Незнание семейной истории, из-за того, что родители стыдятся, не могут или не хотят обсуждать недавнее прошлое, становится причиной нестабильнлсти идентичности молодёжи, асоциальности поведения молодых людей или их тягой к правым идеям и партиям. Автор делает вывод, что отношение молодых людей к истории является одним из условий формированмя в их идентичности чувства тождественности.
"Identity as such is a modern invention: It was a 'problem" from its birth. It was born as a problem, as something one needs do something about:" And it is even more so, if there are radical societal changes. At the end of the eighties because of the political transition, the demolition of the iron curtain has faced the members of the countries of the so called existing socialism with this task. For many of them their old identity that fit the previous regime was not suitable for the new situation. It became necessary to build up a new identity.
Identity becomes shaped through our narrative of life. Throughout our life we retell and retell our lifestory again and again. The way of this retelling is determined by our past experiences and our future expectations.
Using Ricoeur's expression we can call selfhood our feeling of remaining ourselves despite all the outer changes throughout our lifecourse. This is one aspect of identity. That we are ourselves inspite of all the changes we go through, inspite the fact, that we are not identical anymore with the baby, we were born. Our selfhood is our ipse-identity. This is the core of our identity. This feeling of selfhood is the basis of our changing stability, remaining the same throughout all biographical changes. Idem-identity, our sameness, is the other aspect of our identity. It refers to the more societal aspect of our identity, to being the same in the sense not being anyone else. Being someone we could describe from an outer point of view by certain outer traits. This is the pure sociological aspect of our identity, most earlier identity-theories delt with. The identity to which the man of modernity was supposed to arrive. But "if the modern 'problem of identity' was how to construct an identity and keep it solid and stable, the postmodern 'problem of identity' is primarily how to avoid fixation and keep the options open:"
The task of our life-narration, the story we tell of our lives, is to bind together these two aspects of our identity. There cannot be any change in the outer world surrounding us that would change radically our selfhood. Our sameness is the one, that we have to adjust to the new situation. And the new story has to care for holding them together.
It is a difficult task for those in the countries of political transition, who could not "use" their old stories any more, to form a new life-narration. There are many events of their past that cannot fit into the new situation, into their new sameness. In the course of retelling their stories in a way, that is acceptable for them and their surrounding today, events that are chosen for determining the main line of the life-narrative and their meaning have to be changed. Experiences, that one could earlier be proud of have become shameful, others, that were dangerous earlier, now are events one could pridefully tell about.
It is a general experience in Hungarian society, but I suppose in also other former communist countries as well, that there is a whole in the story of many family. There is a young generation brought up without stories of the family past. In the last more than ten years young people were brought up in a certain silence, locked up among secrets. Their parents could not tell them their lifestories, as certain events of their life do not fit into their post-communist identity. They are able to bridge the gap between their "new" sameness and their selfhood only by cutting out certain events and life-periods of their life-narration or at least give them for the outside world a totally new interpretation that does not really match their selfhood. What they can show through their life-narration is a false selfhood that mathes the societal role they try to present in the new situtation.
For a young person to build upa stable selfhood it is necessary to be surrounded by a family, by persons who accept their individuality and turn with their complete personality to them. It builds up its selfhood from his/her own feelings and the reactions of the parents. The stories of the family past serve as a raw material for him/her to build up his/her sameness. In the situation where the parents own life-narration has to be altered in such an extent, that it already does not math with their selfhood, they cannot really provide their children the surrounding, it would need. By trying to hide their selfhood they leave their children psychically alone and by the time the children grow up, their selfhood remains rudimentary, unstable. And above that, because of the missing past, he/she has no other means for building up his/her sameness than own the basis of its own phantasies concerning the story of the family.
People with unstable selfhood are in a permanent search for stability coming from outside. That makes them susceptible for simple ideologies, that help them to understand the surrounding world. It is easy to make them believe in skapegoats, enemies. As these young people have no own experience of the communist regime and as the parents experiences are not passed to them, they have no subtle view of the past. It is easy to except a simplicistic view of the past where communism and communists without any difference are from the evil. It is also easy to make them believe in racist ideologies, to become members or at least followers, voters of right wing parties.
This influences their relationship to history. They do not try to get to a deep understanding of the past, they look at it just as the fight of good and evil, as a deep and subtle understanding of history could questions of the family past, would make fell the skeletons out of the cupbords. It can be so even in such cases, where these skeletons are actually rather small, where the secret, the hidden sin of the parents is not more, than a simple party membership during the last decade of communism. As they have never tried to get closer to that period, they do not see the differences between the different periods of communism, the meaning of being a party member at different times, or between being a member of the communist party just out of compliance and real sins committed in the name of communist ideology. In such a simplicisstic view any knowledge of the family past could be dangerous for them, would make questionable the identity they were able to build up for themselves as they would not be able to deal with any knowledge that does not fit into the mistified and superficial story of the family.
This refusal of getting closer to the personal past, to the story of the family does not concern, of course, only the communist period. It goes further and hinders the working through of the holocaust. Although one could have hoped, that by the diseppearence of the taboo of this topic by the fall of communism, there will be a possibility of discussing it in a subtle way, because of this break in the relationship to history, it has not happened yet.
Still, the fact, that in many cases the instability of the feeling of selfhood of these young people emerges in the form of a shame - though e.g. they follow a right wing party, they have guilty feelings because of its racism which they try to deny - might give a chance for a slow change. And on the other hand, the picture of the post-communist Hungary would be rather one-sided if one mentioned only this type of struggle with the past. There are processes of just the opposite tyep. For many of those, who struggled with secrets in the previous regime, its fall brought a real liberation, which can be traced in the revival of different identities, in the search for the roots in the members and decendants of different minority groups (e.g. Jews) . In their case this search for own roots naturally connected with an interest for historical knowledge, as well. And though in their case the parents are still or sometimes even more frightened than they used to be before the demolition of the regime and would liket still to hide their origin, because of the presence of overt racism, the struggle of these young people, who belong to the same age groups the ones mentioned earlier, there is a chance, that they will learn how to discuss these problems with each other within their generation.
Budapest, 10.01.2003.
Внимание!!! Тезисы участников семинара являются интеллектуальной собственностью. Цитирование и перепечатка возможна только с письменного разрешения автора и указания имени автора и источника.