1. Today’s Class: Outline of activities
Introduction to the Collective Memory Reader
(J. Marontate)
Presentations of Selected Readings from Part I: Precursors and Classics
Film screening : Loylities
Discussion topic: ‘doing collective memory research’ -- What is the position of the researcher?

2. Introduction to The Collective Memory Reader
Precursors & Classics
History, Memory & Identity
Power, Politics & Contestation
Media & Modes of Transmission
Memory, Justice & the Contemporary Epoch

3. New Directions in Memory Studies
Memory ‘boom’ since 1970s ?
History of ‘Memory studies’
Media literacy & self-reflexivity
Role of memory depends on context
Social structure
Differentiation associated with modern (vs. traditional) social organization (individual vs. collective memory)
Bonds of civility & social solidarity

4. History & Memory Studies- 19th and early 20th century
Theories of cultural inheritance, biological, psychological basis?
Debates about the irrational & role of myths or taboos vs. rational basis for social life
Positivist notion of progress (irreversibility of historical progression)
“Iconological” (symbolic) theories of social memory

5. Memory, Nation-States & Imagined communities
Rise of nationalism & invention of tradition, naturalizing assumptions about time & place
But large-scale wars & genocides displaced heroic epic forms for traumatic witnessing of atrocities
Intellectual, scientific & political agendas apparent in notions of collective memory

6. Early Formulations of concept of collective memory
Halbwachs
Standardization & rationalization in the name of science
Questions of lived experience & subjectivity (individual vs. collective forms ofcognition)
How do minds work in society? Collective memory as social frameworks
Autobiographical vs. historical
Collective representations, unconscious

7. Other traditions in Memory Studies
The ‘Annales’ school (the longue durée)
Pierre Nora’s Lieux de mémoire (places or sites of memory)
Problems in communications among scholars
Memory studies & media theory
Memory studies & holocaust studies (past & future)
interest in social mnemonic practices

8. What binds recent memories and distant ones?
Groups provide frameworks to locate memories
Different groups have different frameworks
Collective memory about communication
in specific contexts between group members

9. Life Stories and Collective Memory
Rescuing the lived experience of marginalized or subordinate groups ?
Problems in confronting personal histories with “objective” records (ex. Connerton, Zerubavel)

10. First Presentations of Readings
Yeo,Amanda--Burke, De Tocqueville, pp
Ayyad,Salama--Nietzsche, Renan, pp
Hill,Caitlin --Mannheim,Benjamin, pp
Bains,Alysha --Becker pp
Hu,Jenny --Cooley, Durkheim, pp
Byers,Justin --Halbwachs, Blondel pp , 156

11. Burke
Late 18th century opponent of revolution

12. De Toquelville
Aristocratic societies built on collective memory (associated by De T. with responsibility to collectivity
Democratic Societies (about forgetting, individualism. egotism)
Does this hold today?

13. Nietzsche Modes of regarding the past
Monumental
Antiquarian
Critical
Notion of ‘unhistorical’ , pura historical& forgetting as positive
Tension between History vs. scientific progress

14. Renan Nation and sharing the past as a form of solidarity
Triumphs and grief or suffering as forms of social bonds
Raises questions about limits of the power of nationalism for individuals?

15. Mannheim
Differences in autobiographical vs. historical memory narratives
What produces a generation with shared experiences of mnemonic <events>?

16. Benjamin & Becker Benjamin Becker
“epic” forms of stories & memory as chain of tradition
Progress as a future storm
Modernity as decline & disaster
Becker
Academic vs. ‘ordinary’ uses of the past

17. Cooley, Durkheim Cooley Durkheim
social interactionist (society based on consensus, collaboration)
Collective memory as a process
Reputation as socially constructed
Durkheim
Social solidarity achieved through regulation & integration
Notion of a ‘social fact’ as larger than individual people

18. Halbwachs & Blondel Halbwachs Blondel
Social frameworks of memory (& importance of context for individual experience of collective memory)
Blondel
Questions interpretations & generalizations made by Halbwachs pushing for more research on multiple registers of meaning & memberships in more than one group.

19. Memory & Knowledge as social constructions
Maurice Halbwachs
Social Frames of Memory, On collective Memory
Revolt against rationalism, promoted idea of contemplation
Influences:
Henri Bergson (importance of time as source of self-knowledge, immediate experience)
Annales School of historiography (Marc Bloch, Lucien Febvre) « duration » (intuitive perception of innner time)
Emile Durkheim (social morphology, search for causes and explanation)

20. Collective vs. individualistic memories?
Contextualized: Social classes, families, associations, corporations, religious groups, linguistic groups etc.
Constructed: Members construct collective memories in the context of the social group to remember, forget or recreate the past
Social Communication : not individualistic consciousness or subjective time

21. Halbwachs on Collective Memory as a Social Process
a reconstruction of the past in light of the present (Lewis Coser)
depends on social environment & identification with groups
Examine how we recollect things & make connections
External prompting: Answering questions others ask us or that we suppose they have asked
“Reconstruction” as part of participating in society
placing ourselves in the perspective of a social group

22. Themes in Halbwach’s work on Memory
Dreams & Memory Images
Language & Memory
Family, Religion, Class and Memory traditions
Salvador Dali, Dream Caused by the Flight of a Bee around a pomegranat a second before awakening

23. Film Screening
Film: Loyalities (Lesley Ann Patton, dir.)

24. The “person” as a carrier of public memory
1. Manifestations: personal “careers” and life histories as devices for accessing & tracking changes
Processes:
Prompting as context
Disappearance of older generations
familiarity of new generations with new “paradigms” rather than “conversion”
Commitments to old paradigms vs. revisionism?

25. Lessons “Learned” & Observing change in Collective memory
personal experience as guide (avoidance)
Example: Change in “language” has potential to alter meaning
Observation of shifts in collective representations through changes in language
Importance of temporal, spatial, group affiliations of individual testimonies as contexts

26. “Dynamics” of Collective memory (Schudson)
Pre-emptive Metaphors & Devices (avoidance technique), ex. Trauma designations like holocaust, genocide
Demonstration effects (interaction of personal experience & experience of others)
Ex. Nazis & anti-racism
Accidents as models for risk avoidance (ex. tsunami victims)
Coordinative, conjunctive & serial effects– (ex. the right to vote & working class white men in different places)
Cultures of memory (diverse) (ex. Different uses of collective identity in different national contexts, ex. Post WWII fascist countries, attitudes towards elders as carriers of public memory, etc….)

27. “ Cultures” of collective memory (Olick)
Different ontological orders, different epistemological & methodological implications
Collective memory as
Aggregated individual recollections?
Official commemorations (or silencing)?
Constitutive features of shared identity?

28. “Collected” Memory
based on individualistic principles (aggregated individual memories of members of a croup)
Assume: only individuals remembers
Different rememberers may be valued differently
Publicly available symbols
Methods: assign same values to all rememberers OR redistributively (ex. To include previously disenfranchised)

29. Advantages of Individualist approaches (“Collected” Memory)
Potential to reduce political bias embedded in existing representations of collective memory by recognizing many different kinds of collective memory in different places in society
Bearing Witness (Zelizer)

30. Posture of Neutrality? Should we
assume a collective memory or identity exists?
assume a collectivity exists that shares a memory?
Consider ideology, will?
ex. Survey of Germans about their identity & effects on politics
Ex. I am Canadian beer commercial
A screen capture of Joe Canadian from an I am Canadian commercial, with the maple leaf of the Canadian flag projected on the background

31. Collective Memory (vs. collected)
Patterns of socialization not reducible to individual psycho-social processes?
groups provide conditions and distinctions through which particular events are defined as consequential
Symbols, institutions, technologies etc. considered somewhat “autonomous”
Memory performed through language, narrative, dialogue, genres, …shared practices
Collective memory AS a form of communication & identity <work>