Collective Memory and Oral Text

Abbreviations

Theoretical issues←19 | 20→←20 | 21→

I Collective memory: definitions, types, functions

1 Memory: collective or social?

The terms collective memory (Pol. ‘pamięć zbiorowa’), social memory (‘pamięć społeczna’), group memory (‘pamięć grupowa’), historical memory (‘pamięć historyczna’), or cultural memory (‘pamięć kulturowa’) can all be found in literature on the subject. As noted by Stefan Bednarek (2010: 101), ‘this terminological abundance may well underestimate the issue, but, on the other hand, it allows for a whole array of semantic distinctions. Although all these terms relate to one and the same area, they nevertheless differ in scope’.

The researchers that seem to favour the term collective memory include Maurice Halbwachs (1992), Krzysztof Pomian (2006), Paul Ricoeur (2004), Andrzej Szpociński (2006), Jan Assmann (2008, 2009), Jacek Nowak (2011), and Barbara Szacka (2006, 2012). The term social memory is used by Marian Golka (2009). For some (e.g. Kamilla Biskupska 2011 and Krzysztof Malicki 2012), these two terms happen to be used interchangeably. Yet, some others make deliberate attempts at keeping them apart (for example, the Polish scholars Marian Golka and Barbara Szacka). The divergence that Golka (2009:14) finds between one and the other has to do with the connotations of the corresponding adjectives, social (‘społeczna’) and collective (‘zbiorowa’):

What the adjective social brings to mind is not only collective memory, but also individual memory, which is the one that relates to social issues and is conditioned by social factors. The adjective collective, or group, in turn, may denote a more real [Pol. reistyczny] understanding of memory, as some form of a collective entity.

That Szacka (2012: 16) has opted for the term collective memory comes with advances in social psychology:

Over the last quarter of a century psychology has confirmed Halbwachs’ intuitions about social conditioning of individual memory. (…) It was the recognition of the influence which social factors exert upon individual memory that brought about the concept of ‘social memory’. This is why I assumed that for me, as a sociologist, collective memory is a better general term.

Accordingly, in one of her other works, Szacka (2006: 38) suggests that the term collective memory should be superordinate in relation to social memory, the latter often being considered to be merely informal:←21 | 22→

Edited by Mirosław Bańko, Inny słownik języka polskiego points to the following four definitions of społeczny:

relating to society, involving its character, ways of organisation, or functions its individual members perform in it;

The meaning of the adjective społeczny seems to be extended in Praktyczny słownik współczesnej polszczyzny (edited by Halina Zgółkowa):

Bound with society, relating to society, belonging to society, as a product of society as a whole or of its part; collocations: social system, class, social group, social movement, social transformations, great/poor social awareness, reforms, social changes;

Now, collective ‘zbiorowy’ is given the following definitions: ‘relating to a certain group of people or to a set of things; characteristic of a given set; composed of many units, being a part of a given set; group-like [Pol. gromadny], communal [Pol. kolektywny]’ (SJPDor, http://doroszewski.pwn.pl), ‘relating to a group of people, or (seldom) to sets of things and phenomena’ (ISJP, II, 1305), ‘relating to a group of people or a set of things’ (PSWP, XLIX, 84).

As evidenced in the above definitions, social is related to some general grouping, the whole of society and with social structures. This means that social memory could be understood as a subtype of collective memory, as the latter involves various social groupings, including society as a macrostructure as well as various bigger or smaller microstructures, such as social units of a generational, regional, or subcultural character. I would then opt for collective memory as a superordinate term, whereas social memory would be – next to generational memory, or group memory – one of the subtypes of collective memory. In other words, collective memory embraces various groupings, from society as the biggest to many smaller ones. However incomplete, the following scheme is meant to illustrate some of these distinctions:

2 Collective memory: literal or metaphorical?

There does not seem to be any general consensus as to whether social/collective memory should be taken literally or metaphorically. This echoes the question Paul Ricoeur (2004: 123) asks in relation to what it is that constitutes the actual object of memory processes: who it is that we can ascribe to both pathos (memory reception) and praxis (memory retrieval).

Let us note that even in reference to individual (personal) memory, that is how ‘the inner man [is[remembering himself’ (Ricoeur 2004: 98), Ricoeur uses several metaphorical expressions: ‘spacious palace’ of memory, the storehouse, or the sepulchre ‘where the variety of memories (…) are “stored away”’ (Ricoeur 2004: 98–99). Elżbieta Tarkowska (2012: 29) observes that identifying memory in terms of a store, a supermarket, a reservoir from which relevant themes, subjects ←23 | 24→and objects are derived, is what keeps on recurring in current reflections on memory. According to Astrid Erll, both concepts of, respectively, “cultural” and “collective” memory, have to do with one and the same conceptual metaphor:

A similar position is taken by Paul Connerton, who believes that Halbwachs’ concept of collective memory is still plausible providing that we understand that much of what the term embraces is simply interpersonal, rather than collective or social, communication (cf. Connerton 1989: 38).←24 | 25→

3 Collective memory: a sum total of individual memories, or a supraindividual construct?

The question posed in the title of this section involves, in fact, a problem of a relationship between individual (personal) memory and collective memory. Since the publication of M. Halbwachs’ now classic Cadres sociaux de la memoire (Pol. edition: Społeczne ramy pamięci), it has been assumed that individuals’ memories are closely tied in with the social group these individuals belong to. Halbwachs argues that memory depends on its social environment (Halbwachs 1992: 4). It is in a society that an individual acquires memories, learns to identify and recognise them, and where his memories happen to be fostered by what others remember: ‘no one ever remembers alone’ (Ricoeur 2004: 122). A similar position is taken by S. Schmidt, whose argument is that memory and remembering acquire their social dimension not because they are located outside the responsible actors, but because they become dependent on reversible processes of expectation and ascription/attribution. This creates an impression that members of a community tend to think in a given way. In the context of collective memory, then, remembering amounts to a representation which is a derivative of memory understood as either a structure or a competence (cf. Schmidt 2008: 196).

What is, then, collective memory, if it is related to individual memory? Is collective memory merely a background referent for what individuals remember, or is it an independent and autonomous construct?

‘[I]t must first be said that it is on the basis of a subtle analysis of the individual experience of belonging to a group, and through the instruction received from others, that individual memory takes possession of itself’ (Ricoeur 2004: 120). If so, collective and individual memories seem to be closely related, conditioning and supplementing each other, with any attempt at telling them apart being a futile exercise. This is what stems also from Ricoeur’s phenomenological conception of memory: ‘(…) it is this capacity to designate oneself as the possessor of one’s own memories that leads to attributing to others the same mnemonic phenomena as to oneself’ (Ricoeur 2004: 128).

Nevertheless, in Halbwachs’ original insight, collective memory is not meant to be a sum total, or an accumulation, of individual memories, each projected by members of one and the same society. The social framework of memory includes ‘the instruments used by the collective memory to reconstruct an image of the past which is in accord, in each epoch, with the predominant thoughts of the society’ (Halbwachs 1992: 40). An individual remembers assuming the point of view of the group he/she belongs to, but, on the other hand, the memory of the group finds its reflection in what its individual members remember. What ←25 | 26→occurs, then, in-between these two kinds of memories is reciprocal relations, with collective memory being more than a mere sum of individual memories. One notable example of someone who regards collective memory as a sum of individual memories is Jacek Nowak (2011: 9), who states that ‘Collective memory includes in its scope individual memories of the people that constitute societies’. Moreover, he also claims that collective memory is not exclusively a combination of individual memories, or a set of past-representing ideas, but is ‘an act of communication, an activity that results in memory being handed down and recreated in rituals and symbols; the way we remember the past is constantly being adapted to the way we build our identity’ (Nowak 2011: 54).

4 Memory vs. history: relational possibilities

Whenever memory has been approached – in sociology, history, anthropology, or social psychology – some relationship between memory and history has been assumed. These postulated relations appear important in the present book for ←26 | 27→two main reasons. First of all, history is a reference point for memory and, thus provides its definitional basis. The other reason is that the texts we examine here (songs, tales, stories, legends) make references to both local and general history, and are then registers of what and how the country folk as much as the town dwellers remember in relation to history, be it national, communal, or individual. At the same time, memory (what we remember) and remembering (what we recollect) are the gist and parts of the names of some folk genres (e.g. the Polish generic name opowieści wspomnieniowe and its English counterpart recollections are clearly bound with, respectively, wspominać and to recall as two of the terms for ‘to remember’).

4.1 Memory versus history: disintegrating approaches

That collective memory and history are antithetical to each other goes back to Maurice Halbwachs’ canonical insight that the direction history follows is precisely opposite to the direction that can be found in collective memory (cf. J. Assmann 2011: 28: “it [history] works in a reverse way from collective memory”).

This calls for criteria that may serve the purpose of differentiating between memory and history. One proposal comes from Andrzej Szpociński, who distinguishes three sets of parameters, all complementary in some sense:

If so, the postulated divergences between history and collective memory¹ can be presented in terms of binary oppositions. Nevertheless, it should be stressed that Szpocińki’s parameters are, in fact, idealisations, whereas the divergences between memory and history are a matter of degree and measure. This is why in comparison to a historiographic text, a collective memory driven text will tend to be biased, simplified, temporally cyclic, emotionally-loaded, poetic, equivocal etc.

This binary oppositeness of, or antithetical relationship between, history and memory, should be understood in terms of complementary distribution: if a given feature appears in memory, it does not in history and vice versa. And so, in terms of:

Whereas collective memory looks at the group from inside – and is at pains to present it with an image of its past in which it can recognise itself at every stage and so exclude any major changes – history leaves out any periods without change as empty interludes in the story in order that the only worthwhile historical facts are those that reveal an event or a process resulting in something new. (J. Assmann 2011: 28)

In contradistinction to memory,

What history is concerned with is a critical destruction of spontaneous memory. In history’s eyes, the memory of a group appears always suspicious because it aims at the group being disintegrated or persecuted. History may well preserve and appreciate museums, souvenirs, memorabilia, statues, all as useful objects of historical research, but it anyway deprives them of what it is that makes them symbolically significant places of collective memory – lieux de memoire. (Nowak 2011: 35)