Sunday, February 5, 2012

On Re-membering

Over the course of the past NFL season, and particularly evidenced tonight, the New England Patriots have been paying homage to Myra Kraft, the recently deceased wife of Pats owner Robert Kraft.  Even during tonight's game, the biggest game of the year, numerous Patriots tapped the patch bearing Myra's initials and pointed to the sky in her honour.  
Many see this as a touching tribute to a woman who more than one player called by some variation of 'mama'.  While I would hate to criticize what was probably a very meaningful gesture from these players, I'd like to briefly consider what it means to truly remember the dead.

Only a few weeks ago I heard a professor say, "The best way to forget about a person is to look at a photograph."  We stare at photographs to remember the past, but in so doing, we merely confine the deceased to the past.  As I sat watching the Patriots give tribute to Mrs. Kraft, I wondered to myself what meaning such tributes might actually have.  Was anything actually accomplished by a bunch of grown men wearing a small MHK patch on their chests for the past few months?  Was the show of pounding the chest and pointing skyward even meaningful to the players, or was it merely a show for the boss?  Could the life of Mrs. Kraft really even have meant that much to these players?  These are merely hypothetical questions.  Far be it from me to criticize the personal observances of these men.  I can't possibly pretend to understand the mourning process of any other person. Keeping that in mind, I would like to argue that a small shoulder patch and a finger upward, while possibly personally meaningful, are not an act of remembrance.  

Playing off an admittedly over-used philosophical trick, we can get a much stronger understanding of 'remembrance' by throwing a hyphen into the word.  'Remembering', at its strongest form, is nothing less than re-membering.  Re-membering, is an act of intentional embodiment.  To re-member, is not to think happy thoughts about the events of the past (even if sugar-coating the negative).  Rather, re-membering is to recognize what was important to a person, and to again put flesh to those motivations.  Myra Kraft, for example, was by all public accounts a pretty impressive person.  She was a great philanthropist and supported a number of great causes.  She was not actively involved in her husband's work as owner of the Patriots, but when she found out that a recent draft pick had a continuing history of violence toward women she demanded that he be released immediately.  As it turned out he was released even before training camp had started.  It would seem that Myra Kraft is a woman who deserves to be re-membered.  Yet, this re-membrance cannot come from a simple expression.  If Patriots players truly wanted to re-member Mrs. Kraft, they could best do so by living the life that she is no longer able to live.  To re-member Mrs. Kraft would be to demonstrate a life of committed engagement.  This is not a simple act of mimicry, but a meaningful demonstration of intentional embodiment.  

Gilles Deleuze spoke at great length about the concept of memory, and, citing the literature of Marcel Proust, profoundly spoke of memory as "time regained."  Memory, claimed Deleuze, is related to a past that has never been present.  The active performance of memory, what has here been called 'remembering', is an act of repetition, or of eternal return in Deleuze's Nietzschean terminology.  Yet, this repetition, is an enacting, not a reenacting.  In memory time is regained because it allows the bringing to present of things past.  The Remembrance of Things Past, thus, is ultimately the becoming of something.  

In the end, re-membrance is not a complicated idea, much less a complicated practice.  While weeping for the lost can be a meaningful part of the grieving process, it is not a meaningful remembrance.  While it can be fun to look at pictures of those we loved who have passed on, it is not a meaningful remembrance.  Remembering, re-membering, is to live a life that would make the re-membered proud.  Re-membering is to see the footsteps of the deceased, and to continue on in the direction in which they lead.  This is not the act of 'following in' the footsteps, but of placing value upon the footsteps themselves by moving beyond them.  Remembrance is not an act of grief, not an act of looking to the past, but an act of intentionally moving into the future. To live well is the greatest remembrance. We remember by re-membering the remembered.