Hermeneutics, History and Memory by Gardner Philip;

Author:Gardner, Philip;
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Education
Publisher: Taylor & Francis Group
Published: 2010-01-18T00:00:00+00:00

The terms of this intricate relation – between past and present, between repetition and recollection – are perhaps most acutely pointed up in comparison between the distinctive approaches to memory undertaken, on the one hand by Freud (1856–1939), and on the other by the Durkheimian sociologist, Maurice Halbwachs (1877–1945). Freud’s approach accorded with that of nineteenth- century historicism in supposing that the past in memory could, in theory, be recovered – repeated – on its own terms, that individual memory constituted a vast repository of lived experience that, through a variety of strategies including psychoanalysis,108 could be brought to mind in its original form. In Hutton’s words, ‘Whatever we have experienced lies etched on our psyches. This moment of memory, which prompts us repeatedly in unexpected ways, can be drawn forth.’109 Despite the complex, demanding and potentially painful costs of the disciplined exercise of memory, its fundamental power promises that ‘(w)e can recover our deepest memories and so comprehend the true record of the course of our lives’.110 To the extent that this may be possible, then memory may be seen as ‘the hidden ground of history’,111 to be drawn upon alongside the ‘open’ ground of history, constituted by the archive sources upon which the principles of historicism have been traditionally operationalized. Alongside the archive of the document is the archive of the mind.

Halbwachs, by contrast, perceives memory as a social fact, after the teaching of his dominating intellectual influence, Durkheim.112 Memory seems intuitively to be a defining characteristic of the self, of what Carlyle saw as ‘one little inward Kingdom’.113 My memories are surely mine and no one else’s. For Halbwachs, however, this fundamental claim is mistaken: ‘we are the victims here of a rather natural illusion’.114 Memory is not in fact held ‘within the invisible enclosure of representation, locking it within our head, in the mind’.115 Rather, the form and function of memory are essentially social, carrying the remit for its disciplined investigation away from phenomenology and towards sociology.116 Though it may appear to us that remembering is the act of the reflecting individual, Halbwachs, as a scientist of social life, can tell us that the content of our memory is warranted not so much by the serial record of our experiences, but rather by the social conventions that govern what should be remembered and what should be forgotten, ‘by the meetings, within us, of currents that have an objective reality outside of us’.117 In this respect, as Megill argues, ‘(c)rucially, the Halbwachsian model holds that memory is determined by an identity (collective or individual) that is already established … fundamentally identity precedes memory.’118 Indeed, it is just those memories which appear as our most personal and private, and therefore most cherished, which are, in fact, ‘simply those that are sustained by the most complex patterns of multiple social connection’.119 This is the sense in which Halbwachs is able to speak of ‘collective’ memory, arguing that human beings never remember alone.120 Halbwachs’ project was to provide a sociological explanation, against Freud, as to why it is that we remember in discernible collective patterns.

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