MEMORIE

CULTURAL, LUCRURI, IDENTITATE

Ieirea din cultur : utopia realizat i anihilarea culturii nalte [rezumat] Sensul nihilismului actual se poate explica i
prin relaia dintre civilizaia i cultur. ncepnd cu lumea omului arhaic, cultura a umplut golurile pe care le las civilizaia prin
semnificare, cu ajutorul simbolurilor i miturilor, i a substituit tehnicilor i tehnologiilor absente ritualurile. Dar odat ce civilizaia
poate rezolva numeroase astfel de goluri prin oferte materiale efective, ea poate susine viaa i n absena sensurilor culturale
nvate. Omul occidental a depit pentru prima dat n istorie penuria, trind ntr-o societate a consumului, n care exist un exces
de bunuri ... El nu mai are nevoie de protezele semnificante ale culturii ... Odat cu mijloacele de comunicare de mas, cultura trece
n civilizaie (...) Vechile civilizaii, imperfecte productiv, aveau nevoie de schelria culturii, de eafodajul formelor simbolice ...
Aceast schelrie simbolic susintoare era totodat ceva diferit, lateral fa de via, susinut cu efort i reclamnd nvare ...
Atunci cnd modernitatea european a ieit din religie, ea a refuzat, mai mult sau mai puin explicit, un anumit exces al semnificrii.
S-ar putea ca, odat cu postmodernitatea, s ieim din cultur, tot astfel cum am ieit din religie. Pentru c i cultura clasic sau
tradiional este resimit de metabolismul postmodern ca un exces simbolic. E prea erudit, prea lipsit de spontaneitate; pe scurt,
e prea mult semnificaie adugat, ca un balast, vieii ... Ceea ce inea de valori i creaie uman liber e redistribuit regulilor i
tehnologiilor civilizaiei spre exemplu, dreptul nlocuiete etica, designul nlocuiete arta1.
Cultural memory is a kind of institution. It is exteriorized, objectified, and stored away in symbolic forms that are stable and
situation-transcendent: They may be transferred from one situation to another and transmitted from one generation to another.
External objects as carriers of memory play a role already on the level of personal memory. Our memory exists only in constant
interaction not only with other human memories but also with things, outward symbols. With respects to things or artifacts, objects,
feasts, icons, symbols, or landscapes, memory is based on contact between a remembering mind and a remininding object. Things
may remind us, may trigger our memory, because they carry memories which we have invested into them. On the social level, the
role of external symbols becomes even more important by means of things meant as reminders such as monuments, museums,
libraries, archives, and other mnemonic institutions, This is what we call cultural memory. In order to be reembodied [arrhitectura!]
in the sequence of generations, cultural memory, unlike communicative memory, exists also in disembodied form [cultural-ideal]
and requires institutions of preservations and reembodiement () Communicative memory is non-institutional; it is not supported
by any institutions of learning, transmission, and interpretation; it is not formalized and stabilized by any forms of material
symbolization, it leaves in everyday interaction and communication and, for this very reason, has only a limited time depth which
normally reaches no farther back than 80 years () The cultural memory is based on fixed points in the past. Even in the cultural
memory, the past is not preserved as such but it cast in symbols as they are represented in oral myths or in writings, performed in
feasts, and as thet are continually illuminating a changing present. In the context of cultural memory, the distinction between myth
and history vanishes. Not the past as such, as investigated and reconstructed by historians, counts for cultural memory, but only the
past as remembered. Here, in the context of cultural memory, it is the temporal horizon of cultural memory which is important.
Cultural memory reaches back into the past only so far as the past can be reclaimed as ours [cf. Nietzsche!]. Knowledge about the
past acquires the properties and functions of memory if it is related to a concept of identity. It is only by forgetting what lies outside
the horizon of the relevant that it performs an identity function. Nietzsche circumscribed this function by notions such as plastic
power and horizon, obviously intending the same thing for which now the term identity has become generally accepted. ()
Memory is knowledge [!] with an identity-index, it is knowledge about onself, that is, about ones own diachronic identity, be it a
generation, a community, a nation, or a cultural and religious tradition Remembering is a realization of belonging. One has to
remember in order to belong. Assimilation is usually accompanied by an imperative to forget the memories connected with the
original identity2.

Cultur i memorie. Prin natura sa luntric, orice om este o lume un microcosmos, unde se reflect i fiineaz ntreaga lume
real i toate epocile istoriei; omul nu este o fraciune din univers. () Dac exist un punct iniial stimulator pentru o rememorare
profund, omul trebuie s cunoasc istoria, s o neleag n sinele propriu n microcosmul care este omul sunt coninute toate
epocile trecutului pe care omul nu le poate strici cu straturile timpului i ale vieii istorice imediate; straturile profunde pot fi
acoperite, dar niciodat nu vor fi strivite. Acest process de iluminare interioar i de aprofundare are drept consecin ptrunderea
omului prin aceste straturi n interior, n profunzimea timpurilor, n adncul sinelui tu3.

1 Aurel Codoban, Imperiul comunicrii, Idea, Cluj, p. 102-103. 90-91.

2 Jan Assmann, Communicative and cultural memory ( http://archiv.ub.uni-
heidelberg.de/propylaeumdok/1774/1/Assmann_Communicative_and_cultural_memory_2008.pdf ) [lectur obligatorie]
3
Nicolai Berdiaev, Sensul istoriei, p. 42-43