If I know something then I know it within a memory. One might say that our remembering makes knowledge possible. Present knowing is contextualized between a past and future knowing. Add to this what a society calls normal or fair is in some manner a negotiation between individuals and the time in which they live. So the discursive nature of values and other exchanges is illustrated by changing norms that can become more fluid at times. As when the civil rights movement is able to accomplish in two decades what was denied for centuries in America. So one may ask when are the times ripe for change? How is change often related to memories of the past and perceptions of the present? Certainly any plan of coordinated action has better chances of success if implementers consider carefully all remembrances at play. But memory studies is not just about being more effective in implementing ones own interests.
One great goal of the study of memory is to aid the type of cosmopolitan conversation modeled for us by Kwame Anthony Appiah when he visited our campus last spring. While meeting him I remember being impressed by his personal civility, also recognizable in his books. While he appreciates the truth of scientific knowledge, logical positivism and its contributions to the modern world, Appiah also admires the values of pre-modern traditional societies like is Asante homeland. And he sees the shortcomings of both! Because of this I would say that his patience and desire for cross-cultural conversations are partially an outcome of his experience of different forms of cultural memory, not because he favors one. Such civil patience is often born from the realization that there are many ways to read history yet some readings of the same texts or the same events can be detrimental to human well-being.
The study of memory often begins with the description of commemorations. What they emphasize and what they leave out, their intensity and their implied hopes. Sometimes collective memory has shown itself able navigate the complexities of decision making and see new possibilities. At other times the collective memory performs with blinders that narrow the vision and thus the possibilities. (And of course one definition of politics is the art of the possible. The vision for the future can shift rapidly as when Bobby Kennedy famously quoted George Bernard Shaw, “Some men see things as they are and ask why. Others dream things that never were and ask why not.” Memory can make a difference.)
One can think about different historical examples and find various locations for the study of collective memory. For example how should one remember something like 9/11? Or how does one remember Hiroshima and Nagasaki today? Pierre Nora famously studied how the french nation remembers its past, including 1789. So one asks if there is a comparison between these collective remembrances? Maybe not. But embedded within each are various trajectories of political, religious, and social views. What can be studied is the relation between how society remembers and how it shows itself to be blind to possibilities at times. This is most true anytime there is a trauma to society. The call to remember the trauma, can spur forgiveness and sometimes retribution. How the remembering takes place can make the difference. And the reading of the different remembrances or collective memories that surround specific events is a reading of a cultural discourse on norms and values. And what is religion if not a chain of discursive memory? Certainly the study of memory calls for an inter-disciplinary approach that is undeniably important in a modern society.
Links to Recent Books on Collective Memory
Jan Assman Religion and Cultural Memory: Ten Studies (Stanford University Press: 2006)
Elizabeth Castelli Memory and Martyrdom: Early Christian Culture Making (Columbia University Press: 2004)
Maurice Halbwachs On Collective Memory (University of Chicago Press: 1992) First published in 1950 after the authors death, Halbwachs’ primary thesis is that human memory can only function within a collective context.
Daniele Harvieu-Leger Religion as a Chain of Memory (Rutgers University Press: 2000)
Pierre Nora Realms of Memory: The Construction of the French Past (Colombia University Press: 1994)
Christian Lee Novetzske Religion and Public Memory: A Cultural History of Saint Namdev in India (Columbia University Press: 2008)
Paul Ricoeur Memory, History, Forgetting (University of Chicago Press: 2004)
Oren Baruch Stier and J. Shawn Landres Religion, Violence, Memory, and Place (Indiana University Press: 2006)
Printable Article
Jeffrey Olick “From Usable Pasts to the Return of the Repressed” The Hedgehog Review, Summer 2007.
