[[De]]constructing memory: rethinking memory sanctions and damnatio memoriae
The phenomenon of Roman “memory sanctions”– also known under the neologism “damnatio memoriae” – has recently been well-theorised. Scholars emphasise that, contrary to the rhetoric of our ancient sources, these sanctions were not simply misguided attempts to suppress their victim’s memory, but as measures intended to disgrace them and so, in an oblique way, foster memory. They were thus not purely destructive, but rather, productive gestures. This paper takes the idea of memory sanctions as a “productive gesture” as a stimulus, but complicates the picture. Using the sanctions the senate passed against the emperor Domitian in 96 AD as an example, it argues that the smashing of statues and erasure of inscriptions alone could not make or unmake the memory of an individual. Rather, they were only the first step in a much more complex process of re-negotiating the past, that also involved more obviously “productive” actions of remembering, such as the setting-up of inscriptions, the minting of coins, and the writing of literature. It then argues further that this process of “remembering to forget” Domitian also had significant practical consequences, most importantly perhaps, the upsetting of the existing social order that had been constructed around the former emperor.