Barash-collective memory

Barash (2007) criticizes psychoanalytical, neurocognitive and socio-historical approaches to collective memory and argues for a renewal of the phenomenological approach. According to him, applying the analogy of individual psychic process to collective memory risk the symbolic depth and long durability of collective experiences (Freud); neurocognitive claim reduces  the validity of mental normative standards to biological function or natural law (Edelman); and the socio-historical  method's claim that the collective memory disappeared because of the urbanization and secularization of modern society (Nora) is not completely true because of the ongoing capacity of new mnemonic technologies.

According to Barash (2012), memory in the collective domain corresponds to what can be symbolically incorporated and communicated. The collective memory uses the power of imagination to express symbols and it corresponds to a certain context of living contemporaries. The symbolic meaning fades away with time and becomes only partially interpretable through historical analysis and imagination. While there is no collective subject of remembering, following Edmund Husserl and Benedict Anderson, individual bodily experiences (leibhafte Erfahrung) are later substituted by a collective imagination through symbols. The faculty of imagination allows us to locate events of the past in our memory and trace their temporal sequence. It has the ability to make experience communicable by symbolically embodying it.

According to Barash (2007) the communicative power of symbols connects the individual bodily experiences of the past to the collective domain of remembering. Somehow similar to Halbwach's (1980) theory -after all the members of a shared experience pass away, collective memory disappears and historiography starts-, he distinguishes historical narrative from the symbolic embodiment, which as a collective phenomenon precedes the historical narrative. In accordance with Olick's (1999) distinction between "collected memories" and "collective memory", Barrack also distinguishes between "the multitude of personal perspectives" and "the symbolic embodiment of memory". Collective memory gravitates between this multitude of personal experiences and the symbolic collective remembering.

Barash's approach seems suitable with the phenomenological 'tradition' in architecture (Gaston Bachelard, Christian Norberg-Schulz, Edward Casey etc.), which emphasizes the power of place in relation with remembering and belonging, but this approach is mostly missing a critical view on power relations. While contemporary world politics bears a mark of rising authoritarianism and neo-fascism, it's important to analyze how governments are instrumentalizing collective memory and how oppressed groups or communities make use of the constructive power of memory. According to Obradovic (2017) this work is mostly done by disciplines like political psychology, peace psychology and intergroup conflict studies. This literature shows how specific versions of the past are legitimized by institutions and other power holders. The focus is more on the power asymmetries present in processes of remembering, rather than the problematic relationship between individual and collective memory.



Obradovic, S. (2017) Whose memory and why: A commentary on power and the construction of memory, Culture & Psychology, 23(2), pp.208-216

Barash, J. A. (2007). “Analyzing Collective Memory”, On Memory: An Interdisciplinary Approach, En Mendels, D. (eds),  Peter Lang, pp. 101-116.

Halbwachs, M. (1980) The Collective Memory, Harper & Row, New York.

Barash, J.A. (2012) "Was ist kollektive Erinnerung?", Wer zeugt für den Zeugen? Positionen jüdischen Erinnerns im 20. Jahrhundert, Dorothee Gelhard and Irmela von der Lühe (eds.), Peter Lang, pp.25-36.