Underlying the notion of the deathwork is, as we noted, a basic repudiation of history as a source of authority and wisdom. This in turn means that what Rieff calls “forgetfulness” is one of the hallmarks of third worlds and a dominant trait of modern education. It is not simply that society just happens to be antihistorical in the way it approaches history. It has a vested interest in the actual erasure of history, of those things that conjure up unpleasant ideas that might disrupt happiness in the present.
