If the past weighs on the present, then the present also weighs on the past: Collective remembering as an open system for human science

2021 ◽  
Vol 24 (3) ◽  
pp. 263-271
Author(s):  
James H. Liu ◽  
Sammyh S. Khan
Keyword(s):  
Open System ◽  
Human Science ◽  
The Past ◽  
Collective Remembering

Introduction

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Sjoerd van Tuinen
Keyword(s):  
Art History ◽  
Continental Philosophy ◽  
Human Science ◽  
The Self ◽  
Critical Philosophy ◽  
The Past ◽  
Reflective Thought ◽  
The World

THIS BOOK EXPLORES some of the implications of and opportunities within the speculative turn in continental philosophy from the perspective of art history. Speculation? Besides its only legitimate domain today, that of finance, is this not a thing of the past, when metaphysicians were used to making unverifiable claims about the nature of God, the World and the Self? From Kant to Wittgenstein, critical philosophy has taught us to remain silent on that of which we cannot speak. Likewise, art history has come a long way in establishing itself as a positive human science independent from its metaphysical beginnings. In both cases, enlightened, self-critical and self-reflective thought has worked hard on closing the door to ontology, on reducing the Ideas of reason to ideology and on limiting the domain of knowledge to phenomenal objects. Speculation, it seems, has not been ...

For an “Ambitious History”: A Reply to Our Critics

2015 ◽  
Vol 70 (02) ◽  
pp. 293-303
Author(s):  
David Armitage ◽  
Jo Guldi
Keyword(s):  
Time Scales ◽  
Human Science ◽  
Historical Time ◽  
The Past ◽  
The World ◽  
The Future ◽  
Longue Duree ◽  
Longue Durée

Abstract This article responds to a variety of criticisms of our thesis that the longue durée is returning after a period of retreat, and that this return provides a necessary means to revive the discipline of history as a critical human science. We argue that the longue durée has different meanings in distinct historical traditions and that its importance for non-academic audiences will not be the same as for an academic readership. We also suggest that the longue durée should be combined with other historical time-scales (including those covered by microhistory), and that this combination can help us all to better understand the present in light of the past and then orient ourselves toward the future. In sum, we argue that the revenant longue durée can be one means, among others, to address the widespread “crisis of the humanities” that has been discerned by scholars around the world.

Towards a cognitive pragmatics of collective remembering

2012 ◽  
Vol 20 (1) ◽  
pp. 32-61 ◽  
Author(s):  
Lucas M. Bietti
Keyword(s):  
Collective Memory ◽  
Real World ◽  
Social Cognitive ◽  
Memory Studies ◽  
Memory Research ◽  
New Approach ◽  
The Past ◽  
Discourse Processes ◽  
Collective Remembering ◽  
Discourse Psychology

This article aims to provide a cognitive and discourse based theory to collective memory research. Despite the fact that a large proportion of studies in collective memory research in social, cognitive, and discourse psychology are based on investigations of (interactional) cognitive and discourse processes, neither linguistics nor cognitive and social psychologists have proposed an integrative, interdisciplinary and discursive-based theory to memory research. I argue that processes of remembering are always embodied and action oriented reconstructions of the past, which are highly dynamic and malleable by means of communication and context. This new approach aims to provide the grounds for a new ecologically valid theory on memory studies which accounts for the mutual interdependencies between communication, cognition, meaning, and interaction, as guiding collective remembering processes in the real-world activities.

From Bricks to Clicks: How Digital Heritage Initiatives Create a New Ecosystem for Cultural Heritage and Collective Remembering

2021 ◽  
pp. 019685992110411
Author(s):  
Brant Burkey
Keyword(s):  
Social Media ◽  
Cultural Heritage ◽  
Qualitative Studies ◽  
The Past ◽  
Historical Societies ◽  
Digital Heritage ◽  
Social Media Platforms ◽  
Collective Remembering ◽  
Extended View ◽  
Depth Interviews

Cultural heritage institutions, such as museums, libraries, archives, and historical societies, are increasingly using digital heritage initiatives and social media platforms to connect and interact with their heritage communities. This creates a new memory ecosystem whereby heritage communities are invited to contribute, participate with, and share more of what they are interested in collectively remembering, rather than simply accepting the authoritative narratives of heritage institutions, which raises questions about what this means for cultural heritage writ large and whose versions of the past these heritage communities will hold onto as their digital inheritance. The primary contributions of this article are to provide both an extended view of the issue by building on several qualitative studies involving in-depth interviews and digital observations with eight cultural heritage communities over a five-year period and to better understand how their digital heritage initiatives are creating a new ecosystem for cultural heritage and collective remembering.

Mapping the Boosterist Imaginary: Colonial Williamsburg, Historical Tourism, and the Construction of Managerial Memory

2006 ◽  
Vol 28 (4) ◽  
pp. 51-74 ◽  
Author(s):  
JAMES S. MILLER
Keyword(s):  
Industrial Development ◽  
White Collar ◽  
Raw Material ◽  
Historical Reconstruction ◽  
Commercial Development ◽  
The Past ◽  
Colonial Williamsburg ◽  
Cultural Conservation ◽  
Collective Remembering

Abstract With very few exceptions, existing scholarship on public memory in America has tended to script commercial-industrial ““development”” as the implacable adversary of legitimate collective remembering. Indeed, it has become a virtual article of faith that any attempt at commercially underwritten historical reconstruction involves, by definition, an act of historical falsification. This essay sets about to revise this longstanding conceit by pondering some of the specific ways that industrial and commercial development practices came during the early twentieth century to be imagined as technologies for producing new and viable models of a specifically white-collar history. To make this argument, I focus on the phenomenon of historical tourism, a movement that gained popularity in the 1920s and 30s (typified by such ventures as Henry Ford's Greenfield Village and John D. Rockefeller's Colonial Williamsburg), which dedicated itself to reconstructing vestiges of America's ““bygone”” past. Using Colonial Williamsburg as my case study, I explore how the planners and promoters behind this movement forged a discourse of historical reconstruction designed to make the tactics of industrial-commercial development compatible with the vaunted ideals of historical recovery and cultural conservation. More specifically, I show how this discourse labored to imagine the past itself as a useful and fungible resource: a raw material to be taken up, managed, and improved by the agents of the modern corporate-capitalist order.

scholarly journals Collective Forgetting in a Changing Organization: When memories become unusable and uprooted

2019 ◽  
Vol 41 (4) ◽  
pp. 449-470 ◽  
Author(s):  
Hamid Foroughi ◽  
Ismael Al-Amoudi
Keyword(s):  
Social Relations ◽  
Ethnographic Study ◽  
Organizational Changes ◽  
Charitable Organization ◽  
The Past ◽  
Practical Usefulness ◽  
The Social ◽  
Memory Power ◽  
Collective Remembering ◽  
Sense Of Identity

How is collective remembering inhibited by organizational changes which were not intended to manipulate it? And how does collective forgetting affect workers’ power and sense of identity? We rely on an ethnographic study of a charitable organization that went through recent organizational changes to study two processes constitutive of collective forgetting. The first process consists in the past becoming unusable because once-useful memories lost their practical usefulness for participants’ new activities. The second process consists in the past becoming uprooted because the social relations through which memories used to be shared had changed beyond recognition. Our findings provide insights into the organizational processes through which memories cease to circulate. They also help understand the complex relations between memory, power relations and participants’ sense of identity.

scholarly journals Declining ethnic relations in post-war Liberia: The transmission of violent memories

2019 ◽  
Vol 101 (910) ◽  
pp. 151-171
Author(s):  
Aaron Weah
Keyword(s):  
Ethnic Relations ◽  
Truth And Reconciliation Commission ◽  
Violent Conflict ◽  
Final Report ◽  
Reconciliation Commission ◽  
Truth And Reconciliation ◽  
The Past ◽  
Post Conflict ◽  
Collective Remembering ◽  
Post War

AbstractMore than ten years after the Liberia Truth and Reconciliation Commission (TRC) released its Final Report, there has been no implementation of the recommendations proffered. This article focuses on post-conflict memorialization, the TRC's strategy to engender collective remembering, and a set of State-led actions designed to teach future generations about the past violence with a view to preventing relapse into violent conflict. Both the constructive and destructive patterns of remembering that have evolved in the wake of the government's silence since the release of the recommendations will be analyzed.

scholarly journals Variations on the Theme of Remembering: A National Survey of How Canadians Use the Past

2010 ◽  
Vol 20 (1) ◽  
pp. 221-248 ◽  
Author(s):  
Gerald Friesen ◽  
Del Muise ◽  
David Northrup
Keyword(s):  
Ethnic Group ◽  
Telephone Survey ◽  
Daily Life ◽  
Fundamental Aspect ◽  
Nation State ◽  
Sources Of Information ◽  
Historic Sites ◽  
The Past ◽  
Collective Remembering ◽  
Different Sources

Abstract This paper in collective remembering is based on a telephone survey of 3,419 adult residents of Canada. The questionnaire contains over 70 questions. The interviews average over 20 minutes in length. Part of the Canadians and Their Pasts project, the survey seeks to assess how Canadians use the past in daily life. How many engage in activities related to the past, such as reading books, viewing photos, or visiting museums and historic sites? How do they evaluate different sources of information about the past? What types of past — family, province, nation, ethnic group — are most important to them? The paper suggests that the construction and reconstruction of autobiographical memory is a fundamental aspect of one’s uses of the past. It also proposes that wider collective pasts are particularly important among members of minority and alternative groups. And that the past of the nation-state figures more prominently in these citizens’ reflections than Roy Rosenzweig and David Thelen observed in their similar study, The Presence of the Past: Popular Uses of History in American Life (1998).

Tarrying with Repression: Political Anecdotes and Social Memory in Northern Mongolia

Inner Asia ◽  
2006 ◽  
Vol 8 (2) ◽  
pp. 163-81 ◽  
Author(s):  
Morten Axel Pedersen
Keyword(s):  
Social Memory ◽  
The State ◽  
Political Climate ◽  
The Past ◽  
Northern Mongolia ◽  
Collective Remembering ◽  
State Socialist

AbstractThis article1 explores different forms of social memory about the state socialist repression of Mongolian Buddhism in the 1930s. Based on two political anecdotes collected during fieldwork among Darhads in Northern Mongolia as well as on recent studies of social memory in Mongolia and Buryatia by Christopher Kaplonski and Caroline Humphrey, I identify three ‘mnemonic tropes,’ which are appropriated by people in recounting these tragic events of the past, namely, what I call the digital, the paranoid, and the comical mode of collective remembering respectively. In broad terms, these mnemonic attitudes seem to correspond to three scapes of remembering: a radically liberal, a mildly conservative, and a neo-authoritarian political climate respectively.

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