Institutional Forgetting: Problematizing the Erasure of Past Failures in Governance Memory

How Selective Amnesia and Cyclical Crisis Narratives Serve the Avoidance of Long-Term Responsibility

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Introduction

Public institutions, like societies, remember selectively. Archives are maintained, reports are filed, commemorations are held—but the memory of failure, wrongdoing, and structural harm is often quietly erased or neutralized. This process of forgetting is not accidental. It is shaped by political interests, reputational concerns, and the need to maintain the appearance of forward motion. Institutions often present themselves as continuously evolving, always learning from past mistakes. Yet behind this rhetoric lies a pattern of cyclical amnesia, in which failures are periodically acknowledged, symbolically addressed, and then buried beneath new agendas. This article examines how institutional forgetting functions as a blame avoidance strategy, and how problematization enables us to interrogate the politics of what is remembered, what is forgotten, and why.