Forms of collective memory

and how they relate to

power, (identity and myth)

Eva-Clarita Onken econken@ut.ee

Institute of Government and Politics University of Tartu

Winterschool “Politics of Memory“Tartu 2008

Today‘s lecture• Types of collective memory

– Aleida Assmann “Formats of collective memory”

• Collective memory and political culture– Jeffrey Olick/Daniel Levy “Cultural

constraints”• Memory and power

– Jan-Werner Müller “Two analytical distinctions”

Collective memory

• Individual remembering is socially conditioned (M. Halbwachs) Engendered or evoked by relating to other people

(communication) Framed by language, religion, class Triggered by sites and places Embedded in time and space

• Individuals remember in order to belong (J. Assmann)

Today‘s conceptualizations of ‘collective memory‘ go far beyond Halbwachs‘ still predominantly individual-based approach to social remembering

Aleida Assmann: Formats of collective memory

Aleida Assmann (2004) "Four Formats of Memory: From Individual to Collective Constructions of the Past” in Chr. Emden/ D. Midgley (eds), Cultural Memory and Historical Consciousness in the German-Speaking World Since 1500 (Peter Lang, 2004).

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Aleida Assmann (2006) Der lange Schatten der Vergangenheit. Erinnerungskultur und Geschichts-politik (München: C.H. Beck)

Three formats:• Social memory = Memories shared in direct or indirect relation to others, i.e.

with family, friends, colleagues, but also with contemporaries that never physically met (= social generations)

• Political memory= based on more durable carriers of symbols and material

representations, i.e. stabilizers of memory through radical reduction of content, high symbolic intensity and strong psychic affect; integrating those who have no experiential connection to a particular historical event

• Cultural memory= disconnects other memory formats from individuals, groups

and institutions that were once its carriers and reconnects them with an open community of readers, highly abstract, institutionalized and canonized

Formats of memoryBasis: Biologically

transmitted(bottom-up)

Symbolically transmitted (top-down)

Processing: neural communicative collective individual

Memory format:

Individual memory

Socialmemory

Political memory

Cultural memory

Source: Assmann (2006), p. 36.

Formats of memory

“It is to move to an ever larger scope of memory, widening in space, time, and complexity.“

• (Individual/)Social memory = “bottom-up”= Studied by social psychologist who are interested in the ways

in which historical events are perceived and remembered by individuals within their own life-span

• Political(/cultural) memory = “top-down”= Investigated by political scientist, who discuss the role of

memory on the level of ideology formation and study its immediate impact on collective identity formation, political action and power relations

Memory and politics• In what form do memories manifest themselves

in the public-political sphere? a) In form of political measures that explicitly deal with the

past through justice and accountability policies after regime change.

b) As public representations and rituals, in form of concrete manifestations of memory in monuments and public commemorations

c) In public speeches and interviews by political actors that draw analogies to the past or justifying current policies (high politics)

d) Through providing an attitudinal influence and a basis for political and group identities that can be translated into political action

Jeffrey Olick: Collective memory and political cultureJeffrey Olick and Daniel Levy (1997)

“Collective Memory and Cultural Constraints: Holocaust Myth and Rationality in German Politics.” ” American Sociological Review 62: 6 (1997).

Jeffrey Olick (1999) “Collective Memory: The Two Cultures.” Sociological Theory 17:3 (1999).

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Cultural constraints “In what different ways can the remembered

past [shape and] constrain the present [and vice versa], and under what circumstances are such constraints transformable?

• Conceptual distinctions:a) Distinction between two kinds of cultural constraints:

mythical and instrumental (rational)b) Delineation of mechanisms through which the

political-cultural logics operate as constraints

Helps to understand how rules of political claim-making can be transformed over time.

Memory and political culture

• Politics as strategic claim-making and struggle over public meanings in a specific cultural context

“Political culture ... is the symbolic structuring of political claim-making that is always a constitutive part of any political moment.“

“Claim-making by actors in political contexts is con-ditioned by significant pasts as well as by meaningful presents.“

What exactly are the mechanisms through which collective memory works as part of a political-cultural process?

Collective memory as constraint

a) By way of proscription, i.e. through taboos and prohibition

b) By way of prescription, i.e. through duties and requirement

Mapping the conceptsMode

Operation

RationalCalculative, interested, exogenously caused, mundane, strategic

MythicMoral, constitutive, endogenous, projective, definitional

ProscriptionsWhat may not be

done(-) Prohibition (-) Taboo

PrescriptionsWhat must be done (+) Requirement (+) Duty/Obligation

ContraventionHow the constraint

is overcome(x) Refutation

(abandonment, change)(x) Transgression (socially or literally

deadly or damaging)

Source: Olick/Levy (1997) p. 925

Jan-Werner Müller: Memory-power nexus

Müller, Jan-Werner. ”Introduction: The power of memory, the memory of power and the power over memory“ in Müller, J.-W. (ed) Memory and Power in Post-War Europe (Cambridge UP, 2004).

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Key question

How can we establish the analytical link between political memory and power?

• Power = output of political institutions, i.e. as policies

• Memory defined as a kind of „symbolic power“

Collective memory

= the outcome of a series of ongoing intel-lectual and political negotiations

= never a unitary collective mental act= the process character makes collective

or national memory particularly vulne-rable to be influenced by historians, journalists and politicans

Questions of agents, i.e. individual and “social carriers of memory“

Analytical distinctions

MIM: recollection of events which individuals actually lived through (Erinnerung)Advanced recovering of unrecorded histories and demand for recognition of particular collective experiences within states > memory as claim to political resources

CNM: social framework through which nationally cons-cious individuals can organize their history (=con-stitutive for national identity and vice versa) (Gedächtnis)Too easily collapsed into myth, loosing important distinctions

Mass individual memory (MIM)

Collective, national memory (CNM)

Memory-power nexusLegitimacy• “Politicies are legitimated through appeals to the collective

or national memory for social consumption both at home and abroad“ (26)– Historical analogies and justifications

• Memory as form of ‘structural power‘, the power to set the political agenda, to frame political issues and avoid conflict

Interest• examine the historically and ideologically conditioned

constructions of interest (Weber)– Cultural and mnemonic context of political decision-making

• “Interests are not formulated prior to the uses (and abuses) of memory /.../, but rather, memory and interest become interdependent, as political meanings and interests emerge in the struggle over past and future.“ (30)

Polish ex-PM Jarosłav Kaczynski ......when negotiating the new EU voting system: (one that would tie the voting strength to the size of a country's population)

"We are only demanding one thing, that we get back what was taken from us.... If Poland had not had to live through the years of 1939-45, Poland would be today looking at the demographics of a

country of 66 million.“ Interview to Polish National Radio,

quoted in BBC NEWS, 21 June 2007

Political claim-making by drawing on collective, national memory

US President G.W. Bush, justifying his decision to deplore more troops to IraqKansas City, Missouri, 22.8.2007

“I'm going to limit myself to one argument that has par-ticular significance today. Then as now, people argued the real problem was America's presence [in Vietnam] and that if we would just withdraw, the killing would end. /... /one unmistakable legacy of Vietnam is that the price of America's withdrawal was paid by millions of innocent citizens whose agonies would add to our voca-bulary new terms like "boat people," "re-education camps," and "killing fields." ...

Legitimating policy through historical analogy

THANK YOU!