From “Collective Memory” to the Historical Sociology ofMnemonic Practices (1998) Jeffrey K. Olick and Joyce Robbins
Olick&Robbins (1998) aims to create a ground for future academic works "in a field that ironically has little organized memory of its own" by showing the lineages, different approaches and main disputes in social memory studies.
Lineages:
"The first explicit use of the term collective memory we could find was by Hugo von Hofmannsthal in 1902, who referred to “the dammed up force of our mysterious ancestors within us” and “piled up layers of accumulated collective memory” (Schieder 1978, p. 2). Contemporary usages are usually traced to Maurice Halbwachs, who published his landmark Social Frameworks of Memory in 1925."
"Bartlett (1932) is usually credited as the first modern psychologist to attend
to the social dimensions of memory, attributing decisive importance to group dynamics in individual remembering."
"Anthropologist Evans-Pritchard (1940) developed a notion of“structural amnesia” in his famous study of the Nuer."
"“The tradition of the dead generations,” Marx (1852) writes in The Eighteenth Brumaire, “weighs like a nightmare on the minds of the living.”"
"The classical theorists, Shils writes, “oversub- scribed to the naive view that modern society was on the road to traditionless- ness….”
"Nora, Hutton, Le Goff, Matsuda, and Huyssen pursue similar lines of explanation through an enterprise they label “the history of memory"
"Historians like Ariès (1974) and Agulhon (1981), Hutton writes, began to study the history of commemorative practices, which they saw as mechanisms of political power, thus shifting historiographical interest from ideology to imagery and from meaning to manipulation. Writers like Hobsbawm—whose much-cited Invention of Tradition was a hallmark work in this vein—extended this desacralization, seeing traditions as disingenuous efforts to secure political power. "
"Social memory studies also draw on the Mannheimian tradition in
the sociology of knowledge and the Mertonian tradition in the sociology of science as well as on Berger & Luckmann’s (1966) social constructionism, for
which many sociologists of memory seem to have a special affinity."
Halbwachs vs Freud:
"“There is [thus] no point,” he argues, “in seeking where… [memories] are preserved in my brain or in some nook of my mind to which I alone have access: for they are recalled by me externally, and the groups of which I am a part at any time give me the means to reconstruct them…” (Halbwachs 1992, p. 38)."
Gadamer... Pennebaker, Paez, and Rimé (1997)
History vs Memory and the notion of "collective memory"
Halbwachs-"History is dead memory, a way of preserving pasts to which we no longer have an “organic” experiential relation. ... On History’s epistemological claim is devalued in favor of memory’s meaningfulness."
"Recent approaches within historiography, however, have critiqued this understanding of the relations between history and memory."
"Halbwachs distinguished among autobiographical memory, historical memory, history, and col lective memory. "
The notion "collective memory" is problematic because of rendering the individual to a passive subject.
"Assmann (1992) distinguishes among four modes of memory in an effort to capture the range of memory problematics: 1. mimetic memory—the transmission of practical knowledge from the past; 2. material memory—the history contained in objects; 3. communicative memory—the residues of the past in language and communication, including the very ability to communicate in language; and 4. cultural memory—the transmission of meanings from the past, that is, explicit historical reference and consciousness."
"We refer to distinct sets of mnemonic practices in various social sites, rather than to collective memory as a thing. This approach, we argue, enables us to identify ways in which past and present are intertwined without reifying a mystical group mind and without including absolutely every-thing in the enterprise."
"Yates’ (1966) The Art of Memory"
Alphabet and Memory:
"This study thus contradicts technologically determinist claims about the importance of the alphabet for cultural continuity: While the development of an alphabet was important, it was not sufficient, nor were its effects uniform."
Voluntary and Involuntary Memories:
"“Memory,” as Hutton (1993, p. 16) puts it, “ first conceived as a repetition, is eventually re- conceived as a recollection.” Where Proust revelled in the “involuntary” mem- ory evoked by the taste of a tea cookie, macro-historical theorists of memory describe modern memory as predominantly “voluntary” or active. Hobsbawm & Ranger (1983), for instance, distinguish sharply between custom and tradi- tion. The former is the unproblematic sense of continuity that undergirds the gradual, living changes of “traditional” societies. Tradition, in contrast, aims at invariance and is the product of explicit ideologies."
"In an important synthesis, Le Goff (1992) follows Leroi-Gourhan (1993 [1964–1965]) in identifying five distinct periods in the history of memory."
Nationalism and social memory:
"Gillis (1994) links the construction of national memories to what he calls a cult of new beginnings."
"Print capitalism, according to Anderson, was the principal agent of this transformation toward what Benjamin (1968) called the “empty, homogeneous time” of the nation-state."
"Duara (1995) writes that the relationship between linear historicity and the nation-state is repressive: “National history secures for the contested and contingent nation the false unity of a self-same, national subject evolving through time…” enabling “conquests of Historical awareness over other, ‘nonprogressive’ modes of time.”"
"Hobsbawm (1983) notes the proliferation in the
mid to late nineteenth century of state-led efforts to “invent” useful traditions to shore up their fading legitimacy."
"Confino (1997) shows how German nation-building in the nineteenth century (and by extension other nation-building projects elsewhere) required assimilating diverse regional memories into one coherent national identity, which was successful only when the national was mediated through local categories."
"Nietzsche also claims that an excess of history can destroy our humanity: “The past,” he writes, “has to be forgotten if it is not to be- come the gravedigger of the present.”
"Nietzsche sees historicism's scientific attitude as producing “dead” knowledge, while monumental history “inspires the courageous to foolhardiness and the inspired to fanaticism.”
"As a result, “The memory of the war was refashioned into a sacred experience which provided the nation with a new depth of religious feeling, put- ting at its disposal ever-present saints and martyrs, places of worship, and a heritage to emulate.”"
"Where nationalist leaders ex-ploited a cult of the war dead after the First World War to foment further na- tionalist sentiment, memory after Auschwitz and Hiroshima has often been more problematic (Bosworth 1993)."
"Adorno (1967) had many years earlier pointed out the associa- tion between the words “museum” and “mausoleum.”"
"Postmodern writers have addressed the ruptured sense of continuity and the multiple temporalities that they see as characterizing our highly mediated society:"
For a critique ofthe postmodernist account ofmemory as overly unilinear in its critique of unilinearity, see Schwartz (1997).!!!
- Twilight Memories, Andreas Huyssen (1995)
- French historian Pierre Nora (1992). "Nora thus contrasts contemporary “lieux” or places of memory to earlier lived “milieux.” The former are impoverished versions of the latter: “If we were able to live within memory, we would not have needed to consecrate lieux de mémoire in its name.”
"In contrast to theories of the nation discussed above, Nora thus sees the nation-state as declining in salience, the last incarnation of the unification of memory and history, a form in which history could provide the social cohesion memory no longer could. History too has now lost its temporary ability to transmit values with pedagogical authority (Wood 1994). All that is left, as Hutton (1993) characterizes Nora’s project, is to autopsy the past, at best to celebrate its celebrations."
"Nonetheless, Nora’s theory remains the most comprehensive empirical effort to confront the contemporary situation of memory. Where Yates suggests a history of memory, Nora takes it to a programmatic level"
-----
"Thomas Carlyle (1901), examine the role of heroes in national identity". -- ömer hasdemir
"Mudimbe&Jewsiewicki (1993) explore history making in Africa"
"Lowenthal’s (1985) monumental The Past Is a Foreign Country"
"nation-states not only use history for their purposes, but make historiography into a nationalist enterprise."
"Foucault articulated a notion of“counter-memory"
"Groups can also use images of the past and struggles over history as vehicles for establishing their power or, perversely, lack of power. Baker (1985) demonstrates how revolutionaries in eighteenth-century France used memory to achieve their movement aims."
Presentism
Tumarkin N. 1994. The Living and the Dead: The Rise andFall ofthe Cult ofWorldWar II in Russia
Lineages:
"The first explicit use of the term collective memory we could find was by Hugo von Hofmannsthal in 1902, who referred to “the dammed up force of our mysterious ancestors within us” and “piled up layers of accumulated collective memory” (Schieder 1978, p. 2). Contemporary usages are usually traced to Maurice Halbwachs, who published his landmark Social Frameworks of Memory in 1925."
"Bartlett (1932) is usually credited as the first modern psychologist to attend
to the social dimensions of memory, attributing decisive importance to group dynamics in individual remembering."
"Anthropologist Evans-Pritchard (1940) developed a notion of“structural amnesia” in his famous study of the Nuer."
"“The tradition of the dead generations,” Marx (1852) writes in The Eighteenth Brumaire, “weighs like a nightmare on the minds of the living.”"
"The classical theorists, Shils writes, “oversub- scribed to the naive view that modern society was on the road to traditionless- ness….”
"Nora, Hutton, Le Goff, Matsuda, and Huyssen pursue similar lines of explanation through an enterprise they label “the history of memory"
"Historians like Ariès (1974) and Agulhon (1981), Hutton writes, began to study the history of commemorative practices, which they saw as mechanisms of political power, thus shifting historiographical interest from ideology to imagery and from meaning to manipulation. Writers like Hobsbawm—whose much-cited Invention of Tradition was a hallmark work in this vein—extended this desacralization, seeing traditions as disingenuous efforts to secure political power. "
"Social memory studies also draw on the Mannheimian tradition in
the sociology of knowledge and the Mertonian tradition in the sociology of science as well as on Berger & Luckmann’s (1966) social constructionism, for
which many sociologists of memory seem to have a special affinity."
Halbwachs vs Freud:
"“There is [thus] no point,” he argues, “in seeking where… [memories] are preserved in my brain or in some nook of my mind to which I alone have access: for they are recalled by me externally, and the groups of which I am a part at any time give me the means to reconstruct them…” (Halbwachs 1992, p. 38)."
Gadamer... Pennebaker, Paez, and Rimé (1997)
History vs Memory and the notion of "collective memory"
Halbwachs-"History is dead memory, a way of preserving pasts to which we no longer have an “organic” experiential relation. ... On History’s epistemological claim is devalued in favor of memory’s meaningfulness."
"Recent approaches within historiography, however, have critiqued this understanding of the relations between history and memory."
"Halbwachs distinguished among autobiographical memory, historical memory, history, and col lective memory. "
The notion "collective memory" is problematic because of rendering the individual to a passive subject.
"Assmann (1992) distinguishes among four modes of memory in an effort to capture the range of memory problematics: 1. mimetic memory—the transmission of practical knowledge from the past; 2. material memory—the history contained in objects; 3. communicative memory—the residues of the past in language and communication, including the very ability to communicate in language; and 4. cultural memory—the transmission of meanings from the past, that is, explicit historical reference and consciousness."
"We refer to distinct sets of mnemonic practices in various social sites, rather than to collective memory as a thing. This approach, we argue, enables us to identify ways in which past and present are intertwined without reifying a mystical group mind and without including absolutely every-thing in the enterprise."
"Yates’ (1966) The Art of Memory"
Alphabet and Memory:
"This study thus contradicts technologically determinist claims about the importance of the alphabet for cultural continuity: While the development of an alphabet was important, it was not sufficient, nor were its effects uniform."
Voluntary and Involuntary Memories:
"“Memory,” as Hutton (1993, p. 16) puts it, “ first conceived as a repetition, is eventually re- conceived as a recollection.” Where Proust revelled in the “involuntary” mem- ory evoked by the taste of a tea cookie, macro-historical theorists of memory describe modern memory as predominantly “voluntary” or active. Hobsbawm & Ranger (1983), for instance, distinguish sharply between custom and tradi- tion. The former is the unproblematic sense of continuity that undergirds the gradual, living changes of “traditional” societies. Tradition, in contrast, aims at invariance and is the product of explicit ideologies."
"In an important synthesis, Le Goff (1992) follows Leroi-Gourhan (1993 [1964–1965]) in identifying five distinct periods in the history of memory."
Nationalism and social memory:
"Gillis (1994) links the construction of national memories to what he calls a cult of new beginnings."
"Print capitalism, according to Anderson, was the principal agent of this transformation toward what Benjamin (1968) called the “empty, homogeneous time” of the nation-state."
"Duara (1995) writes that the relationship between linear historicity and the nation-state is repressive: “National history secures for the contested and contingent nation the false unity of a self-same, national subject evolving through time…” enabling “conquests of Historical awareness over other, ‘nonprogressive’ modes of time.”"
"Hobsbawm (1983) notes the proliferation in the
mid to late nineteenth century of state-led efforts to “invent” useful traditions to shore up their fading legitimacy."
"Confino (1997) shows how German nation-building in the nineteenth century (and by extension other nation-building projects elsewhere) required assimilating diverse regional memories into one coherent national identity, which was successful only when the national was mediated through local categories."
"Nietzsche also claims that an excess of history can destroy our humanity: “The past,” he writes, “has to be forgotten if it is not to be- come the gravedigger of the present.”
"Nietzsche sees historicism's scientific attitude as producing “dead” knowledge, while monumental history “inspires the courageous to foolhardiness and the inspired to fanaticism.”
"As a result, “The memory of the war was refashioned into a sacred experience which provided the nation with a new depth of religious feeling, put- ting at its disposal ever-present saints and martyrs, places of worship, and a heritage to emulate.”"
"Where nationalist leaders ex-ploited a cult of the war dead after the First World War to foment further na- tionalist sentiment, memory after Auschwitz and Hiroshima has often been more problematic (Bosworth 1993)."
"Adorno (1967) had many years earlier pointed out the associa- tion between the words “museum” and “mausoleum.”"
"Postmodern writers have addressed the ruptured sense of continuity and the multiple temporalities that they see as characterizing our highly mediated society:"
For a critique ofthe postmodernist account ofmemory as overly unilinear in its critique of unilinearity, see Schwartz (1997).!!!
- Twilight Memories, Andreas Huyssen (1995)
- French historian Pierre Nora (1992). "Nora thus contrasts contemporary “lieux” or places of memory to earlier lived “milieux.” The former are impoverished versions of the latter: “If we were able to live within memory, we would not have needed to consecrate lieux de mémoire in its name.”
"In contrast to theories of the nation discussed above, Nora thus sees the nation-state as declining in salience, the last incarnation of the unification of memory and history, a form in which history could provide the social cohesion memory no longer could. History too has now lost its temporary ability to transmit values with pedagogical authority (Wood 1994). All that is left, as Hutton (1993) characterizes Nora’s project, is to autopsy the past, at best to celebrate its celebrations."
"Nonetheless, Nora’s theory remains the most comprehensive empirical effort to confront the contemporary situation of memory. Where Yates suggests a history of memory, Nora takes it to a programmatic level"
-----
"Thomas Carlyle (1901), examine the role of heroes in national identity". -- ömer hasdemir
"Mudimbe&Jewsiewicki (1993) explore history making in Africa"
"Lowenthal’s (1985) monumental The Past Is a Foreign Country"
"nation-states not only use history for their purposes, but make historiography into a nationalist enterprise."
"Foucault articulated a notion of“counter-memory"
"Groups can also use images of the past and struggles over history as vehicles for establishing their power or, perversely, lack of power. Baker (1985) demonstrates how revolutionaries in eighteenth-century France used memory to achieve their movement aims."
Presentism
Tumarkin N. 1994. The Living and the Dead: The Rise andFall ofthe Cult ofWorldWar II in Russia
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