Collective Memory and Public Discourse

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Collective Memory and Public Discourse

• School of Communication, SFU, Spring 2007
• Professor
• Jan Marontate

Exhibition of Storefront Display covered with
toxic dust from September 11, 2001, New York
City. Source NYTimes, Aug. 25, 2006 See also
article by Fried about another exhibition related
to the September 11, 2001 terrorist attacks
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Course Administration

• Handout 1 Syllabus, Grading, Schedule
• Course Website
• Handout 2 Partial List of Readings for Weeks
  1-4

Salvador Dali, The Persistence of Memory, 1931
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Fieldwork Start researching ideas for term work
by

• 1-Viewing one of each
• a documentary film
• a  fact-based  fictionalized film
• Must be about past events (can be very recent
  past) or the history of a group, a place
  etc.something that involves sharing memories
• 2-Doing  fieldwork . Visiting an historic
  site, reconstruction or public monument or
  building that is intended to commemorate or
  express memories of a group or event.

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Examples of possible fieldwork trips in the
Vancouver Area

• Historic reconstructions
• Stevenson Town, Museum Brittania Historic Site
  (Cannery, Shipbuiding, Reconstruction of Workers
  accommodations, Photos, etc.)
• Compare the virtual museum , other documents
  testimony of descendants to the actual
  reconstruction of the Cannery living working
  conditions
• Sites with some traces of the past
• Historic Powell Street area former Japanese
  Canadian urban community in Vancouver (before
  internment camps)
• Museums and memorials
• UBC Museum of Anthropology (First Nations Art
  History)
• Chinese Cultural Centre of Vancouver

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Today Core concepts in Studies of Collective
Memory

• Focus on
• History of scholarly work on collective memory
  and origins of early interests
• Terminology related issues

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Early Interest in Collective Memory Social
Construction of Knowledge Individual/Society

• Memory as a social fact the social frameworks
  of memory (Schwartz, 1996)
• Émile Durkheim the French School of Sociology
• Social morphology, collective life
  consciousness as clues to understanding  big
  questions  (like the persistance of class
  distinctions etc
• Maurice Halbwachs
• The social frames of memory
• On collective Memory

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Later Collective Memory as a  Modern 
phenomenon

• Pierre Nora --Sites of Memory (article by
  Hortloff)
• "A lieu de mémoire is any significant entity,
  whether material or non-material in nature, which
  by dint of human will or the work of time has
  become a symbolic element of the memorial
  heritage of any community (in this case, the
  French community)" (Nora 1996 XVII)

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What constitutes a Site of Memory

• "where cultural memory crystallizes and
  secretes itself" (Nora 1989 7)
• places such as archives, museums, cathedrals,
  palaces, cemeteries, and memorials
• concepts and practices such as commemorations,
  generations, mottos, and all rituals
• objects such as inherited property, commemorative
  monuments (see image right), manuals, emblems,
  basic texts, and symbols.
• Non-places also can be sites

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Censorship Iconoclasm

• Censurship Iconoclasm deliberate destruction
  of images rooted in religious, political or other
  socio-cultural beliefs
• Ex. Destruction of 3rd c. A.D. Buddhas by
  Taleban in Afghanistan completed March 12, 2002

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Silencing Memories of Amish Schoolhouse Killings

• Site where children were killed
• Destruction of Amish Schoolhouse

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Other disciplinary roots of Collective Memory
Studies

• Philosophy
• Henri Bergson theories of individualism
  society
• Psychology Psychiatry
• Humanist approaches
• Historians of the Annales School (Marc Bloch,
  Lucien Lefebre)social intellectual accounts of
  the longue durée and history from below)
• Politics

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Problems in understanding how collective or
individual memories originate are used

• Difficult to link
• Grand Theory structural or contextual
  determinants (economy, politics, Zeitgeist or
  spirit of the times)
• Individual agency cognition
• Observable practices

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Example Multiple Meanings of Same Site

• Study of visits to the Holyland connections
  between pilgrims the past in context of present
  (inspired Halbwachs)
• vary with different generations, different groups

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Halbwachs on Memory as a Social Process

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

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Themes in Halbwachs 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
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Individual, Social Political Memory (Connerton)

• Connertons work NOT about
• individual or personal memory (agency, cognition,
  consciousness the unconscious)
• politics of commemoration or amnesia (we will be
  doing this later)
• How is the memory of groups conveyed or sustained?

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Functions of social memories of the past

• Commonly legitimate a present social order
• Factors issues
• Generational difference
• Experiences of the present depend on knowledge of
  the past
• Images of the past conveyed sustained by ritual
  performances
• Recollection a cultural rather than an individual
  activities of commemoration and performance

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Changing visions of the past as a way to change
the present (Connerton)

• Acts of repudiation, like the execution of
  leaders.
• King of France during the French revolution
  (Connerton)
• Saddam Hussein in December 2006

Preparations for the execution of Saddam Hussein
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Innovations as Rejection of Memories of the Past?

• Invention of new ceremonies
• new fashions (today could it be rejection of
  the burka?)

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Typology of Memory Claims (Connerton)

• 1-Personal Memory
• Sources Connections with individuals life
  history
• 2-Cognitive memory
• Not necessary about the past but enabled by
  something we have learned to help us decipher
  past, present future
• 3-Habit Memory
• Performative but not necessarily grounded in
  specifiv memories

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Life (Personal) histories and collective memory

• Rescuing the lived experience of marginalized or
  subordinate groups ?
• Problems in confronting personal histories with
  objective records (ex. Connerton, Zerubavel)

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Social Memory vs. Historical Reconstruction
(Connerton)

• Historical reconstructions independent of social
  memory
• Historians, evidence authority
• Traces of the past (documents, artifacts, first
  hand observations)
• Notions of truth
• Historical writing and politics (ex. Basis for
  understanding the war between Israel the
  Palestinians differing collective memories of
  the past and its meaning for the present)

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Historical reconstructions and the shape of
shared memories of the past

• depends on group membership
• Belief disbelief
• Survival of witnesses
• Context (village vs. urban) different
  opportunities for deceit (film the Return of
  Martin Guerre)

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Memories as Habits

• Individuals (even bodily practices)
• universal or shared mental traditions or
  processes
• Conventions or norms or practices of sameness
  (rule-following behaviours like language systems
  or clothes)

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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

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Film Screening

• Rabbit-Proof Fence
• Fact-based story
• Personal Memories?
• Collective Memories?