Das kulturelle Gedächtnis : Schrift, Erinnerung und politische Identität in frühen Hochkulturen
About: This article is published in Vetus Testamentum.The article was published on 1992-01-01 and is currently open access. It has received 1154 citations till now.
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TL;DR: Social memory studies is a nonparadigmatic, transdisciplinary, centerless enterprise as discussed by the authors, and despite substantial work in a variety of disciplines, substantive areas, and geographical contexts, social memory studies are a non paradigmatic and non-disciplinary enterprise.
Abstract: Despite substantial work in a variety of disciplines, substantive areas, and geographical contexts, social memory studies is a nonparadigmatic, transdisciplinary, centerless enterprise. To remedy this relative disorganization, we (re-)construct out of the diversity of work addressing social memory a useful tradition, range of working definitions, and basis for future work. We trace lineages of the enterprise, review basic definitional disputes, outline a historical approach, and review sociological theories concerning the statics and dynamics of social memory.
1,427 citations
Cites background from "Das kulturelle Gedächtnis : Schrift..."
...Assmann (1992) distinguishes among four modes of memory in an effort to capture the range of memory problematics: 1. mimetic memory—the transmission of practical knowledge from the past; 2. material memory—the history contained in objects; 3. communicative memory—the residues of the past in…...
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...Assmann (1992), for instance, argues that while Babylonian, Egyptian, Greek, and Jewish cultures all developed the technical means for preserving the past (word, text, writing, and book), only the Greek and Jewish persisted as living traditions, due to the peculiarities of their historical…...
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...Modern man no longer works at what cannot be abbreviated… Paul Valéry Scholars have viewed social memory narrowly as a subfield of the sociology of knowledge (Swidler & Arditi 1994) and broadly as “the connective structure of societies” (Assmann 1992, p. 293)....
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...Shils (1981) and Assmann (1992), among others, discuss pasts that remain the same simply out of the force of habit....
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TL;DR: In this article, the role of the family as a space of transmission and the function of gender as an idiom of remembrance of the Holocaust is discussed. But the focus is on the second generation, which is the hinge generation in which received, transferred knowledge of events is being transmuted into history or into myth.
Abstract: Postmemory describes the relationship of the second generation to power- ful, often traumatic, experiences that preceded their births but that were never- theless transmitted to them so deeply as to seem to constitute memories in their own right. Focusing on the remembrance of the Holocaust, this essay elucidates the generation of postmemory and its reliance on photography as a primary medium of transgenerational transmission of trauma. Identifying tropes that most potently mobilize the work of postmemory, it examines the role of the family as a space of transmission and the function of gender as an idiom of remembrance. The guardianship of the Holocaust is being passed on to us. The second genera- tion is the hinge generation in which received, transferred knowledge of events is being transmuted into history, or into myth. It is also the generation in which we can think about certain questions arising from the Shoah with a sense of living
1,104 citations
01 Jan 2011
TL;DR: In this paper, the formation of a canon of "classical" or "sacred" texts requires techniques of interpretation to keep accessible the meaning of the texts that may no longer be altered or multiplied.
Abstract: Like consciousness and language, human memory is acquired through communication, socialization, and acculturation. It is, therefore, about both one’s brain and one’s social and cultural relations and comprises three dimensions: the personal, social, and cultural. Human memory is “embodied” in living personal memories and “embedded” in social frames and external cultural symbols (e.g., texts, images, and rituals) that can be acknowledged as a memory function insofar as they are related to the self-image or “identity” of a tribal, national, and/or religious community. Whereas the social or “collective” memory comprises knowledge commonly shared by a given society in a given epoch, cultural memory in literate societies includes not only a “canon” of normative knowledge but also an “archive” of apocryphal material that may be rediscovered and brought to the fore in later epochs. The formation of a canon of “classical” or sacred texts requires techniques of interpretation to keep accessible the meaning of the texts that may no longer be altered or multiplied. At that stage of cultural evolution, cultural memory changes from ritual to textual continuity. Cultural memory becomes complex, splitting into the “classical” and the “modern,” the “sacred” and the “secular.”
477 citations
TL;DR: In this article, a typological model for the analysis of collective identify is outlined and applied to the case of German and Japanese national identity, where German national identity is presented as a cultural project carried by the ‘Bildungsburgertum' and Japanese identity is a combination of primordial and civic elements.
Abstract: A general typological model for the analysis of collective identify is outlined and applied to the case of German and Japanese national identity. Primordial, civic and cultural codes of boundary construction are described with respect to their logic of exclusion, corresponding rituals etc. German national identity is presented as a cultural project carried by the ‘Bildungsburgertum’, whereas the Japanese identity is presented as a combination of primordial and civic elements.
266 citations