Today’s Class: Outline of activities Introduction to the Collective Memory Reader (J. Marontate) Presentations of Selected Readings from Part I: Precursors.

Today’s Class: Outline of activities

• Introduction to the Collective Memory Reader(J. Marontate)• Presentations of Selected Readings from Part

I: Precursors and Classics• Film screening : Loylities• Discussion topic: ‘doing collective memory

research’ -- What is the position of the researcher?

Introduction to The Collective Memory Reader

1. Precursors & Classics2. History, Memory & Identity3. Power, Politics & Contestation4. Media & Modes of Transmission5. Memory, Justice & the Contemporary Epoch

New Directions in Memory Studies

• Memory ‘boom’ since 1970s ?• History of ‘Memory studies’– Media literacy & self-reflexivity– Role of memory depends on context• Social structure• Differentiation associated with modern (vs. traditional)

social organization (individual vs. collective memory)• Bonds of civility & social solidarity

History & Memory Studies- 19th and early 20th century

• Theories of cultural inheritance, biological, psychological basis?

• Debates about the irrational & role of myths or taboos vs. rational basis for social life

• Positivist notion of progress (irreversibility of historical progression)

• “Iconological” (symbolic) theories of social memory

Memory, Nation-States & Imagined communities

• Rise of nationalism & invention of tradition, naturalizing assumptions about time & place

• But large-scale wars & genocides displaced heroic epic forms for traumatic witnessing of atrocities

• Intellectual, scientific & political agendas apparent in notions of collective memory

Early Formulations of concept of collective memory

• Halbwachs• Standardization & rationalization in the name of

science• Questions of lived experience & subjectivity (individual

vs. collective forms ofcognition)• How do minds work in society? Collective memory as

social frameworks• Autobiographical vs. historical• Collective representations, unconscious

Other traditions in Memory Studies

• The ‘Annales’ school (the longue durée)• Pierre Nora’s Lieux de mémoire (places or sites

of memory)• Problems in communications among scholars• Memory studies & media theory• Memory studies & holocaust studies (past &

future)• interest in social mnemonic practices

What binds recent memories and distant ones?

• Groups provide frameworks to locate memories

• Different groups have different frameworks• Collective memory about communication– in specific contexts between group members

Life Stories and Collective Memory

• Rescuing the lived experience of marginalized or subordinate groups ?

• Problems in confronting personal histories with “objective” records (ex. Connerton, Zerubavel)

First Presentations of Readings

Yeo,Amanda--Burke, De Tocqueville, pp. 65-72Ayyad,Salama--Nietzsche, Renan, pp. 73-83

Hill,Caitlin --Mannheim,Benjamin, pp. 92-103

Bains,Alysha --Becker pp. 122-130

Hu,Jenny --Cooley, Durkheim, pp 131-138

Byers,Justin --Halbwachs, Blondel pp.139-150, 156

Burke• Late 18th century

opponent of revolution

De Toquelville

• Aristocratic societies built on collective memory (associated by De T. with responsibility to collectivity

• Democratic Societies (about forgetting, individualism. egotism)

Does this hold today?

Nietzsche

• Modes of regarding the past– Monumental– Antiquarian– Critical

• Notion of ‘unhistorical’ , pura historical& forgetting as positive

• Tension between History vs. scientific progress

Renan

• Nation and sharing the past as a form of solidarity

• Triumphs and grief or suffering as forms of social bonds

• Raises questions about limits of the power of nationalism for individuals?

Mannheim

• Differences in autobiographical vs. historical memory narratives

• What produces a generation with shared experiences of mnemonic <events>?

Benjamin & Becker

• Benjamin– “epic” forms of stories & memory as chain of

tradition– Progress as a future storm– Modernity as decline & disaster

• Becker– Academic vs. ‘ordinary’ uses of the past

Cooley, Durkheim

• Cooley– social interactionist (society based on consensus,

collaboration)– Collective memory as a process– Reputation as socially constructed

• Durkheim– Social solidarity achieved through regulation &

integration– Notion of a ‘social fact’ as larger than individual

people

Halbwachs & Blondel

• Halbwachs– Social frameworks of memory (& importance of

context for individual experience of collective memory)

• Blondel– Questions interpretations & generalizations made

by Halbwachs pushing for more research on multiple registers of meaning & memberships in more than one group.

Memory & Knowledge as social constructions

• Maurice Halbwachs– Social Frames of Memory, On collective Memory

• Revolt against rationalism, promoted idea of contemplation

• Influences:– Henri Bergson (importance of time as source of self-

knowledge, immediate experience)– Annales School of historiography (Marc Bloch, Lucien

Febvre) « duration » (intuitive perception of innner time)– Emile Durkheim (social morphology, search for causes and

explanation)

Collective vs. individualistic memories?

• Contextualized: Social classes, families, associations, corporations, religious groups, linguistic groups etc.

• Constructed: Members construct collective memories in the context of the social group to remember, forget or recreate the past

• Social Communication : not individualistic consciousness or subjective time

Halbwachs on Collective Memory as a Social Process

• a reconstruction of the past in light of the present (Lewis Coser)

• depends on social environment & identification with groups

• Examine how we recollect things & make connections– External prompting: Answering questions others ask us or

that we suppose they have asked– “Reconstruction” as part of participating in society

» placing ourselves in the perspective of a social group

Themes in Halbwach’s work on Memory

• Dreams & Memory Images

• Language & Memory• Family, Religion,

Class and Memory traditions

Salvador Dali, Dream Caused by the Flight of a Bee around a pomegranat a second before awakening

Film Screening

• Film: Loyalities (Lesley Ann Patton, dir.)

The “person” as a carrier of public memory

• 1. Manifestations: personal “careers” and life histories as devices for accessing & tracking changes

• Processes: – Prompting as context– Disappearance of older generations– familiarity of new generations with

new “paradigms” rather than “conversion”

– Commitments to old paradigms vs. revisionism?

Lessons “Learned” & Observing change in Collective memory

• personal experience as guide (avoidance)• Example: Change in “language” has potential to alter

meaning• Observation of shifts in collective representations through

changes in language• Importance of temporal, spatial, group affiliations of

individual testimonies as contexts

“Dynamics” of Collective memory (Schudson)

• Pre-emptive Metaphors & Devices (avoidance technique), ex. Trauma designations like holocaust, genocide

• Demonstration effects (interaction of personal experience & experience of others)– Ex. Nazis & anti-racism

• Accidents as models for risk avoidance (ex. tsunami victims)• Coordinative, conjunctive & serial effects– (ex. the right to vote &

working class white men in different places)• Cultures of memory (diverse) (ex. Different uses of collective identity in

different national contexts, ex. Post WWII fascist countries, attitudes towards elders as carriers of public memory, etc….)

“ Cultures” of collective memory (Olick)

• Different ontological orders, different epistemological & methodological implications

• Collective memory as– Aggregated individual recollections?– Official commemorations (or silencing)?– Constitutive features of shared identity?

“Collected” Memory

• based on individualistic principles (aggregated individual memories of members of a croup)

• Assume: only individuals remembers• Different rememberers may be valued differently• Publicly available symbols • Methods: assign same values to all rememberers OR

redistributively (ex. To include previously disenfranchised)

Advantages of Individualist approaches (“Collected” Memory)

• Potential to reduce political bias embedded in existing representations of collective memory by recognizing many different kinds of collective memory in different places in society

• Bearing Witness (Zelizer)

Posture of Neutrality?

• Should we – assume a collective memory or

identity exists?– assume a collectivity exists that

shares a memory?– Consider ideology, will? – ex. Survey of Germans about their

identity & effects on politics– Ex. I am Canadian beer commercial

A screen capture of Joe Canadian from an I am Canadian commercial, with the maple leaf of the Canadian flag projected on the background

Collective Memory (vs. collected)

• Patterns of socialization not reducible to individual psycho-social processes?

• groups provide conditions and distinctions through which particular events are defined as consequential

• Symbols, institutions, technologies etc. considered somewhat “autonomous”

• Memory performed through language, narrative, dialogue, genres, …shared practices

• Collective memory AS a form of communication & identity <work>