national amnesia

English

Noun

national amnesia

1. A nationwide loss of memories about an event, time or cultural phenomenon.

   The country seems to have a national amnesia about its past.

   • 1989, Toni Morrison, The Pain Of Being Black‎^[1], Time:

     […] I don't want to remember, black people don't want to remember, white people don't want to remember. I mean, it's national amnesia.

   • 1996, Meir Kahane, Or hara'ayon = The Jewish idea, →OCLC:

     Let us not suffer from a national amnesia that causes us to forget who and what we are.

   • 2018, Vincent J. Cheng, Amnesia and the Nation: History, Forgetting, and James Joyce, Palgrave Macmillan, →ISBN, page 20:

     […] for its subjects to be able to forget the history of bloody conquest and empire-building if they are to partake in a collective identity as members of such sovereignty. But such collective, national amnesia—at both the individual and the national levels—is precisely what Kundera takes issue with […]

Further reading

• national memory on Wikipedia.Wikipedia
• social amnesia on Wikipedia.Wikipedia