Passive Inheritance and Active Reconstruction of Historical Emotions

Abstract

This article investigates the effects of intergenerational historical emotions, particularly shame and pride. The research first focuses on the level of accountability of different individuals in response to past emotions. It comes to the statement that individuals, different from organizations, which may be trapped in collective feelings, bear limited responsibility for past events. Later, the article focuses on different situations when those past emotions occur. When they are passively inherited, they may function as political tools for consolidating hegemony, but when they are actively utilized, they may enable liberal historical reconstruction. Therefore, even though individuals may not need to derive and inherit emotions from past incidents, they can actively evoke those emotions to dismantle historical myths and bring back the authenticity of history.