Cultural Memory: The Link Between Past Present And Future

At first glance, Memory Wave seems something inert, caught up to now - a memory of something that has occurred and stopped in time. But a more in-depth look reveals that memory is dynamic and connects the three temporal dimensions: evoked at the current, it refers to the previous, however all the time views the future. During their conference entitled ‘Communicative and Cultural Memory’, researchers Jan Assmann and Aleida Assmann, each professors on the University of Konstanz, addressed this dynamic character of memory. Jan spoke on the sturdiness and symbolic facets of cultural memory, emphasizing their position in the construction of identities, whereas Aleida prioritized contemporary historic narrative, specializing in mnemonic processes associated to the formation of new nation-states. The occasion, held on Might 15 at IEA, opened the conference cycle ‘Spaces of Remembrance’, which the researchers uttered within the nation from Could 15 to 21 as part of the Year of Germany in Brazil.



The cycle has been a realization of the Federal College of Paraná (UFPR) and the Institute for Superior Research on Social and Cultural Mobility, with the help of IEA and other establishments. Jan made a distinction between two sorts of memory: the communicative one, related to the diffuse transmission of memories in on a regular basis life by way of orality, and cultural memory - in which the speech was targeted - referring to objectified and institutionalized reminiscences, that can be stored, transferred and reincorporated throughout generations. Cultural memory is formed by symbolic heritage embodied in texts, rites, monuments, celebrations, objects, sacred scriptures and different media that serve as mnemonic triggers to provoke meanings associated with what has happened. Additionally, it brings back the time of the legendary origins, crystallizes collective experiences of the past and can final for millennia. Subsequently it presupposes a knowledge restricted to initiates. Communicative memory, alternatively, is limited to the recent past, evokes private and autobiographical reminiscences, and is characterized by a brief time period (eighty to one hundred ten years), from three to four generations.



Attributable to its informal character, it does not require experience on the part of those who transmit it. Jan identified the connections between cultural memory and identification. In keeping with him, cultural memory is ‘the faculty that permits us to build a narrative image of the past and by this process develop a picture and an identity for ourselves’. Subsequently, cultural memory preserves the symbolic institutionalized heritage to which individuals resort to construct their very own identities and to affirm themselves as part of a gaggle. This is possible as a result of the act of remembering entails normative elements, so that ‘if you need to belong to a group, you have to follow the foundations of how and what to remember’, as said by the researcher. He additionally highlighted that, by working as a collective unifying force, cultural memory is taken into account a hazard by totalitarian regimes. For instance, he talked about the case of the Bosnian conflict, when Serbian artillery destroyed the Library of Sarajevo in an try and undermine the memory of the Bosnians and minorities in the region.



The objective, he mentioned, was to make tradition a blank slate in order that it may very well be attainable to start out a new Serbian identity from scratch: ‘This was the strategy of the totalitarian regime to destroy the past, because if one controls the present, the previous also gets beneath control, and if one controls the past, the future also will get below control’. Aleida opened her convention calling consideration to a characteristic phenomenon of the latest many years: a disbelief in the thought of the long run and the emergence of the past as fundamental concern. In keeping with the researcher, from the 1980s, confidence in the future as a promise of higher days misplaced power and gave rise to the restlessness before the past: ‘the idea of progress is more and more out of date, and the previous has invaded our consciousness’. This phenomenon, she mentioned, is the impact of the period of extreme violence of the twentieth century and new issues faced by contemporary society, such because the environmental disaster, for instance.



But she cautioned that it's not mere nostalgia or rejection of modern occasions, since cultural Memory Wave is at all times directed to the longer term, ‘remembering forward, so to speak’. Thus, memory seems as a machine to protect the previous in opposition to the corrosive motion of time and to provide subsidies for individuals to grasp the world and know what to anticipate, ‘so they do not must reinvent the wheel and start every era from scratch’, because the researcher explained. Based mostly on the concept of ‘les lieux de mémoire’ (locations of memory) ready by the French historian Pierre Nora, Aleida talked about the changes that have taken place in the construction of national Memory Wave Audio within the publish- World Conflict II and put up-Berlin Wall. Thinking from the case of France - a country that can be outlined by the triumphant character of its individuals -, the concept of places of memory refers to concrete symbolic objects such as monuments, museums and archives, linked to a self-picture of heroism and pleasure by the nations.
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