Is there a collective memory? (Koselleck, 2004), Memory-History-Forgetting (Ricoeur, 2004), Collective Memory: Two Cultures (Olick, 1999), Was ist kollektive Erinnerung? (Barash, 2012)

Origins of the term 'collective memory' go back to Emile Durkheim's "The Elementary Forms of Religious Life (1915) and Halbwachs' "The Social Frameworks of Memory (1925). 

[dipnot: While Durkheim's organicist approach is criticized because of neglecting difference and conflict; his student Halbwachs was aware of different groups and their memories in society.] 

According to Olick (1999), Halbwachs' collective memory indicates two distinct phenomena: aggregation of socially framed individual memories and collective commemorative representations and mnemonic traces sui generis. The first, categorized by Olick as 'collected memory', emphasizes individual memory and how it's formed by social frameworks and identities. The latter, categorized as 'collective memory', is more than the aggregation of individual subjectivities and has a certain degree of autonomy. It considers the diverse aggregation affects with regard to individual psychological processes; highlights the formative character of long-term social structures (although not decisive as much as Koselleck's 7-Ps) together with 'prosthetic memories' outside of individual brains. After this dual categorization, Olick offers three solutions: first, the term collective memory can be abandoned as a poor substitution for more specific terms like tradition, myth, and commemoration. Second, it might be used only for collective past images without an individual factor. Third, it might be called 'social memory' encompassing all mnemonic practices/processes and emphasizing the continuous relationship between individual memory and social experience.

Olick, J.K. (1999) Collective Memory: The Two Cultures, Sociological Theory, 17/3, pp. 333-348.

According to Koselleck (2004) there is no collective memory but there are collective conditions of possible memories. These collective conditions are references determined by the seven big P-s: the Professors, the Priests, the Pastors, the PR-specialists, the journalists (die Presseleute), the Poets and the Politicians. Every collectivity, sitting on the diverse memories of individuals, is a priori an Ideology or Myth. This mnemonic conditioning has no direct relation to personal experiences and it is not criticized by history.

Koselleck, R. (2004) Gibt es ein kollektives Gedächtnis?, Divinatio, 19/2 (Spring)





Ricoeur (2004) uses Koselleck's conceptual framework of "space of experience" (Erfahrungsraum) and "horizon of expectation" (Erwartungshorizon). The dialectic between these two poles ensure the dynamic nature of historical consciousness. However this dialectic tends to be obscured by history. Memory restores the link between the work of the historian and historical consciousness.

Ricoeur analyses the relationship between history and memory in three steps:

First, memory establishes the meaning of the past. Here, Ricoeur accepts Halbwachs' collective memory as phenomena but rejects the idea of a collective "subject" of memory. Instead, he prefers to use Husserl's concept "personalities of a higher order", which offers a network of relationships with an intersubjective basis.

Second, history introduces a critical dimension into our dealings with the past. Ricoeur defines history as "a critical authority that is able not only to consolidate and to articulate collective and individual memory but also to correct it or even contradict it.". Memory narratives are interpreted as uncritical and stabile "repetition-memories". Critical history can transform this "repetition-compulsion" into the "work of recollection".

Third, memory maintains the dialectical connection between space of experience and horizon of expectation. Memory is not the opposite of history.

Like repetitive and recollective memories, there are passive and active forgettings. Passive forgetting is like Freud's "substitution discharges". It's a shortage of the active memory. It's escapist. If it's practiced by a semi-official history, it becomes an active forgetting, selective and systematic, which ignores the victims. On the other end of the spectrum of active forgetting is forgiveness. It's recollective and therapeutic. It gives memory a future.

Ricoeur, P. (2004) Memory, History, Forgetting, University Of Chicago Press.

















Olick, Koselleck and Ricoeur reject the idea of a collective subject as a metaphysics of group mind. Social frameworks of memories are interpreted as long-term formative structures, collective conditions of possible memories or uncritical 'repetition-memories' in the case of Ricoeur. Ricoeur (2004) offers history and forgiving as therapeutic devices, connecting individuals past with their future.