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Journal ArticleDOI

Das kulturelle Gedachtnis. Schrift, Erinnerung und politische Identitat in fruhen Hochkulturen

01 May 1994-Numen-Vol. 41, Iss: 2, pp 196
About: This article is published in Numen.The article was published on 1994-05-01. It has received 308 citations till now.
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Journal ArticleDOI
TL;DR: This article explored the dialectics of remembering and forgetting, an issue traditionally neglected in psychological memory research, and questioned the widespacing of the dialectic of forgetting and remembering in the literature.
Abstract: This paper has two objectives: one is to explore the dialectics of remembering and forgetting, an issue traditionally neglected in psychological memory research; the other is to question the widesp...

263 citations


Cites background from "Das kulturelle Gedachtnis. Schrift,..."

  • ...Various authors (e.g. Assmann, 1992; Gross, 2000; Terdiman, 1993) have pointed to a ‘memory crisis’ in modern Western cultures....

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  • ...In the wake of Halbwachs’ (1925/1980) concept of mémoire collective, Assmann (1992, 1997) has argued that each culture develops a sense of coherence that is grounded in an underlying connective structure....

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  • ...From a historical point of view, Assmann (1992) suggested distinguishing two aspects of the transition through which cultural memory passes on a moral order, one being normative, the other being narrative. The normative is expressed and enforced by law, political, economic and, in part, religious power. The narrative is articulated and dispersed through a culture’s countless discursive registers: from myth and fairy tales to literature, film, advertisement and everyday conversation. This is, of course, neither to say that the normative cannot use or include narrative forms—just consider the crucial role of narrative in law (Amsterdam & Bruner, 2000)—nor to say that narratives cannot give form to normative principles—for example, in the plot forms and genres of canonical ‘master narratives’ and in ‘moral stories’ often used in a seemingly peripheral fashion in everyday conversation (see Plummer, 1996). Yet there is still another and, perhaps, more fundamental potential of narrative at work that I would like to highlight here because, I suspect, it leads to the very essence of cultural memory. This is narrative’s distinctive capacity to give shape to the temporal dimension of human experience. Put differently, narrative endows the inherent historicity of human existence with cultural meanings. On a similar note, Freeman (1993) has claimed that it is only narrative that enables us to think about our lives and ourselves historically. And for Carrithers (1991), ‘it is narrativity which allows humans to grasp a longer past and a more intricately conceived future, as well as a more variegated social environment’ (p....

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  • ...From a historical point of view, Assmann (1992) suggested distinguishing two aspects of the transition through which cultural memory passes on a moral order, one being normative, the other being narrative. The normative is expressed and enforced by law, political, economic and, in part, religious power. The narrative is articulated and dispersed through a culture’s countless discursive registers: from myth and fairy tales to literature, film, advertisement and everyday conversation. This is, of course, neither to say that the normative cannot use or include narrative forms—just consider the crucial role of narrative in law (Amsterdam & Bruner, 2000)—nor to say that narratives cannot give form to normative principles—for example, in the plot forms and genres of canonical ‘master narratives’ and in ‘moral stories’ often used in a seemingly peripheral fashion in everyday conversation (see Plummer, 1996). Yet there is still another and, perhaps, more fundamental potential of narrative at work that I would like to highlight here because, I suspect, it leads to the very essence of cultural memory. This is narrative’s distinctive capacity to give shape to the temporal dimension of human experience. Put differently, narrative endows the inherent historicity of human existence with cultural meanings. On a similar note, Freeman (1993) has claimed that it is only narrative that enables us to think about our lives and ourselves historically. And for Carrithers (1991), ‘it is narrativity which allows humans to grasp a longer past and a more intricately conceived future, as well as a more variegated social environment’ (p. 306). In another work, Carrithers (1992) went on to argue that narrative consists not merely of telling stories, but also of understanding complex nets of actions and events....

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  • ...From a historical point of view, Assmann (1992) suggested distinguishing two aspects of the transition through which cultural memory passes on a moral order, one being normative, the other being narrative....

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Journal ArticleDOI
TL;DR: In this paper, a space-theoretical concept according to which space is constituted through acts as the outcome of synthesis and positioning practices is developed, which opens up a theoretical perspective defining atmospheres as an external effect, instantiated in perception.
Abstract: It has become an academic self-evidence that space can only inadequately be conceptualized as a material or earth-bound base for social processes. This could commend a theoretical view of space as the outcome of action, which brings both social production practices and bodily deployment into focus. The action-theoretical perspective allows the constitution of space to be understood as taking place in perception. Not only are things alone perceived but also the relations between objects. This article develops a space-theoretical concept according to which space is constituted through acts as the outcome of synthesis and positioning practices. This opens up a theoretical perspective defining atmospheres as an external effect, instantiated in perception, of social goods and human beings in their situated spatial order/ing. Exclusion and inclusion are accordingly comprehended in terms of perception of the attunement of places. With reference to Anthony Giddens, this article discusses how space can be understood as a duality of structural ordering and action elements.

217 citations

Journal ArticleDOI
TL;DR: The situation in collective memory studies that share a nexus with the discipline of International Relations (IR) is currently reflective of the traditionally West-centric writing of European histo... as mentioned in this paper.
Abstract: The situation in collective memory studies that share a nexus with the discipline of International Relations (IR) is currently reflective of the traditionally West-centric writing of European histo...

200 citations

Book
Jürgen Renn1
01 Jan 2018
TL;DR: Second-order knowledge as mentioned in this paper is the origin of self-organizing, self-promoting qualities of knowledge, and it is the reflexivity of knowledge that accounts for its selforganizing and self-defining qualities.
Abstract: object but always involves knowledge about this knowledge as well, that is, meta or second-order knowledge. This reflexivity of knowledge also accounts for its self-organizing, self-promoting qualities. Second-order knowledge is the origin 22

160 citations

Journal ArticleDOI
Ann Rigney1
TL;DR: In this paper, an argument is made for the need to conceptualize cultural memory, not as merely derivative of individual psychology, but in terms of a "working memory" (Assmann) that is constructed and reconstructed in public acts of remembrance and evolves according to distinctly cultural mechanisms.
Abstract: An argument is made for the need to conceptualize cultural memory, not as merely derivative of individual psychology, but in terms of a ‘working memory’ (Assmann) that is constructed and reconstructed in public acts of remembrance and evolves according to distinctly cultural mechanisms. Foucault’s ‘scarcity principle’ is used to show the role of media in generating shared memories through processes of selection, convergence, recursivity and transfer. This media-based approach, emphasizing the way memories are communicated, circulated and exchanged, allows us to see how collective identities may be (re)defined through memorial practices, and not merely reflected in them.

158 citations


Cites background or result from "Das kulturelle Gedachtnis. Schrift,..."

  • ...…seek to express the memory of their own experience in terms that are understandable by others, and that they may end up identifying with someone else's recollection even if this does not correspond in all respects with their own experience (Halbwachs, 1997 [1950]: 53; also Assmann, 1997: 35–7)....

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  • ...1 Jan Assmann distinguishes usefully between two phases of collective memory: communicative memory or living memory, corresponding to the earliest phase when multiple narratives...

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  • ...participants and eyewitnesses circulate and compete with each other, and cultural memory proper, corresponding to the much longer phase when all eyewitnesses and participants have died out, and a society has only relics and stories left as a reminder of past experience (Assmann, 1997: 48–66)....

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  • ...The work of Jan Assmann (1997) and Aleida Assmann (1999) has been extremely important in working out the concept of 'cultural memory,' though it should be noted that attempts to conceptualize the relations between the various aspects of collective remembering are still in full swing....

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