Collective Memory: How it is Formed and its Intersection with Cultural Trauma

Collective Memory and Cultural Influences
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Collective Memory and Cultural Influences
People’s lives are greatly influenced by their memories, whether collective or individual. Memories of past experiences inform how decisions about the present and future are made. According to Momennejad et al. (2019), memories, and more specifically, collective memories, create bonds among individuals in social/cultural groups, whether family, cultural or national groups. In addition, collective memory shapes the collective identity of a social/cultural group as well as its collective behavior. Different individuals have different memories of their past. However, their interactions with others influence how they remember their past as a collective within any given social/cultural group. In his work on collective memory, Halbwachs (n.d.) indicates that memories are collective because people recall their memories through others even when others did not witness the event. This is partly because people’s confidence in their memories varies depending on whether others can support these memories. When it comes to collective memory, many questions arise. For example, is collective memory the same as shared memory? Does it mean that everyone in a social/cultural group who shares that collective memory remembers their past the same way? These questions can only be answered if there is a clear understanding of collective memory. As such, the purpose of this paper is to provide an understanding of collective memory, how it is formed, and its intersection with cultural trauma and identity as well as how it informs the future.
What is Collective Memory?
There lacks a specific definition of collective memory among scholars, and as such, there is no general consensus on the correct definition of the term. However, there are two common definitions of the term that have been incorporated by scholars based on their view of collective memories. Some scholars argue that collective memories are individual memories that are then shared among a social group to give them a collective identity (Hirst et al., 2018). As such, collective memories are considered to be shared memories that exist in the minds of individuals. This definition is more acceptable among psychological scholars because it allows them to approach collective memory from an individualistic perspective and analyze the role of human memory in shaping collective memories. In addition, this definition allows scholars to view collective memory as a past as experienced by individuals who lived through that past (De Saint-Laurent, 2017). When people share these individual memories, they then form a collective identity as a group.
However, others argue that the definition of collective memories as shared individual memories among a social group is not entirely true. For instance, Hirst and Manier (2008) indicate that collective memories are not shared individual memories but rather “social representations contained not in the head but the world.” This means that collective memory has more to do with how the social group represents itself and its past to the world and its efforts to maintain that representation. Thus, in this case, collective memories are not found in individual minds but in the resources shared by the individuals in the social group. For instance, the collective memory of African-Americans about their past as slaves is not found in the individual mind of each African American, but in the resources they have shared as a group. These resources can include the stories that have been passed down from generation to generation. According to Hirst et al. (2018), this definition of collective memories comprises publicly available symbols that members of a particular social/cultural group maintain and share in shaping their collective memories. These public symbols include mnemonic devices, cultural artifacts, and memory practices that are used by the social/cultural group’s members to maintain the collective memory.
For this paper, both definitions of collective memory will be considered because, as De Saint-Laurent (2017) indicates, only people can remember the past because they are the ones who experienced it. A social group cannot remember, at least not in the way memory recall and remembrance are understood in psychology. As such, collective memories represent the shared individual memories of this past. However, memories are also influenced by social processes and interactions between group members, and as such, it is important to address past memories from a collective rather than individualistic perspective. In addition, Hirst and Echterhoff (2008) indicate that collective memory is a result of the interaction between individual psychological factors and social factors. Thus, incorporating individual and social factors in collective memory will ensure that people, as individuals rather than groups, are included in the definition while still putting into consideration the cultural and social aspects of collective memory.
How is Collective Memory Formed and Maintained in Cultures?
As indicated in the definition above, at the base of collective memory is an individual who then belongs to a cultural group with the same collective memory. According to Momennejad et al. (2019), the formation of collective memories depends on the cognitive function and operations of the individuals that make up the social/cultural group. Thus, collective memories cannot be formed without individual memories. The question that arises here is how the memory of the individuals who experienced an event or a past becomes a collective memory. How is collective memory formed? How do unshared individual memories become collective memory (Cuc et al., 2006)? How is it that the Holocaust that some Jews experienced at a specific point in time is now a collective memory shared by all Jews and has been maintained for decades? To answer this question, this paper will discuss several ways in which collective memories are formed, transmitted, and maintained.
The first way in which collective memory is formed is through conversation. When two people talk about a past event related to their cultural group, the things they talk about influence how they remember this past event. According to Cuc et al. (2006), conversations between people who experienced an event individually, to some extent, influence the formation of collective memory. Cuc et al. (2006) came to this conclusion in their study where participants studied stories individually and were asked to recall those stories as individuals (pre-group recollection), as a group, and then individually (post-group recollection). They found that conversations about the story in the group can lead to the formation of a collective memory if two key conditions are met; (1) the pre-group recollections that have not been shared with the group come up in the conversation, and (2) the unshared pre-group recollections interfere with group recollections, thus influencing post-group recollections. When pre-group recollections that have not yet been shared with the group are introduced in a conversation, the group becomes aware of a memory they had forgotten and incorporates them into the post-group recollection, thus forming collective memory.
The unshared pre-group recollection interferes with the post-group recollection by reminding the group of a pre-group recollection that had been forgotten (Cuc et al., 2006). It can also interfere with the post-group recollection by omitting some pre-group recollection, causing the group to forget the memory over time. People are more likely to have similar recollections of past memories if they have engaged in a conversation about that particular past than if they have not. Conversations allow people to transmit a memory to other people within a cultural group. According to Assmann and Czaplicka (1995), conversations or communication play a role in the formation of collective memories because these conversations occur among people who have a perceived unity that is informed by a common image of their past. For instance, the conversations among African-Americans about slavery form a collective memory of their enslavement because this common past unites them as slaves in American plantations. They are more likely to entertain this collective memory because they have a perceived unity informed by their common past.
The second way in which collective memory is formed and maintained is through cultural products. According to Candia et al. (2019), collective memories are formed through the consumption of cultural products such as biographical records and songs. These cultural products allow people to retrieve selective memories that had already been forgotten, which helps shape the cultural identity of the group consuming these cultural products. As such, the formation of collective memories also occurs when people interact with cultural artifacts/products and are reminded of memories that have been forgotten over time. This occurs outside of actual conversations. Assmann and Czaplicka (1995) indicate that it occurs not only through written cultural products but also through rituals and pictures, among other cultural products. This is evident in the efforts made by a group of people to maintain their collective memory. For instance, in an effort to maintain the collective memory of the 9/11 attack, Americans have created memorials and museums (Doss, 2011). These memorials and museums serve as cultural products that remind them of memories they might have forgotten about the attacks, especially now that conversations about the attack and its impact have reduced over time.
While cultural artifacts/products are mostly used in the transmission and maintenance of collective memory, they also play an instrumental role in the formation of collective memory. According to Assmann and Czaplicka (1995), “no memory can preserve the past,” and as such, people reconstruct cultural archives to suit their contemporary situation. What the cultural group may find most relatable at one point in time changes at another point in time, and the group has to reconstruct the cultural products so that their cultural memory serves their current situation. This makes sense because despite the preservation of collective memory by a cultural group, the cultural practices of the groups around the world have changed over the years as the groups adapt to their current situations. Reconstruction allows people to form a collective memory based not only on the available evidence (cultural products/artifacts) but also on how the culture interprets the evidence given their current situation.
Once the memory has been formed, it is transmitted to other people within the cultural group to ensure that it is maintained as part of its cultural identity. Hirst and Manier (2008) indicate that transmission occurs through communication between people to form what is known as communicative memories. Communicative memories then become cultural memories that last for centuries through cultural formation and institutional communication. Cultural formations include cultural monuments, texts, and rites that are shared within the cultural group, while institutional communication includes practices and recitations of the group (Hirst & Manier, 2008). These elements enable individual recollectio...