine Jensen is a philosopher and writer. She writes a column here every other week.

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