1. Social Theory: Collective Memory Bin Xu Assistant Professor of Sociology and Asian Studies Florida International University

2. Cultural Memory (Aleida and Jan Assmann) Communicative Memory Cultural Memory Content Historical experiences within the framework of individual biographies Mythical past/ancient history, events from an absolute past Forms Informal, loosely shaped, natural, created through interaction and everyday experience Consciously established, highly formalized, ceremonial communication, festival Media Living memory in individual minds, experience, hearsay Established objectivations, traditional symbolic encoding/staging in word, image, dance, etc (cultural objects) Temporal Structure 80-100 years, 3 or 4 generationsAbsolute past of a mythical ancient time Carriers Non-specific, eyewitness within a memory community Specialized carriers of tradition

3. Characteristics of Cultural Memory Concretion of identity Capacity of reconstruct the past Formation/formality Organization Obligation Reflexivity

4. Implications from the Cultural Memory Approach The distinction between communicative and cultural memory (better than other distinctions) Study of the relationship between communicative and cultural memory Compatible with cultural object approach

5. Erll’s Semiotic Theory of Memory What is semiotics? The study of signs Semantics: the relationship of signs to what they stand for Syntactics: the formal or structural relations between signs Pragmatics: the relation of signs to interpreters

6. Memory as metonymy and metaphor

7. Three Dimensions of Cultural Memory

8. Systems and Modes of Cultural Memory

9. Critiques Lots of concepts but few arguments Not sure about uses of the Cultural Memory theories except for a few obvious ones (media; cultural objects)

10. Olick’s Dialogical Memory Historical sociology of memory has to be historical. (Elias) Sociology of mnemonic practice. (Bourdieu) Memory as dialogue. (Bakhtin)

11. Olick’s Dialogical Memory Article “Genre Memories and Memory Genres” Dialog: utterances take place within historical contexts and contain memory traces of earlier usages. Memory: 1) history of memory; 2) memory of memory/commemorations. Case: German commemoration of August 8.

12. Critiques Sociology of mnemonic practices: ironically, focused on utterances and discourses instead of actions. Olick’s use of Bourdieu’s practice: Where are class and habitus?