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Communicative and Cultural Memory
Abstract
Like consciousness and language, human memory is acquired through communication, socialization, and acculturation. It is,
therefore, about both one’s brain and one’s social and cultural relations and comprises three dimensions: the personal, social,
and cultural. Human memory is “embodied” in living personal memories and “embedded” in social frames and external cultural
symbols (e.g., texts, images, and rituals) that can be acknowledged as a memory function insofar as they are related to the
self-image or “identity” of a tribal, national, and/or religious community. Whereas the social or “collective” memory comprises
knowledge commonly shared by a given society in a given epoch, cultural memory in literate societies includes not only a “canon”
of normative knowledge but also an “archive” of apocryphal material that may be rediscovered and brought to the fore in later
epochs. The formation of a canon of “classical” or sacred texts requires techniques of interpretation to keep accessible the
meaning of the texts that may no longer be altered or multiplied. At that stage of cultural evolution, cultural memory changes
from ritual to textual continuity. Cultural memory becomes complex, splitting into the “classical” and the “modern,” the “sacred”
and the “secular.”
... The cultural memory is both a process and, following Assmann (2000Assmann ( , 2008, a concept enabling one to track how memory is disembodied by institutions and re-embodied in the sequence of generations thus bridging long timespans. Assmann (2000, pp. ...
... 109-117) distinguishes cultural and communicative memories, the latter transferred over three generations within a continuously shifting gap which follows the progressing present. Cultural memory by contrast, is created through both reconstructions of the past and permanently realized discourses with empiricism (Assmann, 2008). It emerges from the interplay of predispositions, of remembering and amnesia, of recognizing and denying (Barth, 2002;Fabian, 2007, p. 66), finally generating an identity-focused collective experience about the past that in global networks turns into public memory (Assmann, 1988, p. 12;Fabian, 2007). ...
... 54-62). 2 Both parties tried to recruit followers among the regional population composed of immigrants and locals (Saignes, 1985b, p. 209). Their power-preserving knowledge on filiation was initially linked to the communicative memory which over time, by turning Kallawaya language, institutions, and ritual into figures of memory (Assmann, 2008), became the cultural memory of a thinning out elite caste. Today, references to Kallawaya authorities still resonate in some family names spread over the region, such as Serena, García, Coarete, and Calacauqui ([sic] Canauqui, fieldnotes 1985-1988-2015. ...
The Kallawaya are a Bolivian ethnic group well known for ritualism and naturopathy. This paper explores the ‘making’ of the Kallawaya as a polity emerging, modifying, and adapting over time according to its political and economic needs, at the intersection of local conditions and of global developments. The case of the Kallawaya shows how processes of ethnicization unfold through the interplay of primordialist and of instrumentalist logics. An important vehicle for ethnicization is resilience as expressed by the cultural memory.
... Para abordar mi argumento, seguiré principalmente ciertas ideas de Rebecca Schneider (2011) en su texto Performance Remains a partir de la performance de Coco Fusco, Words May Not Be Found (Berlín, 2017). Iniciaré señalando algunos aspectos formales de esta pieza en relación con ciertos niveles de documentación que revelan procesos de memoria colectiva (Halbwachs 1997) y cultural (Assmann 2008), para seguidamente retomar algunos argumentos que se han esgrimido dentro de la disciplina de los Performance Studies sobre la relación entre archivo y performance con el objetivo de abrir ciertas preguntas que la performance de Coco Fusco pone en escena. Quiero referirme principalmente a la oposición que se ha establecido entre archivo y performance dentro de los Performance Studies, 6 con el objetivo de proponer que la grabación de la performance que tiene lugar "en vivo" supone una rematerialización de las realizaciones escénicas, donde se da una multiplicación de lugares y donde se ubica precisamente la extensión de su campo a partir de la producción de otras audiencias en otros espacios. ...
... La escena que incluye a la audiencia se encuentra atravesada por varios niveles de documentación que involucran diversos procesos de memoria cultural (Assmann 2008) y postmemoria (Hirsch 2008). En primer lugar, la edición de los documentos sobre el genocidio en Namibia. ...
... Algunos de los presentes reclamaron el hecho de que en el sistema escolar nunca se habló de ello. El trabajo postmemorial pasa así por una "cultural memory" (Assmann 2008), es decir, por la construcción de sistemas simbólicos, que incluyen tanto esta performance como otros tipos de "symbolic systems" (Hirsch 2008: 110) y que van a permitir este trabajo postmemorial gracias a la "puesta en archivo" (Ricoeur 2004: 215) de diferentes tipos de documentos, lo cual entra también dentro de las formas que materializan la interacción entre propuesta escénica y audiencia presentada al inicio de este texto. ...
... Many more studies have appeared in the form of journal articles and book chapters during this timeframe. As it is found through Web of 2. For Jan Assmann (2008), cultural memory is institutionalized memories, embodied in texts, rites, traditions, monuments, objects, and other media, to initiate meanings of the past and establish a sense of cultural identity. Cultural memory is usually those beyond a time span of three or four generations. ...
... Tradition is a major form or manifestation of cultural memory (Assmann 2008), and sites of memory are ubiquitous (Nora 1989). Their interconnections with translation have been examined in the research trend. ...
This article presents a critical review of a bourgeoning interdisciplinary research trend in the English-language literature that integrates Translation Studies and Memory Studies. After sketching its emergence over the past three decades or so, the article recounts main theoretical contributions in this research trend to explain how scholars promote an idea of translation as memory and expound on political and ethical issues. It then reports on analytical scholarship on specific cases of translation that take on different memory themes, including (1) the Holocaust, genocide and mass killing, (2) war, conflict, and other dark memories, and (3) traditions and sites of memory. Finally, to anticipate a more diversified prospect of the research trend, it is suggested that researchers adopt more concepts and theories from recent transcultural memory studies, and attend more to memory cultures, themes, and practices in different, especially non-Western, contexts.
... Focus and attention shall be given to Schudson's (1992) understanding of collective memory as a social memory as a means by groups and institutions for the cultural recollection of the past to shape people's actions in the present. The collective memory being rooted in the past is found in two forms, a social construction and relics, traces and personal memories (Assmann, 2011). The process of mythmaking is an integral aspect of forging national identity through imagined and mythologized national history that transcends different interests and strata in society to bring unity of focus and purpose via public rituals, where challenging the myth becomes frowned upon Reading, 2011). ...
... This is part of Schudson's (1992) understanding of the role of group, institutional cultural recollection of the past influence people's actions in the present or at least this is attempted. That link to the past is a process of social construction through the interactions of relics, personal memories, and traces according to Assmann (2011). Collective memory is being shaped by the ideas noted by Markwick (2012) on the "holy trinity" of blood, sacrifice and nation that can become an integral and untouchable collective memory. ...
The significance and symbolism of the Great Patriotic War and Victory Day has grown in its political and social importance in terms of the communication of collective memory in the inter-generational transmission of norms and values by mass media. Victory Day is the iconic moment that has come to symbolise and concentrate the desirable values and traits required of "good" citizens to meet the contemporary challenges of domestic politics and international relations. This article uses Framing Analysis of 21 articles from five local and regional newspapers' coverage of Victory Day in 2021 in the Sverdlovsk Oblast during the Coronavirus pandemic. The indicative findings of the study hint at the role of local and regional media in shaping the collective memory of readers to further align the contemporary individual narrative with the collective narrative of this communicated memory. There are a clear set of historical values and behaviour related to a sense of group belonging and collective purpose that are taken from the communicated memory of the Great Patriotic War through Victory Day celebrations and applied to the Coronavirus crisis.
... The coexistence of objective and communicative memory forms mimetic. It is constantly renewed and transported through the transfer of meaning (Assmann, 2011). Assmann (2011) states that remembering or transferring cultural memory is not a spontaneous event. ...
... It is constantly renewed and transported through the transfer of meaning (Assmann, 2011). Assmann (2011) states that remembering or transferring cultural memory is not a spontaneous event. People use various technologies and objects to retain and share memory. ...
This study aims to reveal the effect of virtual communities in social media on the reproduction of cultural memory, neighborhood identity, and culture. Another aim of the study is to investigate the potential of virtual communities to shape cultural memory, continuity, and social structure and to discuss the impact of individuals who can actively produce and share content in virtual communities on neighborhood identity and neighborhood culture. For this purpose, three research questions were put forward. RQ1: “How does interaction occur in social media, different from communities in the physical environment?” RQ2: “How are cultural memory, neighborhood culture, and identity rebuilt and shaped in the context of communication and interaction that emerges in social media virtual communities?” RQ3: “In virtual communities in social media, what is the potential of subcultures to influence or contribute to communities on a macro scale with the resulting interaction?” The theoretical approach of the research consists of Mead (2019), the representative of symbolic interactionism, and Goffman's (1978) self-society relationship with the presentation of the Self. In addition, cultural memory, neighborhood identity and culture, and the concept of the virtual community were mentioned, and the coding made for the research was directed in this direction. As a sample for the study, comments were obtained on the Tatavla'dan Kurtuluş’a virtual community on Facebook between 30 May and 30 December 2022 (n:1134), and these comments were analyzed by Van Dijk's discourse analysis method. According to the findings, the communities formed by the coming together of the selves in the micro context ensure the continuity of the neighborhood identity and culture that has been eroded in the virtual environment. However, the impact of these communities on face-to-face relations and institutions remains limited.
... As perceived by international visitors, they feel that these tourist destinations give them new experiences and information that they never got before. They are inferred with social level of memory which felt that visiting disaster museums and monuments as similar as a visiting another tourism places (Assmann, 2008). Otherwise, national or regional visitors are also inferred with social and cultural level of memory, in which they feel that visiting both places are wonderful experiences, because every room and space in the museums could represent the tsunami at that time. ...
... Indonesian mass media which almost all covering intensively the disaster. In contrast to local visitors who are also the witnesses of tsunami, they get the inner or neuromental level of memory (Assmann, 2008). They feel that visiting museum or monument tsunami is not only the practice of remembering, but the practice of praying for the relatives who have been the victims of tsunami, the practice of reflecting self and their society, the practice of mourning. ...
Disaster tourism could be defined as tourism practices based on certain disasters, both natural and cultural, which happened in the past. It melts the enjoyment and trauma, when people come and enjoy the monument of disaster or damaged place caused by a disaster. Thus, many questions arise: why do people come as tourists to disaster artefacts? How do people make meaning of the disaster artefacts? The paper examines this question, taking the visitors of Tsunami Museum, PLTD Apung Monument, and Kapal Tsunami Lampulo as study cases. The paper aims to describe the meaning of disaster tourism activities constructed by the visitors of these three memorials. The broader purpose of the study is to understand why and how people enjoy the disaster tourism destinations. The paper is based on qualitative research done in these three memorials in Aceh, Indonesia. The fieldwork to collect primary data was conducted in three months in 2015 and another three months in 2017, optimizing in-depth interviews and observations. The study concludes that disaster tourism activities are closely related to individual and collective memory. The Acehnese or the outsider, who is deeply related to the place or has direct experience of the tsunami, construct the meaning of their activities as remembering and recreational activities, which is closely associated with their inner level of memory. While the Indonesian and foreigners who do not have firsthand experience of the disaster construct the meaning of their visits as educational and recreational activities, which is related to the collective memory of the 2004 tsunami. Thus, the study confirms some previous studies that have emphasized that disaster tourism could have different roles and change its function to suit visitors' needs. Keywords: disaster tourism, collective memory, Tsunami Museum, PLTD Apung Monument, Kapal Tsunami Lampulo
... This interview shows how interconnected communicative and cultural memory are (Assmann 2008) and how the war, by destroying the temporal integrity of personal daily life, leads people to search for connections in historical time. ...
... On one hand, we examine diverse and heterogeneous research objects, such as national identity, monuments, museums, or trauma. On the other hand, we engage with a range of analytical and heuristic concepts like "collective memory" (Halbwachs, 1980;Olick, 1999), "social memory" (Dimbath and Heinlein, 2022), "cultural memory" (Assmann, 2011), and "postmemory" (Hirsch, 2001), to name just a few. One goal of the program is to acquaint students with the richness of the field and equip them with conceptual tools to understand and examine the phenomena competently. ...
The article results from the creation and implementation of a 1-year online Memory Studies Certificate Program at UCLouvain (Belgium). It describes the program designed by a team of researchers with different disciplinary backgrounds (i.e. sociology, political science, psychology, philosophy) and with different pedagogical styles. After this description, the article highlights key lessons informed by data from lecturers’ internal discussions and a survey involving the pioneer student cohort enrolled during the 2021–2022 academic year. This experience shows the importance of teaching as a way of contributing to field of Memory studies. As a counterpoint to the relentless publish-or-perish ethos, which often favors expedited dissemination of fragmented knowledge, creating a study program necessitates deep understanding and cohesive dialogue.
... I grew increasingly interested in unpacking the unsettling nature of my 'encounters of nothingness' with the aim of 'experiencing the experience' of COVID-19. I was deeply disturbed by the lack of 'cultural memory' (Assmann 2011) surrounding the 1918 pandemic. It only happened 100 years ago. ...
... Institutions such as libraries, archives, museums, and schools (and the memory artifacts that are part of those institutions) store information about the cultural past and, in that sense, function as repositories of cultural memory (Assmann 1995(Assmann , 2011. So, on a broader characterisation of memory artifacts, libraries, archives, museums, schools, and the artifacts partly constituting these institutions can also be seen as part of the category, even though such artifacts don't necessarily help individual humans to remember information they already know. ...
Human biological memory systems have adapted to use technological artifacts to overcome some of the limitations of these systems. For example, when performing a difficult calculation, we use pen and paper to create and store external number symbols; when remembering our appointments, we use a calendar; when remembering what to buy, we use a shopping list. This chapter looks at the history of memory artifacts, describing the evolution from cave paintings to virtual reality. It first characterizes memory artifacts, memory systems, and the two main functions such artifacts have, which are to aid individual users in completing memory tasks and as a cultural inheritance channel (section 2). It then outlines some of our first symbolic practices such as making cave paintings and figurines, and then moves on to outline several key developments in external representational systems and the artifacts that support these such as written language, numeral systems and counting devices, diagrams and maps, measuring devices, libraries and archives, photographs, analogue and digital computational artifacts, the World Wide Web, virtual reality, and smartphones (section 3). After that, it makes some brief points about the cumulative nature of the cultural evolution of memory artifacts and speculates about the possible future of memory artifacts, arguing that it is very difficult to look beyond an epistemological horizon of more than five years (section 4).
... This subverts what De Haan (1997) notes as the lack of Jewish agency over their narrative, albeit not in the national sphere but within the community. The identity that is thus constructed, as Jan Assmann (2010) argues, relies on the collective knowledge of the group about their struggle for an independent state. As this service was a joint ceremony of different Jewish congregations, it illustrates how this shared past and the future goal of an independent Jewish state unify different groups within Judaism. ...
This article discusses the function of Amsterdam’s Portuguese Synagogue (Esnoga) as a site of memory for the Sephardic community. Besides providing a historiography of this community in Amsterdam and discussing the postwar development of the memory of the Holocaust in the Netherlands, concepts from memory studies and a framework for psalm analysis are employed to analyze the communal praying in three of the Esnoga’s Orders of Service of special occasions from the period 1961 (the Eichmann trial) until 1989 (the fall of the Berlin Wall). This analysis illustrates how the Esnoga is a space in which the Sephardic community can performatively engage with their collective shared knowledge of the past: the mythic past as well as the recent past of the Holocaust. In this way, memories are constructed and expressed which constitute the group’s sense of unity and identity. The memorialization of the past and visions for the future are reconstructed in the Orders of Service in four ways: the psalms and prayers transmit memories over generations; the act of communal praying continually invests the psalms and prayers with new meanings; they provide a distinct, Godly view of reality; and they structure a feeling of communality across time and space. The communal praying in the Orders thus illustrates how the Esnoga allows for the transmission of memories through external symbols by acting as a site of memory in which the identity of the Sephardic community is expressed, transmitted, and affirmed.
... Thus, memories are also circulated though physical objects and places, linking to Assmann's [91] assertion that memory of the past takes a double form; with personal memories and 'sedimentation of relics and traces', alongside social constructions of what the past was. The physical products of past volcanic activity exist within and alongside wider relationships with the environment and the place of humans within it. ...
... Struggling with different cultural frames, diasporas' cultural identities are constructed through the interaction between similarity and difference in the process of daily life media use (Xie, 2005). According to cultural memory theory, "Human memory is 'embodied' in living personal memories and 'embedded' in social frames and external cultural symbols (e.g., texts, images, and rituals) that can be acknowledged as a memory function insofar as they are related to the self-image or 'identity' of a tribal, national, and/or religious community" (Assmann, 2011). The storage and inheritance of memory largely depend on the media in the context of global flows. ...
Introduction
Language media from one’s hometown is an important means of maintaining cultural identification, especially for minorities. Cantonese media plays an active role in shaping the Chinese cultural identification of ethnic Chinese all over the world. To date, few researchers have undertaken quantitative empirical analyses of the mechanism through which Cantonese media influences cultural identification.
Methods
Using data from 642 Malaysian Chinese, this study established a structural equation model with the partial least squares method.
Results
We found that the emotional affinity of ethnic Chinese to Cantonese media can influence identification with Chinese culture through the perceived value of Cantonese media and cognition of Chinese culture. The perceived value of Cantonese media ( IE = 0.208) and cognition of Chinese culture ( IE = 0.068) play partial mediation roles. Meanwhile, emotional affinity to Cantonese media influences cognition of Chinese culture ( IE = 0.069) through the chain mediation of perceived value of Cantonese media and cognition of Chinese culture. Age has a partial moderating effect in the structural equation model. Compared with minors, adults’ emotional affinity to Cantonese media can eventually influence identification with Chinese culture ( TE diff = 0.126) more strongly through several mediation paths.
Discussion
The study suggests a need to cultivate the emotional affinity of ethnic Chinese to Cantonese media, improve the multidimensional values of Cantonese media, and endow Cantonese media with functions of cultural dialog and knowledge transmission. The international transmission of Cantonese media could play a vital role in building a cultural community for ethnic Chinese globally.
... Ca "experienţă second hand", întâlnirea cu moştenirea utopiei sovietice are loc la intersecţia a două viziuni şi seturi de reprezentări ale lumii recompuse în fotografii, derivate din două forme ale memoriei, pe care imaginaţia mnemonică a artistului le conectează, evidenţiindu-le, în acelaşi timp, relaţia conflictuală. Prima este (post)memoria comunicativă 12 -"interspaţiul dialogului, activat de imaginaţia mnemonică, dintre [...] noi înşine, relaţiile noastre apropiate şi ceilalţi, aflaţi la distanţă". Este "spaţiul discursiv" al recunoaşterii şi al reconcilierii cu trecutul celorlalţi, care îşi pune amprenta asupra propriului trecut 13 . ...
After the collapse of the Soviet Union, particularly during the hard transition of the 90s, the highly polarized Russian society revealed two main forms of remembering and coping with recent past. This past was either idealized as a time of imperial glory, national pride, and relative welfare, even if it also included periods of anomie (the late Stalin era) or stagnation (the Brejnev era), either treated as a period of significant traumas that necessitated persistent recognition and working through. As for the official memory regimes, if the first post-Soviet decade was dominated by the totalitarian anticommunist (and antinostalgic) paradigm, the 2000s brought a radical turn, with the rise of victimhood nationalism and “redemptive” authoritarianism of the Putin era. The new mnemonic regime is shaped by an official, “patriotic” restorative nostalgia that is also placed in the centre of the presidential cultural programe designed to legitimize the authoritarian system and to support the restoration of a great, mythical Russia. Against this background, new forms of counter-memory and counter-nostalgia began to manifest within both the social and cultural field. One of the most remarkable exemples is offered within the “new realities” created by the young photographer Danila Tkachenko, who’s compositions marked by a “second-hand nostalgia” challenge both the Soviet utopia and its official nostalgic-populist recostructions. By means of a special nostalgic technique based on reframing the remnants and the “trukhliashechkas” of the Soviet past – (re)interpreted as the symbols of “the perfect technocratic future that never came” –, the young artist also deconstruct the imagined “sovietness” embedded in the cultural-political products shaped by the statist patriotic nostalgia. His representations of the post-Soviet landscape are those of “a ghost of utopia”, a land of ruins, of abandoned cities, of ecological disasters, and of millions unburied deads of the GULAG.
... These and the other constant features relate to our experience of reality, which is shaped by perception as well as by cultural memory (see Assmann 2011Assmann , 2018Assmann and Livingstone 2006;Kahneman 2012). Variable elements also play a significant role in explicit dramaturgy. ...
This chapter gives an overview of dramaturgy as practice and discipline. Dramaturgy has its origins in Antiquity and established itself as a theoretical and analytical approach to understand and support narrative-performative arts in the eighteenth century. After comparing the most influential roots and tradition, from its European origins to its equivalents in India and in the Arabic world, as well as considering interpretations and receptions of Aristotle’s Poetics , the chapter looks at key influential figures such as G. E. Lessing, Max Reinhardt, Max Herrmann and Bertolt Brecht. It discusses dramaturgy as a subject for higher education and its correspondence to professional practice. Furthermore, it highlights the importance of dramaturgy for the screenwriting process and, consequently, how dramaturgy can support academic analyses of time-based and narrative-performative artworks.
... The mechanisms also amplify how experiences are enjoyed and remembered and motivate keeping affective records for the future. This phenomenon contributes to the process of collective memory [24], a construct resulting from a permanent dynamic of resignification of individual experiences modelled by social experiences, including communicative memories produced by the media [25]. In this sense, more relevant to collective memory than historical memory, often distant from people's daily lives, are the social experiences within groups, which is the core of POLARISCOPE project. ...
POLARISCOPE is an R&D project supported by Digital Humanities and Participatory Media to develop an online platform to collect and share memories. The project aims to evaluate if a mobile-based technological solution, that eases multimedia data collection and generates correlated visualizations from resources shared by users, can enhance the experience and collective memory of events. Namely, aiming the social enrichment of documental archives and events that contribute to memory safeguarding and giving visibility to the cultural diversity of territories. To this end, the digital platform aims to facilitate the collection, cataloguing and sharing of multimedia records (images, videos, sounds, oral testimonials, etc.) and their integration into an aggregation system, which presents correlated visualizations of content shared by several participants. Focused on pilot trials on the territory of Aveiro (Portugal), the platform will document the natural landscape and the tangible heritage and urban fabric and also the social and intangible cultural practices of different communities that mingle in the region. As a tool for collecting and correlating multimedia records in mobility, it also aims to facilitate research field activities with communities, particularly to collect oral testimonies from the elderly with lower digital literacy. In summary, the POLARISCOPE project explores mixed methods to approach digital heritage and digital memories for generations to come, having as a differentiating value the potential of correlated visualizations to provide meaningful insights and trigger the discovery and storytelling possibilities through collective content remix and co-creation.KeywordsParticipatory PlatformVisualizationDigital StorytellingCollective Memory
... It can be argued that the transmission of cultural memory in oral contexts is based on a process of ritual reconstruction (see Nygaard 2019a, Nygaard andTirosh 2021). Assmann (2006Assmann ( , 2010 argues that this transmission is led by memory specialists accustomed to remember large amounts of infor mation in their individual memory or embodied storehouse, something noted by Pernille Hermann (2020). Following Assmann (2006Assmann ( : 39, 2011, the collectively-aimed, ritual reconstruction in the oral, or pre-literate, societies of the pre-Christian North would have happened in a tripartite process comprising of preservation, retrieval and communi cation: 1. preservation by memory specialists in poetic form; 2. retrieval by memory specialists through ritual performance; 3. communi cation between the memory specialists and the group through ritual participation (see further Nygaard and Schjødt 2018;Nygaard 2019a;Nygaard and Tirosh 2021). ...
... Sociologists and historians document the past's political legacy. Cultural memory of the national past is an important resource, generating national identity (Assmann, 2008;Zerubavel, 1995) and enabling appeals for loyalty and sacrifice from citizens by suggesting the present owes a debt to the past (Bodnar, 1992). Another thread in this literature acknowledges that the past can be a political burden. ...
Political leaders construct meanings for current events in support of their existing policy goals, but the constructed meanings do not change when policy goals change. Consequently, the established narrative of the past becomes part of the policymaking terrain, justifying existing policies and creating criteria for policy success. It must be navigated by leaders seeking to reach their policy objectives. References made by U.S. and Israeli political leaders to the event known as “9/11” from 2002 through 2019 reveal how they renegotiated its meaning as their policy goals evolved. Policy goals at the time of the event shaped the meanings made of the event. As policy goals changed, existing meanings could not be discarded or reshaped at will, nor could 9/11 simply be forgotten. Instead, leaders navigated and amended the inescapable public memory of 9/11 to support varying policy goals over a 20-year time span. For Israel, 9/11 made a chronic problem an international cause célèbre, offering potential to generate international response to a commonly marginalized threat, a narrative prime ministers sought to adapt as their policy goals changed. In the U.S. the George W. Bush Administration’s narrative of 9/11 promoted and sustained the administration’s policies and goals, making it difficult for Barack Obama’s administration to change course unless it could tell a different story. Both cases demonstrate that arguments made for or against policies are contingent upon how the past is narrated. Collective remembrance can affect the contours of public policy, for the remembered past constitutes the terrain of policymaking.
... A történeti perspektívában a politikai cselekvés számára egy, a kollektív emlékezetből származó nemzetkép képezi a kiindulópontot. Nem fontos itt, hogy a hagyományos halbwachsi megközelítést használjuk (Halbwachs, 1992), mely szerint a csoporthoz kötött irracionális tudat határozza meg az identitást, s a történelmi szemléletet, vagy hogy maga a történelem megalkotása is egyfajta kollektív emlékezetet hoz létre (Assmann, 2008). Ami fontos, hogy egy, a mai történelemről alkotott kép a politikai döntéshozás, döntéshozók számára is egyfajta identitás-séma, és hogy ez valamilyen módon a kép történeti fejlődéséhez köthető, s nem magához a valós konfliktusok vagy konfliktus-kezelések történetéhez. ...
A migrációra vonatkozó kelet-ázsiai politikák értelmezésének legfontosabb dimenziói közé tartoznak a nemzetállam és gazdaság, a globalizáció és nemzetköziesedés viszonyrendszerei, ám ezek egyes megközelítési módjai, elméleti keretei oly mértékben eltérhetnek egymástól, ami a konkrét cselekvési szinteken, intézményeknél vagy a migrációra vonatkozó területeken, mint határrezsimek, beléptetés, idegen munkaerő alkalmazása és az integráció, akár meg is fordíthatják az érvelés logikáját. A hagyományosan két csoportba osztható: a makroökonómiai indíttatású és a nemzeti identitás felől közelítő elméletek egyre kevésbé írják le önmagukban az egyes államok keretei között vagy azok egymás közti kapcsolatában zajló szabályozások belső rendszerét, így szükségessé vált nem csupán rivális teóriákként alkalmazni, hanem a lehetséges pontokon egybefonni azokat. Mindez azonban felveti azt a kérdést is, miszerint a korábbi logikai konstrukciókban felvázolt nemzetállam fogalmak érvényesek-e egyáltalán a mai globalizációs körülmények között. Jelen tanulmányban ezekre a kérdésekre keressük a válaszokat.
... érence qui pourrait s'être développée au fil des années ; ils luttent contre l'amnésie collective ou le déni ; ils éveillent la responsabilité éthique de l'auditoire pour que celui-ci devienne agent de prévention ou acteur d'engagement civique en cas d'éruption ou de propagation de la haine, de la discrimination et de la violence, raciale ou autre.Assmann (2008) et Lachmann (2008 évoquent en effet le pouvoir qu'ont les reconstructions imaginative et esthétique sur la mémoire, du fait d'une mise en scène ou d'une mise en intrigue qui permettent une configuration nouvelle de la mémoire. ...
Cette contribution examine le fonctionnement des analogies à visée argumentative dans les supports multimodaux que sont la bande dessinée et le roman graphique, et plus particulièrement dans les romans graphiques qui traitent de la Shoah, pour répondre aux questions de savoir (a) à quoi est dû le poids argumentatif de ces analogies et comment elles participent à la construction d’un argument, et (b) ce qui caractérise les procédures analogiques construites dans l’« art séquentiel ».
This paper examines the functioning of analogies in comics and graphic novels as a multimodal medium, and more particularly in graphic novels dealing with the Holocaust. Two questions will be addressed in the present study: (a) what triggers the argumentative effect of these analogies and how do they participate in the construction of an argument? (b) what singularizes arguments from analogy constructed in the “sequential art”?
... Modern states, even those not self-defined as nation-states, constitute collective memories of their own nation, such as histories, beliefs, and cultures, whether based on everyday communication, such as oral history [12] or detached from that, such as texts and monuments [13]. Education buries the seed of nationalism; stimulations are also necessary to urge it to grow. ...
Nationalism serves as an important base of citizens identification of the state. When the economy is not promising, elites tend to use nationalism as a tactic to stabilize people and channel their discontent to foreign states. However, the panacea has serious side effects. This essay will demonstrate how such a tactic could lead to a vicious circle that fulfills and reinforces itself until losing control, which accounts for the deteriorating US-China relation, which is far worse than the underlying interest requires and severely hindering the development of the world. More details will be analyzed to find what particularly accelerates the circle so that possible exits from it could be found. Other common explanations for the rising tension between the US and China are also discussed to make the vicious circle more comprehensive and further unveil the possibilities to ameliorate the status quo.
Over the last two decades, 9/11 established itself as an object of interest for the academia, news outlets and the arts, generating a multitude of cultural artefacts that allow us, collectively, to revisit the event, reread it in different circumstances, and, ultimately, rewrite it. Employing rewriting as a metaphor for a continuous process of representation and revision, this article explores the remediation of the terrorist attack of 2001 and how representations of the event across time and different media help consolidate its place in cultural memory. With this purpose in mind, it analyzes John Updike’s Terrorist (2006) and TV series Designated Survivor (2016) and discusses them as after-effects of 9/11.
Purpose
Conversations around diversity, race and science fiction and fantasy films/television have sparked in response to recent casting decisions made in the upcoming live-action The Little Mermaid, The Lord of the Rings: The Rings of Power and Star Wars' Obi-Wan Kenobi (Deggans, 2022; Romano, 2022). Backlash against casting of actors of Color in these genres highlights racial projects where a cultural memory of whiteness comes up against multicultural change. The authors of this paper feel that there is great potential in using current-day racial issues around fantasy films/television to explore these racial projects with students in social studies classes (Omi and Winant, 2014).
Design/methodology/approach
Using a qualitative textual analysis (Peräkylä, 2005), the authors examined online news media outlets addressing the casting of actors of Color in the aforementioned media pieces. After reviewing over twenty articles, the authors determined two major themes that would serve as the findings.
Findings
In this paper, themes of nostalgia for an imagined ‘way things were’ and future-based fears of how things will become emerged from the analysis, revealing a need for engaging students in the history of sci-fi and fantasy media, and the existing, diverse histories of storytelling featuring multiple races.
Originality/value
The authors argue that examining racial projects found in contemporary sci-fi and fantasy casting are chances for students to understand complex racial histories and how they blend into current-day cultural landscapes, and are opportunities to practice analysis of real-life racial histories and richly-imagined fantasy worlds, noticing how and why the two often collide when it comes to race.
This chapter analyses the case study of M-19 (Movimiento 19 de abril) [April 19 Movement], a Colombian guerrilla organisation active until 1990. Considering the difficulty and limitations related to the complete understanding of the Colombian armed struggle, and the shades of a memory and narration made of past and present, distortions and constructions, the aim of this chapter is the reconstruction of the public memory on the M-19 by means of the contrast between the narrative as memory of the M-19 and the official narrative. This contrast will re-signify the incidence of the guerrilla for the purpose of a change in the concept of politics, democracy through armed struggle to reach a different project for the country, it also allows us to reconstruct the past in the present.
The article investigates the social and cultural practices of Sira production and consumption in the later Middle Period. It probes into the place held by Sira regarding the veneration of the Prophet, especially in relation to Hadith. Its first part shows that in the Middle Period Sira was intended as a vast literary repository characterized by fluidity of format, diverse social fruition, and plurality of practices in transmission and consumption. It was a literary field characterized by narrative malleability and creativity, for which there was popular demand and scholarly dedication.
The life and work of the Šāfiʿī scholar and Hadith expert Ibn Nāṣir al-Dīn al-Dimašqī (d. 842/1438), in particular his Ǧāmiʿ al-āṯār fī l-siyar wa-mawlid al-muḫtār ( The Compilation of Traditions on the Life and Birth of the Chosen One ) occupies the second part of the article. Here, Ǧāmiʿ al-āṯār is taken as a written exemplification of the tight relationship between Sira, Hadith and devotion to the Prophet typical of the period, of 14th-15th century Damascus in particular.
Overall, the article argues that the intended meaning and use of a text as rich as Ǧāmiʿ al-āṯār can be fully grasped only when we put it in close conversation with the Hadith culture and veneration for the Prophet of the time. It suggests the existence of a pervasive “Sira culture” binding people in a relationship of meaning to their shared memories of the life of the Prophet. Such culture was nurtured by remembrance of the Prophet’s excellency and life milestones. It aimed at cultivating salvific feelings of love for the Prophet that would assure believers a secure place in the Afterlife.
This contribution shows how oral history and the concept of ‘belonging’ can be used for the analysis of spatial notions in borderlands over time. By giving examples of her research in the border region of Melilla (Spain) and Nador (Morocco), the author presents a transnational and intersectional approach and shows how spatial imaginaries can be taken into view from a historical perspective.
The experience and legends of local communities in Tunisia who lived within archaeological sites and shared long-standing connections with those sites has been poorly recognised and documented. The extent to which elements of the cultural memory of local communities refer back to the pre-Islamic period has often been hinted at, but rarely explored in detail. The aim of this paper is to examine the relationship between local communities and archaeological sites in Tunisia, and the extent to which modern cultural memory in a community embeds elements or cultural markers from the Roman, Punic and Numidian past. This case study examines the cult of Oum Khoula at the site of Dougga (ancient Thugga ). The marabout of Oum Khoula is in the cisterns of Aïn El-Hammam, at the end of the major Roman aqueduct to Dougga. Oum Khoula is remembered by local inhabitants as associated with a range of legends stretching back to the Roman and pre-Roman past. The cult has continued to be revered to the modern day. Whether the cultural memory illustrated by the cult of Oum Khoula at Dougga represents continuity with the past cannot be proved or disproved and is ultimately not the important issue. The cult of Oum Khoula at Dougga represents an example of the persistence of references from Numidian, Punic and Roman periods in the Maghreb. That cultural memory is a function of the community’s sense of place and significant references to that place derive from the archaeological remains and its associated oral traditions and symbols found at Dougga. The question of how modern archaeologists respond to and interpret this cultural memory is discussed.
It is still too early for a conclusive assessment of the processes and effects of the COVID-19 pandemic. However, there are concrete numbers, such as 370 million people infected and 5.6 million deaths confirmed, and mounting concerns about increasing ‘emotion-related-diseases’, devastating mental health indices affecting up to a billion people since the start of the pandemic: insomnia, depression, neurodermatitis, and digestive problems. There were differences in the ways the pandemic was handled in various regions of the world. In spring 2020 when the virus swept over the continents, countries in the Western hemisphere suffered from unpreparedness. There was no alertness or feeling of what a pandemic is like. East Asian citizens had not forgotten about the SARS (Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome) endemic (2002–2004). It became quickly evident that best practice expertise is no longer primarily at home in Europe and North America, but instead in the East Asian contexts. This essay tackles the reasons for this and how this unfamiliar reality came into being. It deals with the role of political structures and practical experience both of which are rooted in history and incorporate specific local bodies of knowledge These knowledge bases have proven themselves first and foremost in implementing protective measures quickly and effectively. Furthermore, building on indigenous medical knowledge, this know-how became highly relevant when it came to diagnosing and treating COVID-19. East Asian countries to a great part succeeded in making use of medico-social interventions and implementing sufficient medical infrastructure in terms of staff and hospitals. Moreover, traditional medicine served in a significant way as medical assistance, in particular also during the very beginning of the pandemic, in European, African and American just as much as in Asian contexts. In addition, there is the social component, e.g. solidarity and community cohesion that played a crucial role in East Asian regions. This solidarity worked well, as it was nothing that could be ordered "top down". However, in the last few months, China’s zero-COVID approach is worrying people in Chinese contexts as well as economists and policymakers at a global scale. There is a need to rethink and to adjust such policy strategies again and again. Since an end of the pandemic is far from being in sight, and this essay was completed in April 2022, it would go beyond the scope of this article to attempt a conclusive assessment here.
Recently, the dynamics of the collective attention of various cultural products are typically modeled by mathematical models. In this article, we propose a simple collective attention model for capturing the dynamics of coupled cultural products, which is represented by a complex dynamical network. In particular, the coupling mechanism of the model involves one of the cooperative, exploitative competitive, and appropriative terms. To facilitate the analysis of the higher-dimensional complex dynamical network, we employ and extend the existing dynamical dimension reduction techniques to reduce the network to a simplified lower-dimensional version. It can then be used to describe the collective dynamics of the original system, such as the emergency of the bifurcation of the collective attention received by cultural products. We test the dimension reduction techniques on several collective attention dynamical networks. Our results indicate that articulating the complex dynamical models as well as their advanced theories and tools may open up a new avenue for the dynamics study of collective attention.
Far-right discourses have been on the rise in the USA and elsewhere. Undoubtedly, the popularity of social media enhances the functioning and visibility of this phenomenon specifically on such platforms. This chapter aims to analyse a right-wing public sphere, created by the @TPPatriots Twitter account, in the context of its ability to build and strengthen narration on the past among its participants. As such, it answers the question of how this radical public sphere used the COVID-19 pandemic to establish some of the key foundations of a far-right collective memory.
In this article, I reflect on the productivity of hermeneutic translation criticism, focusing on literary translation. I pose the question whether the hermeneutic mode of translation analysis and evaluation – largely based on the premises of Romantic art criticism – has the potential to make a significant contribution to contemporary discussions on the functional model of translation criticism. My argument is that the source of the productivity (and functionality) of translation criticism is dialogicity – a feature that can be considered fundamental in the case of hermeneutics. Following the dialogical hermeneutics of F. Schlegel, F. Schleiermacher and H.-G. Gadamer, as well as H.R. Jauß’s aesthetics of reception, I formulate some general postulates regarding a hermeneutic critique of literary translations. This critical mode is interrogative: it locates and poses questions that are answered by the examined texts. The critic’s questions include those about the original and for the original, about the translator and for the translator, as well as about the reader and for the reader. Finally, I demonstrate cases in which a critical dialogue crystallizes around literary translations. It is a dialogue that can be shaped and interpreted by the postulated hermeneutic translation criticism.
Inspired by Suskiewicz’s observation that “if you want to learn something about Poles, you shouldn’t go to Warsaw or Cracow, but to Victoria Station in London”, this chapter explores how contemporary Polish migrant writers construct representations of their homeland and its citizens out of their memories and how a life of migration influences these depictions. The authors’ literary representations highlight mechanisms that explain the dynamics of social and economic reality in Poland, the plurality of views of Poles, and their religious beliefs, political ideas and so on. Some themes in this chapter, such as the role of the Catholic Church in Poland or the myth of Mother Pole, are analysed in the wider historical context. This exploration of the historical background illuminates how the given representations originated, evolved and have taken on the present meaning. A critical study of these depictions reveals vital transformations of Polish society. It also captures how old ideas and stereotypes—placed in a new, foreign context of the UK and Ireland—are contested, dispelled and supplanted by new representations.KeywordsMigration writingMigrant literaturePolish migration to Britain and IrelandLiterary representationsStereotypes of Poles
Scholarship about politics and the body in conflicts has gained prominence in academic debates. This article advances these conversations by arguing that bodily scars are potent ‘carriers’ of memories of mass atrocities committed during the genocide against the Tutsi in Rwanda. Using both semi-structured interviews and a wide range of secondary sources, this study found that bodily scars – as physical manifestations of wartime torture and pain – evidence past atrocities and survivor resilience. Similarly, they are avenues through which the past is communicated and transformed (in ways that complement and surpass other mediums of memory). Bodily scars play powerful and complex roles in memory conversations; they communicate trauma and keep memories of the mass violence vivid in public and private realms. This article empirically contributes to discussions on the politics of memory in post-genocide Rwanda, and body studies and memory scholarship more broadly.
This article presents the changes in history education that bring school history closer to public history and discusses the potential of a textbook as a tool for fostering public history. The analysis of the chapters dealing with the Second World War from the Polish–German history textbook, Europe – Our History , provides arguments in support of the claim that history education may become history for the public – by engaging pupils, not just providing them with knowledge; with the public – by letting the pupils reflect on the lesson content, not take it for granted; about the public – by focusing on ordinary people’s fates, not on political and military operations; and by the public – by referring extensively to people’s memories and letting primary sources speak for themselves, not just illustrate the historiographical narrative.
This paper examines how the negotiation of the traumas of slavery and its legacies in Yaa Gyasi’s Homegoing (2016) deviates from traditional trauma literature in terms of its form and content. Gyasi’s novel is shown to be structured as a postmemorial family saga, allowing it to highlight the transgenerational and transtemporal effects of trauma in a way that differs markedly from the modernist aesthetics prescribed by traditional trauma theory. Homegoing features a confrontational approach, as it represents trauma directly and explicitly, whilst positioning the reader and several characters as implicated subjects. The novel moreover shows itself attuned to the complexities of trauma by featuring cases of insidious trauma and emphasising how traumas may be rooted in structural issues.
In this chapter, based on the authors’ sociocultural concept of media generations, which focuses on media users in the pre-digital and digital information and communication environment, we reveal the differentiating and identifying features of “analogue” and “digital” media generations and the intermediate media generation of the “digital borderline” in Russia, one of the post-Soviet countries.The result of the approbation is the development of an explanatory model of intergenerational communication in the digital media environment. The model includes interaction of three media generations as subjects of communication; three ways of transmitting experience combining post-figurative, co-figurative, and pre-figurative generational interaction; three levels of experience translation that contribute to bridging the digital divide generation cohorts: digital media technologies, everyday media practices, and sociocultural values.
It is paramount that local cultural sustainability be preserved as China implements its rural revitalization strategy, and the integration and transformation of rural cultural tourism spaces based on this foundation is unprecedented. However, rural cultural tourism spaces face many challenges at present, including a lack of cultural appeal and homogenized spatial expression methods. Environmental graphics, a concept widely utilized in urban branding systems, serve as a novel spatial text that combines both material and immaterial aspects within the extension of brand design systems. Creatively intervening in the shaping of rural cultural tourism spaces, environmental graphics enhance the spatial experience of rural tourism. In this study, we introduced a model that uses an experiential design approach to explore and transform local culture into environmental graphics. Through three application case studies of cultural tourism spaces with diverse cultural backgrounds, this study illustrates how environmental graphics can revitalize the cultural and historical allure of rural heritage by transforming local elements through contemporary language. Moreover, the study aims to further validate its findings through practical applications in future research to convert experiential design into cultural sustainability.
This study identifies the mnemonic strategies of the Slovak extreme-right Ľudová Strana Naše Slovensko (ĽSNS) / People’s Party Our Slovakia as a means of establishing a mnemonic alliance with Putin’s Russia. ĽSNS’s construction of mnemonic culture surrounding two critical events in Slovak history – the 1944 Slovak National Uprising and the 1968 invasion of Czechoslovakia by the Soviet army and its allies – is marked by an effort to overcome the ideological divide between its extreme-right ideology and Russia’s identity and memory politics rooted in its anti-fascist heritage. Those two events represent an uneasy terrain for building political and mnemonic alliances between ĽSNS and Putin’s Russia. Even though these two historical milestones represent a seemingly unmasterable past and an obstacle in an ĽSNS-Russia alliance, the party implemented several mnemonic strategies to reconfigure the place of these two key historical events in national memory and clear the path for a closer alliance with Putin’s Russia. We argue that ĽSNS’s memory construction is multidirectional rather than competitive or discordant. We unpack ĽSNS’s memory construction and identify multidirectional effects and trajectories as vectors for building a mnemonic alliance with Putin’s Russia.
Role-play interaction in live role-playing games is also language interaction. Role-playing language is different from everyday language, because the worlds created in role-play are not just a reflection or extension of everyday life. We examine three examples of interaction in live action role-playing games. In all three, players rely on shared cultural knowledge. In the first example, two players employ the cultural conventions about the meanings of colors, objects and space as well as materials borrowed from myth and folklore in order to enact an encounter between a mage and a dragon. In the second, the organizers enact scenes from literary classics in order to construct the game plot. In the third, the players employ cultural stereotypes of personalities and behavior in order to present characters of diverse age and social status.
The study tries to evaluate the development of the Hare Krishna Movement ( ISKCON ) in the Czech Republic. It points out that after a period of great openness and the emergence of non-traditional religious groups after the Velvet Revolution in 1989, the spread of this movement gradually stagnated. After a period of “anti-cult” attacks, the movement did become part of the standard religious scene, although its attractiveness decreased. Based on two models (the model of religious success and the concept of religious memory), the study shows the limits to the wider success of the movement. However, given the widespread secularization and the prevailing “religious apathy” of Czech society, the Hare Krishna Movement’s impact in Czech society can be considered a limited success.
Bellek hatırlama ve unutma ile inşa edilir. Kolektif hafıza belirli bir bağlamda oluşur. Bu bağlamın boyutlarından biri de toplumsal cinsiyet ilişkileridir. Sinema toplumun dinamiklerini resmederken bireysel ve toplumsal bellek inşasında etkili bir rol oynar. Dil, müzik, kurgu ve anlatı yapısı bu inşanın araçlarıdır. 1980’li yıllarda Türk sinemasında kadın filmi dendiğinde akla ilk gelen sinemacı Atıf Yılmaz’dır. Yönetmenin filmlerini çektiği yıllar aynı zamanda kadın hareketinin yükselmeye başladığı dönem olması açısından önemlidir. Bu çalışmada, bahsedilen arka plan düşünülerek Atıf Yılmaz’ın belleğin merkezi rol oynadığı Adı Vasfiye ve Ah Belinda filmleri örneklem olarak seçilmiştir. Filmlerin analizlerine temel oluşturması için bellek, hatırlama ve belleğin sinema ile ilişkisi literatürle temellendirilmiştir. Filmler, toplumsal cinsiyet ilişkileri bağlamında bellek yanılsamalarının nasıl kurulduğunu açıklamak üzere metin analizi yöntemiyle incelenmiştir. Sonuç olarak, iki farklı kadının hikayelerinde görülen bellek yanılsamalarının ve bellek inşasının anlamı değerlendirilmiştir.
The article deals with archives of memoryscapes as remembered landscapes of a past society by Hungarian women authors from Yugoslavia. Divided into two separate cycles, it explores how an inhabited geography transgressed from the present into a past, and how it evolved via belletristic practices from the 1990s onward. The archive is therefore assessed as a cumulative development of text-worlds in prose, poetry, and drama by Hungarian women, who either remained in disintegrating Yugoslavia or emigrated to Hungary, both of which led mostly to uprootedness and a misinterpretation of their work. Accordingly, displaced as authors, who remember landscapes that are beyond official memory politics, their archive remained largely unnoticed and marginalised throughout the decades. Emerging in autobiographic writing and literary fiction equally, these memoryscapes are not idiosyncratic but are regulated and systemic representations of a time, a space, and a society. To display such a mnemonic agency, the article integrates the foucauldian notions of the archive with the thirdspace perspective of geocriticism within literary representation, as used in post-colonial thought. Eventually, this enables the exposition of the archive of these female memoryscapes of an ethnic minority not in relation to other “national” archives, or as auxiliary archives of a male perspective, but as a system of thirdspaces and representation in itself.
The metaphor of cultural trauma, which currently enjoys great popularity in cultural and literary studies, combines two independent traditions of trauma research. The writings on cultural trauma are based primarily on philosophical reflections about Auschwitz and the limits of representation, which emerged in the postwar writings of members of the Frankfurt School and were further developed by a number of poststructuralist thinkers. In addition, the proponents of the cultural trauma metaphor take advantage of the large body of psychological and psychotherapeutic studies about the experiences of actual trauma victims, including victims of the Holocaust. But the attempts to integrate these very different research traditions and concepts of trauma have ultimately not been successful. The writings on cultural trauma display a disconcerting lack of historical and moral precision, which aestheticizes violence and conflates the experiences of victims, perpetrators and spectators of traumatic events.
Native speakers of six languages (Chinese, English, Finnish, Greek, Spanish and Swedish) were tested for digit span with and without articulatory suppression. The results showed that under control conditions Chinese speakers obtained a larger digit span than speakers of the remaining languages, who did not differ among themselves. However, under articulatory suppression, these differences were eliminated and suppressed digit span was equivalent across the languages. These findings provide empirical support for the view that attributes cross-linguistic differences in digit span to variation in the articulatory duration of digit names and the rate of subvocal rehearsal between languages.
The linguistic relativity (Whorfian) hypothesis states that language influences thought. In its strongest form, the hypothesis states that language controls both thought and perception. Several experiments have shown that this is false. The weaker form of the hypothesis, which states that language influences thought, has been held to be so vague that it is unprovable. The argument presented herein is that the weaker Whorfian hypothesis can be quantified and thus evaluated. Models of cognition developed after Whorf's day indicate ways in which thought can be influenced by cultural variations in the lexical, syntactical, semantic, and pragmatic aspects of language. Although much research remains to be done, there appears to be a great deal of truth to the linguistic relativity hypothesis. In many ways the language people speak is a guide to the language in which they think. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2012 APA, all rights reserved)
A 54 year old patient of average intelligence with a severe and enduring loss of old autobiographical memories after herpes simplex type 1 infection is described. She was tested with a comprehensive neuropsychological battery two years after the infection. Special emphasis was laid on examining different aspects of retrograde memory. The neurological examination involved MRI and SPECT. Brain damage was found mainly in the right temporofrontal region, but minor left sided damage to this region seems possible. The patient was in the normal or slightly subnormal range for all tested anterograde memory functions, but manifested severe retrograde memory deficits with respect to episodic old memories and more moderate deficits in tests of general knowledge (semantic old memories). It is concluded that the ecphory of old autobiographical memories relies heavily on an activation of the right lateral temporofrontal junction area, but that probably only some complementary left hemispheric damage to these regions will lead to major and persistent retrograde amnesia. Alternatively, the disconnection between major prefrontal and posterior cortical regions may provide a basis for retrograde amnesia.
When people retell events, they take different perspectives for different audiences and purposes. In four experiments, we examined the effects of this postevent reorganization of events on memory for the original events. In each experiment, participants read a story, wrote a biased letter about one of the story characters, and later remembered the original story. Participants' letters contained more story details and more elaborations relevant to the purpose of their retellings. More importantly, the letter perspective affected the amount of information recalled (Experiments 1, 3, and 4) and the direction of the errors in recall (Experiments 1 and 3) and recognition (Experiment 2). Selective rehearsal plays an important role in these bias effects: retelling involves selectively retrieving and using story information, with consequent differences in memory. However, biased memory occurred even when the biased letters contained little, if any, specific information (Experiment 4) or contained the same amount and kinds of story information as a neutral control condition (Experiment 3). Biased memory is a consequence of the reorganizing schema guiding the retelling perspective, in addition to the effects of rehearsing specific information in retelling.
Two studies of autobiographical memory explored the hypothesis that memories become more accessible when the linguistic environment at retrieval matches the linguistic environment at encoding. In Experiment 1, Russian-English bilinguals were asked to recall specific life experiences in response to word prompts. The results supported the hypothesis of language-dependent recall: Participants retrieved more experiences from the Russian-speaking period of their lives when interviewed in Russian and more experiences from the English-speaking period of their lives when interviewed in English. In Experiment 2, the language of the interview was varied independently from the language of the word prompts. Both variables were found to influence autobiographical recall. These findings show that language at the time of retrieval, like other forms of context, plays a significant role in determining what will be remembered.
We used fMRI to explore the neural substrates involved in the unconscious evaluation of Black and White social groups. Specifically, we focused on the amygdala, a subcortical structure known to play a role in emotional learning and evaluation. In Experiment 1, White American subjects observed faces of unfamiliar Black and White males. The strength of amygdala activation to Black-versus-White faces was correlated with two indirect (unconscious) measures of race evaluation (Implicit Association Test [IAT] and potentiated startle), but not with the direct (conscious) expression of race attitudes. In Experiment 2, these patterns were not obtained when the stimulus faces belonged to familiar and positively regarded Black and White individuals. Together, these results suggest that amygdala and behavioral responses to Black-versus-White faces in White subjects reflect cultural evaluations of social groups modified by individual experience.
This article examines conversational recounting about experiences as a potential mechanism by which people socially construct themselves and their worlds over the life span and the resulting implications for understanding adult development. Two principles governing conversational recounting of past events are proposed: coconstruction (the joint influences of speakers and contexts on conversational reconstructions of past events) and consistency (the influence of a conversational reconstruction on subsequent memory). Operating together, the principles provide an account for how autobiographical memory is socially constructed. In addition, the principles may illuminate how conversations about the past can influence the development of identity in adulthood.
After tuning to an audience, communicators' own memories for the topic often reflect the biased view expressed in their messages. Three studies examined explanations for this bias. Memories for a target person were biased when feedback signaled the audience's successful identification of the target but not after failed identification (Experiment 1). Whereas communicators tuning to an in-group audience exhibited the bias, communicators tuning to an out-group audience did not (Experiment 2). These differences did not depend on communicators' mood but were mediated by communicators' trust in their audience's judgment about other people (Experiments 2 and 3). Message and memory were more closely associated for high than for low trusters. Apparently, audience-tuning effects depend on the communicators' experience of a shared reality.
Previous findings have been equivocal as to whether the postevent misinformation effect on eyewitness memory is reduced by warnings presented after the misinformation (postwarnings). In the present research, social postwarnings, which characterize the postevent source as a low-credibility individual, diminished the misinformation effect in both cued recall and recognition tests. Discrediting the source as being either untrustworthy or incompetent was effective (Experiment 1). Also, postwarned participants rated reality characteristics of their memories more accurately than did participants receiving no or high-credibility information about the postevent source (Experiment 2). A social postwarning yielded the same results as an explicit source-monitoring appeal and led to longer response times for postevent items, relative to a no-warning condition (Experiments 3 and 4). The findings suggest that the reduced misinformation effect was due to more thorough monitoring of memory characteristics by postwarned participants, rather than to a stricter response criterion or to enhanced event memory.
The classic issue of color naming and color cognition has been re-examined in a recent series of articles. Here, we review these developments, and suggest that they move the field beyond a familiar rhetoric of 'nature versus nurture', or 'universals versus relativity', to new concepts and new questions.
Klassik ist durch die prinzipielle Doppelheit von Normativität und Historizität charakterisiert. Klassik wird einerseits als etwas Normatives, Zeitresistentes bestimmt — andererseits läßt es sich als jeweils historisches Phänomen verstehen und rekonstruieren.
This article considers the relevance of individual and collective memory in political analysis. It proposes that there are four formats of memory and these are individual memory, social memory, political memory, and cultural memory. It argues for the existence of collective memory and explains that human beings do not only live in the first person singular, but also in various formats of the first person plural. It contends that each 'we' is constructed through specific discourses that mark certain boundary lines and define respective principles of inclusion and exclusion and suggests that to acknowledge the concept of collective memory is to acknowledge the concept of some collective identity.
The hypothesis that the retrieval of both well-known and vaguely known old memories of an emotional content will activate the right lateral temporopolar cortex was tested in one subject who was in psychotherapy because of her presumed sexual abuse as a child and who could produce symbolic scenes of her abuse by painting them. Indeed, H215O positron emission tomographical results revealed regional cerebral blood flow changes in the right anterior temporal cortex under both conditions, but more so under the vaguely known but not concretely verbalizable ones. These findings make it very likely that the right temporolateral cortex is a major region for ecphorizing (i.e. associating and binding retrieval cues to the retrieval itself) old emotional information of a personal nature, even if it cannot be verbalized.
In 1932, Cambridge University Press published Remembering, by psychologist, Frederic Bartlett. The landmark book described fascinating studies of memory and presented the theory of schema which informs much of cognitive science and psychology today. In Bartlett's most famous experiment, he had subjects read a Native American story about ghosts and had them retell the tale later. Because their background was so different from the cultural context of the story, the subjects changed details in the story that they could not understand. Based on observations like these, Bartlett developed his claim that memory is a process of reconstruction, and that this construction is in important ways a social act. His concerns about the social psychology of memory and the cultural context of remembering were long neglected but are finding an interested and responsive audience today. Now reissued in paperback, Remembering has a new Introduction by Walter Kintsch of the University of Colorado, Boulder.
Much has been written about the iconic power of Joe Rosenthal's 1945 photograph of the flag‐raising at Iwo Jima. This scholarship, however, insufficiently accounts for the rhetorical function of this image as it is appropriated in an unusual number of recent editorial cartoons. Building upon rhetorical theory addressing repetitive form and visual metaphor, we propose a concept of representative form. Exemplifying representative form, the parodied Iwo Jima image operates as an instance of depictive rhetoric that functions ideographically.
Despite substantial work in a variety of disciplines, substantive areas, and geographical contexts, social memory studies is a nonparadigmatic, transdisciplinary, centerless enterprise. To remedy this relative disorganization, we (re-)construct out of the diversity of work addressing social memory a useful tradition, range of working definitions, and basis for future work. We trace lineages of the enterprise, review basic definitional disputes, outline a historical approach, and review sociological theories concerning the statics and dynamics of social memory.
Aleida Assmann fragt nach den verschiedenen Aufgaben kultureller Erinnerung, ihren Medien (wie Schrift, Bilder, Denkmäler) im historischen und technischen Wandel sowie nach den Umgangsformen mit gespeichertem Wissen, bei denen neben Politik und Wissenschaft auch der Kunst eine wachsende Bedeutung zukommt.
In ten brilliant essays, Jan Assmann explores the connections between religion, culture, and memory. Building on Maurice Halbwachs's idea that memory, like language, is a social phenomenon as well as an individual one, he argues that memory has a cultural dimension too. He develops a persuasive view of the life of the past in such surface phenomena as codes, religious rites and festivals, and canonical texts on the one hand, and in the Freudian psychodrama of repressing and resurrecting the past on the other. Whereas the current fad for oral history inevitably focuses on the actual memories of the last century or so, Assmann presents a commanding view of culture extending over five thousand years. He focuses on cultural memory from the Egyptians, Babylonians, and the Osage Indians down to recent controversies about memorializing the Holocaust in Germany and the role of memory in the current disputes between Israelis and Palestinians in the Middle East and between Protestants and Catholics in Northern Ireland.
Collective Memory—What Is It?
- Gedi
- Yigal Noa
- Elam
Gedi, Noa, and Yigal Elam. “Collective Memory—What Is It?” History & Memory 8.1 (1996): 30-50
Letter VII, Platonis (Opera Ed
- Oxford
Oxford: Oxford University Press. Plato (1901b). Letter VII, Platonis (Opera Ed., I. Burnet, Trans.). (St. III, Vol. 5, pp. 323d–351).
Memory, individual and collective The Oxford handbook of contextual political analysis
- A Assmann
Schrift, Tradition, Kultur [Writing, tradition, culture
- A Assmann
- J Assmann
- A. Assmann
Five steps of canonization: Tradition, scripture and the origin of the Hebrew Bible
- J Assmann
- J. Assmann
Pour une approche anthropologique de la mémoire religieuse [Toward an anthropological approach to religious memory
- P Borgeaud
- P. Borgeaud
Europäische Literatur und lateinisches Mittelalter [European literature and Latin middle ages]
- E R Curtius
Kleinere Schriften [Short writings
- J Flavius
Aby Warburg. Eine intellektuelle Biographie [Aby Warburg: An intellectual biography]. Frankfurt am Main
- E H Gombrich
La topographie légendaire des évangiles en Terre Sainte [The legendary topography of the gospels in the Holy Land]
- M Halbwachs
Joseph und seine Brüder [Joeseph and his brethren] (4 vols.). Frankfurt am Main
- T Mann
Kunst und soziales Gedächtnis. Die Warburg-Tradition [Art and social memory: The Warburg tradition
- C Ginzburg
- C. Ginzburg
Collected Works (G 20 vols. Bollingen series
- C G Jung
Remarks on personal identity-Inner, social and historical time
- T Luckmann
- T. Luckmann