1. Nation and Memory in Eastern Europe (19 th and 20 th century) Christoph Mick Lecture 3 Memory and Memorial Culture Week 5

2. Outline 1. Memory and Nation 2. Collective Memory 3. Pierre Nora and “les lieux de memoire“ 4. Conclusion

3. “A nation is a soul, a spiritual principle. Two things, which in truth are but one, constitute this soul or spiritual principle. One lies in the past, one in the present. One is the possession in common of a rich legacy of memories; the other is present-day consent, the desire to live together, the will to perpetuate the value of the heritage that one has received in an undivided form” Ernest Renan

4. “ethnies are constituted, not by lines of physical descent, but by the sense of continuity, shared memory and collective destiny, i.e. by lines of cultural affinity embodied in myths, memories, symbols and values retained by a given cultural unit of population.” A.D. Smith, National Identity, p. 29

5. Ethno-Symbolism Modern nations and pre-modern ethnies are linked Ethnies are crucial for the formation of nations Myths, symbols, folk tales, histories, memories, cultural traditions play important roles in transforming ethnies in nations They are the basis for social cohesion

6. Outline 1. Memory and Nation 2. Collective Memory 3. Pierre Nora and “les lieux de memoire“ 4. Conclusion

7. Collective Memory Concept introduced by the French sociologist Maurice Halbwachs in 1925, based on ideas of Emile Durkheim Individual MemoryCollective Memory Personal, autobiographicSocial, historical Memory of things I have experienced myself, where I have been present Incorporates information about the world beyond my experience, before I was born or where I have not been present Social framework of remembering Constitutes a kind of social framework

8. Emile Durkheim, 1858-1917 Maurice Halbwachs 1877-1945

9. Multiplicity of Memory We can understand each memory as it occurs in individual thought only if we locate each within the thought of the corresponding group. We cannot properly understand their relative strength and the ways in which they combine within individual thought unless we connect the individual to the various groups of which he is simultaneously a member. Maurice Halbwachs, On Collective Memory (Chicago, 1992), p.53

10. Collective Memory Individual remains the real holder of memory Memory changes over time The collective (family, class, religious community, nation) decides what is valuable to remember Cultural memory is based on socially organised mnemonics, institutions, and media Memory is a social product - Individual memory is dependent on society

11. “For this purpose we should conceptualize collective memory as the result of the interaction among three types of historical factors: the intellectual and cultural traditions that frame all our representations of the past, the memory makers who selectively adopt and manipulate these traditions, and the memory consumers who use, ignore or transform such artifacts according to their own interests.” Wulf Kansteiner, “Finding Meaning in memory: A Methodological Critique of Collective Memory Studies,” History and Theory 41 (May 2002), pp. 197-197

12. Communicative Memory – everyday communication, temporal horizon of eighty to hundred years, strongly influenced by contemporaries of the remembered events Collective Memory – strengthen the bond of the collective, mediate a collective identity, social product Cultural Memory – “body of reusable texts, images, and rituals specific to each society in each epoch, whose ‘cultivation’ serves to stabilize and convey that society’s self-image.” Jan Assmann, “Collective Memory and Cultural Identity,” New German Critique 65 (1995), p. 132 Jan and Aleida Assmann

13. Collective Memory and Commemoration Publicly shared memories are shaped by ceremonies, cemeteries, museums, symbols, public holidays, monuments Construction and identity of groups

14. Outline 1. Memory and Nation 2. Collective Memory 3. Pierre Nora and “les lieux de memoire“ 4. Conclusion

15. Les lieux de mémoire – sites of memory (Pierre Nora) Three periods of the history of memory: - Premodern, natural relation between people and their past, milieu de mémoire (environments of memory) sustain traditions and rituals, - Modern (19th c.) Old traditions lost their meaning, reconstruction of tradition by elites, production of sites of memory in language, monument, and archives to secure the future of the nation state - Postmodern: second reconstruction after the collapse of the ideology of the nation state Pierre Nora, “Between Memory and History: Les Lieux de Mémoire,” Representations 26 (1989), pp. 7-24

16. Les lieux de mémoire – sites of memory (Pierre Nora) “If we were able to live within memory, we would not have needed to consecrate lieux de mémoire in its name. Each gesture, down to the most everyday, would be experienced as the ritual repetition of a timeless practice in a primordial identification of act and meaning”

17. Les lieux de mémoire – sites of memory (Pierre Nora) “There are lieux de mémoire, sites of memory, because there are no longer milieux de mémoire, real environments of memory”

18. Les lieux de mémoire – sites of memory (Pierre Nora) Functions To stop time To block the work of forgetting To establish a state of things To immortalize death To materialize the material to capture a maximum of meaning in the fewest of signs

19. Les lieux de mémoire – sites of memory (Pierre Nora) History and Memory “Memory installs remembrance within the sacred; history, always prosaic, releases it again. Memory is blind to all but the group it binds… At the heart of history is a critical discourse that is antithetical to spontaneous memory, History is perpetually suspicious of memory, and its true mission is to suppress and destroy it.”

20. Collective Memory vs. History Identity project (usually a picture of heroism, victimhood, etc.) Impatient with ambiguity Ignores counterevidence in order to preserve established narrative Aspires to arrive at objective truth, regardless of consequences Recognizes complexity and ambiguity May revise existing narrative in light of new evidence (archives, etc.) James V. Wertsch, Washington University in St. Louis From: Voices of Collective Remembering, Universitetet i Oslo, May 2004, by James V. Wertsch, Washington University in St. Louis But… is this dichotomy true? What are the functions of history and historical research in nation building?

21. The past is constructed not as fact but as myth to serve the interest of a particular community Alon Confino

22. No sharp dichotomy between official (manipulative) and vernacular (authentic) memory “How did people internalize the nation and make it in remarkably short time an everyday mental property – a memory as intimate and authentic as the local, ethnic, and family past?“ Alon Confino, Collective Memory and Cultural History, p. 1402

23. Outline 1. Memory and Nation 2. Collective Memory 3. Pierre Nora and “les lieux de memoire“ 4. Conclusion

24. National memory... is constituted by different, often opposing, memories that, in spite of their rivalries, construct common denominators that overcome on the symbolic level real social and political differences to create an imagined community Alon Confino, Collective Memory and Cultural History, p.1400