Collective memories: A complex construction

Abstract

The study uses qualitative research methods to investigate how Canadian youth construct collective memory in relation to the War on Terror, and deals with the memories and understandings of 99 university students. I find that the landscape of collective memory is both material and social in its composition because it involves not only a human agent who remembers but also a collectivity of significant 'others' and material technologies of memory. The study concludes that significant, complex, uneven and mutually constitutive relationships between these features result in the construction of multiple and contested collective memories within a single compass.This study is a part of a growing body of work exploring the internal dynamics of collective memories that make them, 'dynamic, interactive, and therefore potentially changing, in fluxcontested' (Kuhn, 2010: 299), and 'more than just a personal act' (Misztal, 2003: 6). The idea of mapping the landscape of collective memory in relation to the War on Terror occurred to me in 2007 when I saw a group of people near the Highway of Heroes, CFB Trenton, Ontario. They were collectively remembering the Canadian soldiers who died in Afghanistan and producing a commemorative narrative (Zerubavel, 1995) through acts of commemoration. They were involved in the construction of collective memory by collectively grieving the deaths of unknown soldiers and sharing a common narrative of the war that account for this remembrance. People gather over the bridge above the Highway, whenever the military convoy with soldiers' bodies passes by, and mark the site with Canadian flags in their hands (Burnett, 2008). Practices like this link individuals through collective remembering that involves a commonly shared past. My concern was not their practices but the factors involved in the construction of a commonly shared past (Kuhn, 2010) or the formation of collective memories of the war in this case.This article attempts to understand the internal dynamics of collective memory by exploring how Canadian youth construct collective memories in relation to the War on Terror. It deals with Memory Studies 5(4) 378-391

Gelumpai Script: The Relevance of Value Solidarity in Palembang Society

“…The manuscript was a collective memory of Palembang. According to Shazad [11], collective memory could be done by looking at historical media, one of them was a script. The script as collective memory of Palembang society showed that it had many values of life.…”

The danger of a single story: Iconic stories in the aftermath of the 1994 Rwandan genocide

“…1. For excellent overviews of the construction of collective memory, see the work of Farhat Shahzad (2012) and Jeffrey Olick (2008 (Prunier, 1997: 213-214). Rwandan Patriotic Front (RPF) supporters allege that Habyarimana's inner circle had him assassinated following his decision to sign the Arusha Accords because they felt he had betrayed the Hutu cause (Des Forges, 1999: 182).…”

“…Likewise, Farhat Shahzad’s study of how Canadian youth construct collective memories surrounding the War on Terror offers similar insights. Shahzad (2012) finds collective memories are “more dynamic, multiple, shared and contested in their nature” than previously articulated in the literature, and that members of a community can simultaneously be invested in multiple versions of an event according to the agency of the narrator, the material technologies available to them, and the social networks in which they are embedded (p. 379).…”

Present Teaching Stories as Re-Membering the Humanities

“…Given that collective culture will orchestrate forgetting as well as re-membering, the skewing of our meaning-making towards a dominant or authoritative narrative within it becomes more probable [29,30]. This is not to deny the role of contestation and mediation within the process, which Halbwachs failed to address ( [30], p. 379) and is increasingly the focus of debate [19].…”

“…This is not to deny the role of contestation and mediation within the process, which Halbwachs failed to address ( [30], p. 379) and is increasingly the focus of debate [19]. Instead, it is to indicate the possibility of repetitions across generations that would result in a shared repertoire (sometimes regardless of changes to the material circumstances) because of the apparent legitimacy and authority associated with collective memories.…”