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This chapter argues that some contemporary reconstructive models of memory have retained a standard for “good” memory (as fidelity to an original impression) that derives from an outmoded archival model. From the perspective of the reconstructive view, which acknowledges that the needs and interests of selves and others influence memory, our recollections appear as distortions of the past. This chapter argues that when we dismiss the dubious norm of good remembering as reproductive fidelity, the reconstructivist theory no longer encourages skepticism. Campbell’s positive proposal for good remembering combines a need to get both the facts about the past and their significance for the present and future right. The phenomenon of nostalgia is used to illustrate one sort of failure to get the significance of past facts right.

This chapter offers a conception of faithfulness to the past that acknowledges the reconstructive turn in memory theory. It argues that successful remembering includes getting something about the significance of the past right, as judged from the standpoint of our present needs and interests. Furthermore, even though we remember in highly individual ways, we determine the significance of the past together. The norm of integrity thus enters into how we configure our remembering in response to both the concerns of the present and the way that others remember. The connections between accuracy and integrity are illustrated through an extended analysis of an Argentinian political performance by the children of the disappeared, performances undertaken to reshape individual and communal memory in ways that reconfigure possibilities for future response.

The memory wars, fueled by concern with the “false memory syndrome,” assumed an account of integrity as a virtue for protecting memory from influence and for guarding the boundaries of the self. The chapter argues that the idea that there is only one true story to be told about the past comes with a correlative conception of the self as constituted by an accumulation of determinate past experiences. Both of these overly simple ideas are casualties of the reconstructive turn in memory studies. Rather than regarding the reconstructive nature of memory as a source of inevitable distortion, the chapter identifies a view of truth that supports and accommodates the complexities of good remembering. It argues that a multiplicity of perspectives is in itself no threat to accuracy, and that a concern for the truth about the past is essentially implicated in our concern for the value of integrity to the self and others.