Social Memory

James Fentress & Chris Wickham

Winona Meltzer
wmeltzer@princeton.edu

What is Memory?

Objective facts (knowledge) which will be held to be universally true and separate from the knower. Subjective interpretation personal, based on experiences, feelings. Endel Tulving, University of Toronto

Semantic memory system Episodic memory system

In terms of the experience of remembering, there is nothing to distinguish the remembering of true facts from the remembering of nonsense. (p.6)

How Memory Works

Frederick

Bartlett, psychologist, Cambridge

Memory as an effort after meaning 1930s experiment Memorization of Faces

Memory as both visual and semantic Forgetting as part of remembering

Social Memory
When

does memory become social memory? The role of the narrative in social memory
Transmission of social memory

Social

memory as fact In either case, however, the question of whether we regard these memories as historically true will turn out to be less important than whether they regard their memories as true (p. 26)

Narratives and Social Memory

Conceptualization

in narrative structures Narrative formats used to transfer social memory

Legends Myths Oral poetry, such as epics Fairy tales Anecdotes

Oral Poetry
Auditory

memory in oral poetry

Formal structure as a auditory memory map

Meter, syntax, repetition, and stock phrases

What passes from one reciter of the poem to the next, is not a fixed text but rather the idea of the story.

Epic Poems
Assumed

to be true by the audience Epic poems commemorate

Specific Event Specific people, heroes Heroic deeds

Example: Le Chanson de Roland The Song of Roland

Fairy tales
Assumed

to be fiction Highly structured

Standard phrases and situations Folk motifs Interchangeable or nameless characters Main focus is problems to be solved and the obstacles to be overcome.

Class and Group memories in Western Societies

Peasant

Memories

The Great Events of the past are designated as such by people external to most local societies, and certainly to all peasant societies. (p. 96)

Formatted as epics, legends, oral histories, and often mapped to specific geographic locations Tend to commemorate:

Cyclical memories family and life cycle events Community Just royal rule a golden age Idea of absolute justice Past local resistance

Class and Group memories in Western Societies

Working-class

Memories

Perhaps the most powerful element we have met is the memory of the community in opposition to the outside world, for this is one of the most effective recourses any social group has to reinforce its own social identity in opposition to that of others, and it is a memory everyone can participate in, through personal memories and family traditions. (p. 114)

Types of commemoration
Resistance In opposition to hegemonic memory imposed from above

Tend to be more fractured than peasant memories

Class and Group memories in Western Societies

National

Memories

Upper middle class and the intelligentsia Imposed from above Use of major figures and events as rallying points Identity myths act as mythological charters

Class and Group memories in Western Societies

Womens

Memories

Life histories less in the public sphere Home life and life cycle events National and ideological dimensions often left to men. General marginalization of womens memories

Medieval Memories

Social memory highlights political structures Medieval Historians

Genealogical histories

Kings and bishops

Anecdotes relating to royalty or the ruling class

Icelandic Sagas

Interfamily dynamics Recounting the family-centered past proved one was not Norwegian, at the same time as it allowed Icelanders to define themselves through memories of ancestors who had for the most part, come from Norway itself. (p. 172)

The Mafia and the Myth of Sicilian National Identity

Memory

of the Vespers in 1282 as a foundation myth for the mafia and the spirit of the Sicilian nation.

Family Honor Vendetta Myth of the mafia

Morte ai francesi, Italia anela! (Death to the French, Italy is yearning!) Mazzini autorizza furti incendi abigeati (Mazzini authorizes thefts, arson, cattle stealing.)

Critical Reception

Focused on European sources Womens memories could have been expanded upon; Gender is conspicuously absent as a category of analysis. (Tosh) Individual memory becomes social memory simply by talking about it (Boyarin) Social memory as narrative forms (particularly oral transmission) at the expense of other types of social memory, such as rituals and traditions (Boyarin)

Questions

What has memory come to mean in our society? Has text, digital storage devices and other modern technology replaced memory of information? Do you think social memory be used in historical discourse? What are some of the narratives that form your social memory? What is the role of information professional social memory? Do we transfer social memory? Evaluate it a resource, if so how do we assign these values?

Questions?