Debates about political performances of memory and rituals of commemoration largely focus on what they construe as ‘the past’ and our present attitude to it: How, if at all, should Germans remember the Allied bombing of cities during the Second World War? What are the implications of particular versions of memory for the political present? How may ‘the Germans’ adequately imagine their own identity through such memories? Other difficult questions, for example, about truth, ethics and emotion, have been raised in the preceding chapters by exploring memories of the Second World War as they are articulated in novels. So far the argument has, however, bypassed any consideration of one of the most intriguing – and in some senses most obvious – aspects of memory: the question of temporality. Walser's assertion that we may not remember the past as it was when it was the present draws attention to this. That memories change over time is, of course, neither a surprisingly new nor a particularly controversial insight. Yet thinking through what this means for conceptions not only of memory but of temporality itself produces challenges to what appear to be deeply held assumptions. Memories disturb our conception of temporality, and this is crucial, because temporality is implicated in what we perceive to be ethical.

The present chapter starts by briefly considering memory and temporality,highlighting not only how uneasily memory seems to sit in the non-space between past and present but also how both modern physics and our experience pose challenges to a linear understanding of time.