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Article: Transformations between history and memory.(Part I: What Does It Mean for a Community to Have a Memory?)(Essay)
- Article from:
- Social Research
- Article date:
- March 22, 2008
- Author:
CopyrightCOPYRIGHT 2008 New School for Social Research. This material is published under license from the publisher through the Gale Group, Farmington Hills, Michigan. All inquiries regarding rights should be directed to the Gale Group. (Hide copyright information)
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COLLECTIVE MEMORY--A SPURIOUS NOTION?
THERE IS NO NEED TO CONVINCE ANYBODY THAT THERE IS SUCH A THING as individual memory; memory attaches to persons in the singular. But does it attach to them in the plural? Although the term "collective memory" has gained currency and a whole new discourse has been built around it that fills extended library shelves, there are still inveterate skeptics who tenaciously deny the phrase has any meaning. It is of course easy to create a new term, but how can we be sure the term corresponds to anything in reality? Susan Sontag, for instance, is one of those who questioned and denied the meaning of this term. =Photographs that ...