On Collective Memory by Maurice Halbwachs

Author:Maurice Halbwachs
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: University of Chicago Press
Published: 2020-01-15T00:00:00+00:00

Conclusion

In the whole of the first part of this study I did not hesitate to follow the psychologists on their terrain. It is in fact with the individual that we observe dreams, the functioning of memory, and the disorders of aphasia, whether we self-examine ourselves or whether we interrogate others about what was going on in their minds. I was hence obligated to use this method of introspection which, so it seems, cannot be employed without at the same time admitting that the facts of consciousness that are hidden from societal observation also escape its operation. How could society in fact extend its power over these regions of the individual psyche in which it finds nothing that corresponds to its nature and of which it can perceive nothing? But how, on the other hand, could we have the opportunity of discovering in one or several consciousnesses anything that resembles the operation of the totality of all the others on each consciousness, since we place ourselves in the perspective of those who separate and isolate these consciousnesses as through a multitude of tight partitions?

It could however be the case that the psychologist who believes he is engaged in introspection proceeds no differently from the way in which he studies any other object, so that his observation is of value only to the extent that it is, as we say, objective. There are two possibilities. First, what he observes may be unique in its kind, so that there are no words which would permit him to express it. In this case he is not able to verify his observation by referring to the observations of others, nor could others conclude that he has not succumbed to an illusion. What can be the value of a description of this kind which disallows every possibility of collective verification in the present or future? Second (and this is certainly the case in regard to Bergson’s psychology), what the psychologist observes is perhaps not unique, so that there are words that allow him to express it. Let us acknowledge that this observation requires a particularly difficult kind of effort and that there exists an interval or gap between the expression and the thing expressed. But we are not faced with an impossibility and we can hope that, little by little, through habit, the effort will become less exacting and the expression more accurate. Will we however argue that there are certain aspects of states of consciousness that escape every expression but the feeling of which nevertheless can be indicated to those in whom these states appear? That is where introspection would begin; and the possibility of verifying one’s observation by those of others would not end there. But what would permit such verification, if not an agreement as to the meaning of the signs that reveal that we are in fact dealing with the same feelings that others have experienced before us? From the moment that the psychologist claims to explain to others what they should see within themselves, he exposes states of consciousness and exteriorizes them.

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