| Abstract | "When we say "politics of memory," how many of us really mean that memory could constitute a politics? We aren't thinking of memory as some autonomous force that in and of itself dictates a political situation. Recent developments in sociology of memory further emphasize the blurred lines between past and present. Just as Emile Durkheim discarded the idea of the lonely suicidal individual, the sociology of memory, in exploring the social aspects of the mental act of remembering, rejects the existence of "mnemonic Robinson Crusoes." Memory is "a perpetually actual phenomenon,' writes Pierre Nora, "a bond tying us to the eternal present. It is common knowledge now that our memory of the past is affected by our present social environment. Scholars highlight this structured character of past recollections: The "relational setting" in which actors are located affects the depth, tone, and the very facts of their memories. This article can be seen as an attempt to build upon these recent developments in the domain of the sociology of memory. At the same time, it provides a more finegrained analysis of the structuring and relational character of collective memories.
|
