Discourses, Schemata, Technology, Monuments: Outline for a Theory of Cultural Continuity

Remembering Zyzz: Distributed Memories on Distributed Networks

“…The whole of our evolution has been oriented toward placing outside ourselves what in the rest of the animal world is achieved inside by species adaptation (Leroi-Gourhan, 1993: 236) This understanding is helpful for encouraging us to think about the ways media technologies and human memory are intertwined, not simply for individual remembrance but for the development of a collective, social memory. German media theorist Hartmut Winkler identifies such collective relations by tracing the technological connections between written and oral cultures (Winkler 2002). He notes that at first glance writing and orality appear to produce two distinct forms for establishing cultural memory -one invested in the durability of a material medium, the other in the repetition of ritual practice.…”

“…In turn, the repetition of communication in oral traditions is 'condensed' in the material storage device of human memory. Thus, different technologies mediate memory through specific processes encompassing both material affordances or 'inscriptions' and social practices or 'rescriptions' to shape media cultures (Winkler 2002). And this raises questions about how specific technologies mediate memory, and not just for the living but also for the dead.…”

Monuments and Commemorations: A Consideration

“…'Self-musealization' is presented as a millennial phenomena, enabled by technological advances such as the video camera, but accompanied by a resurgence of interest in its historical precedents, 'memoir writing and confessional literature'. 21 This co-option of memory work into the private domain (and the implicit suggestion that the cultural productions of an 'unmarked' individual could conceivably be regarded as deserving of the 'material per-sistence' 22 accorded to monuments occupying civic space) is related by Huyssen to the emergence of what German sociologists have termed the Erlebnisgsellschaft or, literally, 'society of experience'. 23 A society of experience 'privileges intense but superficial experiences oriented toward instant happiness in the present and quick consumption of goods, cultural events and mass-marketed lifestyles'.…”

Cervantes: estatua en Madrid, monumento de la nación

“…Representación que puede llegar a ser tan emblemá-tica como para sintetizar filias y fobias que pueden conducir al deseo de su destrucción o al de su canonización. Hartmut Winkler (2002) y otros han relacionado los monumentos con lo que consideran «la continuidad cultural», aunque nos interesa aquí también señalar el carácter social, ideológica y políticamente condicionado de tal continuidad mediante la identificación de sus agentes y de la intencionalidad humana (término que tomo de A. Martin Byers [1992]), explícita o implícita, que se puede deducir de ellos. Lo cierto es que las conmemoraciones y monumentos desempeñan un papel central en su relación con el proceso de construcción (invención) de concreciones de la memoria y, por tanto, de signos identitarios vinculados a la articulación de un discurso de la nación de carácter nacionalista.…”