Abstract
In this essay the author proposes that one possible function for historians in the future might be to reorganize public memories in positive and helpful ways. While accepting the need for identity-confirming narratives, there remains a choice of what and how elements of our pasts are incorporated and so made meaningful; and in the interest of a more hopeful future, it is recommended here that, utilizing a dialogic rather than dogmatic form, historians direct attention to the (sometimes forgotten) roots of unquestioned assumptions and to such (again sometimes forgotten) exemplary characters as provide models of alternative (anti-consensual) values. Historians might thus reconstitute memories in such a way as to pave the way to something new.