Hazel Gold and Angelika Bammer | Now You See It, Now You Don’t: Scientists, Humanists, and Collective Memory
Collective memory—sometimes referred to as public memory, or social (or cultural) memory—is a term commonly used in the humanities. It posits the act of remembering as ineluctably linked to what the French sociologist Maurice Halbwachs (who is credited with elaborating the concept) called the “social frameworks” of memory such as family, class, ethnic, national or religious communities. Within these social frameworks, an individual’s recollection of events is shaped by the shared experience of that event as the group in question frames it. Cognitive scientists, on the other hand, speak in terms of personal memory, distinguishing among three types—procedural, semantic, and episodic—that enable individuals to register and recall a range of experiences. How do we go from the multiplicity of private, individual memories to the potential unity of collective memory? Inversely, can the collective memory of an event shared by a social group influence the way an individual recollects her experience of that same event? For humanists the concept of collective memory is a useful analytical tool, while scientists find it questionable, if not useless to their inquiries. Can we--humanists and scientists—talk across these differences and, if so, how? Our discussion will address this question on the basis of a CMBC-sponsored seminar in the field of Memory Studies to see what common ground may exist to facilitate bridges between scientific and humanistic inquiry in this field. [February 24, 2015]