Social Memory. Classical Theories and New Perspectives [1. ed.] 9783770567393, 9783846767399

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Social Memory

Oliver Dimbath, Michael Heinlein

Social Memory Classical Theories and New Perspectives Translated from German by Mirko Wittwar

Bibliographic information published by the Deutsche Nationalbibliothek The Deutsche Nationalbibliothek lists this publication in the Deutsche Nationalbibliografie; detailed bibliographic data available online: http://dnb.d-nb.de All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, translated, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise, without prior written permission from the publisher. Title of the German Edition: Gedächtnissoziologie, Wilhelm Fink (UTB) 2017. © 2022 by Brill Fink, Wollmarktstraße 115, 33098 Paderborn, Germany, an imprint of the Brill-Group (Koninklijke Brill NV, Leiden, The Netherlands; Brill USA Inc., Boston MA, USA; Brill Asia Pte Ltd, Singapore; Brill Deutschland GmbH, Paderborn, Germany; Brill Österreich GmbH, Vienna, Austria) Koninklijke Brill NV incorporates the imprints Brill, Brill Nijhoff, Brill Hotei, Brill Schöningh, Brill Fink, Brill mentis, Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, Böhlau and V&R unipress. www.fink.de Cover design: Evelyn Ziegler, Munich Production: Brill Deutschland GmbH, Paderborn Editing: Chris Jones, Annika Ohlig ISBN 978-3-7705-6739-3 (hardback) ISBN 978-3-8467-6739-9 (e-book)

Table of Contents Introduction . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . vii 1 Time and Continuity . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1 1.1 What is Time? . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1 1.2 Experience of Time and Time Consciousness . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 4 1.2.1 Time and the Stream of Thought . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 5 1.2.2 Continuity . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 8 1.2.3 Inner-Time Consciousness . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 11 1.3 Time and Memory: Summary  . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 14 2 Trace, Selectivity and Orientation  . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 17 2.1 Current Recourses . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 17 2.2 Impressions . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 21 2.3 Predetermined Perception . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 22 2.3.1 Body and Mind . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 23 2.3.2 Perception and Memory . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 26 2.3.3 Memory and the Structure of Relevance  . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 29 2.4 Selectivity and Memory: Summary  . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 42 3 Consciousness of the Past . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 43 3.1 Schemata of Experience . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 44 3.2 Forgetfulness . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 48 3.3 Remember/ing as an Intentional Act? . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 50 3.3.1 Experiencing and Learning . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 51 3.3.2 Conscious Remembering . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 54 3.3.3 Identity as Self-Narration  . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 56 3.3.4 Persistent Memory . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 58 3.4 Summary and Transition: What is Social with Individual Memory? . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 65 4 Excursion: On Social Time . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 69 5 Pioneers of the Sociology of Memory . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 75 5.1 Collective Memory . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 75 5.1.1 Solidarity and Collective Consciousness . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 76 5.1.2 Social Frames of Reference  . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 85

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5.2 Pragmatic Remembering . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 96 5.2.1 Myths and Female Memory . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 97 5.2.2 Social Remembering . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 102 5.2.3 The Nature of the Past  . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 103 5.3 Social Phenomenology . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 106 5.3.1 Subjective Memory Context . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 108 5.3.2 Social Stock of Knowledge . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 112 5.4 Summary: Three Pillars of the Sociology of Memory . . . . . . . . . . . 113 6 Social Theories of Memory . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 115 6.1 Structural and Differentiation Theories . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 116 6.1.1 Pattern Maintenance as Function . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 116 6.1.2 System Memories . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 122 6.2 Knowledge-Sociological Concepts of Memory . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 132 6.2.1 The Social Construction of Memory . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 132 6.2.2 Communicative Memory . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 134 6.2.3 Remembrance Culture . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 135 6.2.4 The Formation of Memory . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 137 6.3 Practice-Theoretical Concepts of Memory  . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 139 6.3.1 Incorporated and Habitual Memory . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 141 6.3.2 The Memory of Objects . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 147 6.4 Summary: Social-Theoretical Points of Connection . . . . . . . . . . . . 150 7 Modernisation-Theoretical Perspectives of Social Memory . . . . . . . . 153 7.1 The Memory of Modernity . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 154 7.1.1 The Age of Oblivion . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 154 7.1.2 Enlightenment and Revolution . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 159 7.1.3 Capitalism and Acceleration . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 161 7.1.4 The Evolution of Social Memory . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 166 7.2 Post-Modern Memory  . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 169 7.3 Cosmopolitan Memory . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 173 7.4 Summary: Modernity and Memory . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 177 8 Conclusion and Prospects . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 179 References . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 189 The Authors  . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 207 Index . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 209

Introduction By the phrase ‘to have a skeleton in the cupboard’ we say that in the past somebody violated the social order, that there has not been any expiation for this violation, and that, in one way or another, the person concerned is still tainted by this; that this violation still remains with him or her. But when saying this, we don’t always intend to suggest that this person could certainly be connected to, as yet, undiscovered crimes, if only we looked closely enough. The metaphor of the skeleton in the cupboard also refers to all those minor sins for which we cannot forgive ourselves and which, as soon as we are reminded of them, burden us – such as if we have been unfaithful, have bad-mouthed somebody, have made fools of ourselves, or have hurt or even betrayed somebody. Such minor or major transgressions visit us in the form of a bad conscience; something which could traditionally be remedied by going to confession or, in our secular times, by going to a therapist. Given this, how much easier would things be if we could just take a little pill and purposefully forget about that stupid event that burdens us? Such ideas of beneficial oblivion have been around since antiquity, they have been a subject of literature and film, and are still today a matter of neurophysiology if it is about fighting the suffering caused by post-traumatic stress disorder. Simply deleting certain memories could be imagined if the memory was a store of past events from which anything could be removed if we do not want it anymore. Thus, as in Michel Gondry’s film Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind, we could simply undergo a treatment to forget about an unhappy love affair. However, to achieve this we would have to give away everything which might call such a memory back again, and all the friends of both parties would be obliged to never mention the person concerned anymore. The portrait, the ‘soundtrack’ of happier days, the cap knitted as a Christmas gift, and the slipper left behind are comparably easily disposed of. Things become more difficult, however, in the case of events belonging to the social world – joint activities: the memory of which is connected not to just one person but to certain places and to other people. Whatever triggers reminiscence is part of the environment into which we have been born and to whose order our bodies and minds have adapted. But regardless of whether it may be one day possible to manipulate perception or memory through medical intervention, we are confronted with issues of memory; of remembering and forgetting on a daily basis. When we complain about having a bad memory – not remembering something, or having forgotten something – the first places to turn to would be neuroscience and

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psychology. We naturally tend to associate our ability to remember with the functioning and efficiency of the brain. However, in this way we ignore those aspects of memory which cannot be explained in psychological or neuroscientific terms. This includes, for example, the fact that remembering does not come from deep within us but depends on previous experiences as well as on the situation we are in at a given moment (alone or together with other people, in a social gathering or at an official meeting) as well as on the way in which we perceive such situations. All this is closely connected to the fact that the way we are and the way in which we perceive ourselves at a given moment is a result of a continuous exchange with others or with the traces they have left. Consequently, culture and society are connected both to what we currently believe to be important and relevant and to our past experiences. In this book we intend to have a look at issues of memory, of remembering and forgetting which are not limited to the brain and to individual consciousness. Although, from an historical perspective, physiological and psychological perspectives have paved the way for memory research, today we have good reasons to assume that memory, remembering and forgetting are co-determined by – to put it in the words of social phenomenologist Alfred Schütz – the social world and environment of the individual and the social groups to which he or she belongs. Human relationships are connected to memory insofar as that, on one hand, they make memories possible, and on the other hand, they allow the individuals in the relationship to forget many things. The same applies with social structures, norms, values, roles and institutions – all these concepts from the conceptual-theoretical toolbox of sociology describe a selection of thematically determined possibilities for action, based on past events and developments. Indeed, these insights have already been discussed elsewhere,1 but what is lacking is a systematisation of insights concerning the issue of socially communicated memories as well as connecting sociological concepts of memory to the memory-theoretical research tradition. The book is intended to fill this gap, while at the same time highlighting the specificity and necessity of a sociological – rather than a psychological, historical or cultural-studies – perspective of memory, remembering and forgetting. Sociology, itself, is a very recent voice of the interdisciplinary concerto of memory research. However, it discusses memory, remembering and forgetting in a way which not only leads 1 Some of the works dealing with issues of social memory, remembering and forgetting include, among others, the overview presented by Jeffrey K. Olick and Joyce Robbins (1998), the introductory work by Barbara  A.  Misztal (2003b), the topical exploration by David Middleton and Stephen D. Brown (2005), the compilation of ‘classical’ passages of memory research by Jeffrey K. Olick, Vered Vinitzky-Seroussi and Daniel Levy (2011) of the compilation edited by Siobhan Kattago (2015).

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to new and unexpected insights but to innovative research questions and fields of application. Since history, by means of interviews with contemporary witnesses in the context of oral history, has opened up issues of memory2 and in the field of cultural studies the concept of memory has been important for quite some time;3 an extended and unspecific way of using the terms memory, remembering and forgetting has been established. This is also the case with regard to social or societal relationships. The starting point for this development has its origins in works critical of modernity and ideology, such as those by philosopher and literary scholar, Walter Benjamin, among others.4 Benjamin questions the desire to arouse or ignore memories, thus exploiting the past. In this way he creates important preconditions for thinking about the politics of memory, which is not only used by ruling elites to maintain power. Remembering also serves for creating and securing social peace in the wake of social conflicts, that are accompanied by the traumatisation of collectives, and which require a way of dealing with a bad past which is acceptable for all parties involved in the conflict. For example, in some cases it seems to be necessary to impose oblivion – or more precisely, amnesty – on a historically conditioned perpetrator-victim relationship between individuals or groups. In other cases, such as the memory of the Holocaust, the common hope of a ‘never again’ leads to a way of remembering which is maintained and politically controlled by selected institutions. A look at the history of memory research in the humanities, the social sciences or cultural studies, however, makes obvious that the interest in scientifically reflecting on issues of remembering and forgetting had mostly vanished in the post-war era. Only in the 1980s did Jan and Aleida Assmann again take up the concept of memory in the field of cultural studies. With their distinction between communicative and cultural memory they systematically examined both the ways in which social groups deal with their pasts and the ways in which social groups refer to cultural objects. Their widely-adopted considerations were inspired by classical memory-sociological positions – in 2 In this context there basically exist two lines of research focusing on the way in which contemporary witnesses remember: the oral history research of the science of history which, as a kind of ‘bottom-up history’, deals, sometimes critically, with the problem of the contemporary witness (see e. g. Plato, 1999; 2000), and social-scientific biography research which focuses on the remembering of life histories and life courses (see e. g. Rosenthal, 1995). 3 Such as the compilation by Jan Assmann and Tonio Hölscher (1988) and Jan Assmann’s (2011) monography on cultural memory as well as the more recent publications in the context of the work of Astrid Erll and Ansgar Nünning (see e. g. Erll, 2005; Erll &Nünning 2010). 4 In several passages of his work Benjamin deals with the issue of remembering – such as in his essay On the Concept of History (Benjamin, 2003). Lars Alberth (2014) discusses the issue of seizing a memory which is found in Benjamin.

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particular by Maurice Halbwachs’ theory of the collective memory. Meanwhile, the research of memory and remembering – memory studies – has become a gigantic interdisciplinary research field covering the science of history, archaeology, ethnology and folklore studies, literary science, theology and religious studies, social psychology, political science and, finally, sociology.5 Assessing the sociology of memory here cannot pursue all traces which, starting out from psychology and philosophy in the 19th century, lead to a genuinely sociological conception of social memory. We must limit ourselves to those currents, theories and names which, in our opinion, have been very influential; while minor branches of the history of theory are, at best, hinted at, while some basic or promising questions and issues of memory, remembering and forgetting will only be sketched. A general introduction to sociology is also something this book cannot offer – we assume a working knowledge of important technical terms, as well as a basic understanding of the issues of the discipline. For us it is important to point out theoretical and theory-historical connection points, to consider the topic of memory in the light of both relevant and influential sociological theories and theoreticians, and to point out fields of application and studies merely for the purpose of illustration. All of this is based on the assumption that questions of social memory can be found in all sociological theories and that these questions at the same time offer a connectable research orientation for the variety of specialized sociological fields, which has not yet been pursued or only with the help of insufficient equivalents for the concept of memory. Memory-relevant questions are found in the fields of economic and organisational sociology, educational sociology, the sociology of law, family sociology, sociology of science, sociology of work, industrial sociology and occupational sociology, the sociology of generations and the sociology of social inequality – to name but a few of the manifold points of connection. Accordingly, the history unfolded here of the theory of the sociological study of memory, remembering and forgetting is not only meant to inform the reader about the theory-systematic advantages of this perspective but to also encourage the reader to pursue this stimulating path of theory themselves. Our proposal is structured as follows: As memory is always connected to the phenomenon of time, and as time may not be understood to be naturally given but to be socially construed, we start with a short discussion of classical theories of time. Although the question as to whether remembering comes from time or time comes from remembering is somewhat like the chicken-and-egg problem, it is nevertheless helpful 5 Among these, one can count, since a couple of years ago, the US American journal Memory Studies as a special discussion forum.

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to start by clarifying the relation between past, present and future. We will see that in this way certain basic problems and crucial theoretical traditions of a sociology of memory will already become obvious (Chapter 1). In our second step we deal with some psychological and philosophical roots of the sociology of memory. In particular, we look at those theories that have already served as an inspiration for sociological theories of memory. What makes this section fruitful is broadening the horizon to include two dimensions of meaning of the concept of memory that are not commonly used in everyday understanding: firstly, that memory is not considered a purely intellectual-cognitive tool but a process in which the entire body is involved. Secondly, it is elaborated that memory is no simple store, but must be understood as a delegating orientation mechanism which refers to emerging situations (Chapter 2). Based on from such an expanded concept of memory, it becomes possible to work out related concepts in more detail. To these belong, apart from the still missing established components of the triad ‘memory – remembering – forgetting’, terms such as ‘event’, ‘occurrence’ and ‘experience’. Thus, the connected considerations still basically refer to the ego-logical perspective – the focus is on the individual’s consciousness of the past (Chapter 3). After having discussed issues of individual consciousness and memory, the step from the individual perspective to the consideration of social relations should not be made without some basic knowledge of the sociology of time. As yet, the ways in which societies deal with time has hardly been a topic of memory-sociologic questions. However, we believe it to be necessary to point out to some basic elements of this debate, since even a social or collective time consciousness may considerably influence the ways in which social memories work (Chapter 4). The main part of the book consists of an inspection and discussion of sociological theories, in view of their more or less explicitly presented memorytheoretical motifs. We begin by paying tribute to those sociologists who may be considered classical representatives of the sociology of memory. The focus here is on the Chicago School, which belongs to the tradition of American Pragmatism; on French sociology in the wake of Émile Durkheim and Maurice Halbwachs; as well as on the perspective of social phenomenology as significantly developed by Alfred Schütz (Chapter 5). Following this, we shed light on current social theories, including the aspects of social memories, social or collective memories and social oblivion. Among these, we address structure- and differentiation-theoretical approaches and the more recent sociology of knowledge and practice-theoretical approaches. This section demonstrates how crucial and yet insufficiently examined issues

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of social memory, remembering and forgetting are to this day in the context of sociological theory and where certain equivalents of memory-theoretical concepts are used (Chapter 6). Sociology has frequently been called a child of modern society, since its establishment as an academic discipline is chronologically in line with the first diagnoses of modernity. One element of these analyses of society is the discovery that the way of dealing with the social past has been shifted from remembering to forgetting. It therefore makes sense to question sociological social theory with regard to its memory motifs or to examine which temporal diagnostic impulses can be gained from this direction for a theory of social memory (Chapter 7). If the concepts of memory, remembering and oblivion are made fruitful for sociological use, a set of tools is gained with which we can describe how social actors – both individuals and collectives – base their actions on their own past. The sociology of memory demonstrated here takes into account the social construction of predictabilities derived from a long-term structure of knowledge. Seen in this way, social memories provide a key for answering the question of why social orders have developed in this way, and not in any other. One more word about the location within sociology itself: the sociology of memory is no special sociology. Due to its interest in the social constitution and meaningful construction of relations to the past, the sociology of memory deals with a fundamental issue of sociological theory building and is at odds with hyphenated sociologies and general sociology. As such a perspective is connectable to any research field of sociology while at the same time providing new research questions, we believe it to be helpful – at least for the time being – to call those theory projects and empirical projects as dealing with the development of social orders sociology of memory. This may be unprecise but clamps together terms such as remembrance research, sociology of social memories, sociology of oblivion or memory studies.

Chapter 1

Time and Continuity If we want to trace the meaning of memory, remembrance and oblivion, it is obvious that we must consider the concept of the past. This is in line with our common understanding, according to which memory has always to do with things of the past: it has the function of opening up the past via memories. However, if we have a closer look at this assumption, a new, somewhat more complicated context is revealed: if memory is a tool allowing for reaching back to the past, it must be connected to the phenomenon of time and timeliness. This becomes obvious if we consider that memory can always only operate in the present but seems to deal with events which are over. Thus, to understand memory, at first the connection between time and memory must be clarified. Our first step will be to make some considerations about the phenomenon of time and show that concepts that stem from considering time are also useful for discussing questions of memory. In a second step, we deal with selected theoreticians of time whose findings result in conceptions of memory or remembering. These positions are oriented towards the perception of the individual and form the basis for an understanding of social time. Finally, we make a synthesis of the philosophical interpretations of how time and memory are related to each other and point to sociological points of connection. 1.1

What is Time?

In his science-fiction classic, published in 1895, British author Herbert George Wells pursues the idea of travelling through time. The opening of his book is a discussion in the course of which the novel’s main character, who is familiar with the natural sciences, tries to convince his scientifically-minded friends of the possibility of travelling through time. Time, the nameless protagonist explains, is a fourth dimension in addition to the three spatial dimensions, through which man must theoretically be capable of moving: “He can go up against gravitation in a balloon, and why should he not hope that ultimately he may be able to stop or accelerate his drift along the Time-Dimension, or even turn about and travel the other way?” (Wells, 1983, p. 8). As a result, the protagonist succeeds, by help of a self-constructed time machine, in travelling to the distant future; more precisely to the year 802,701. Eight days later, the time traveller returns from the future to the year 1895, to tell his contemporaries

© Brill Fink, 2022 | doi:10.30965/9783846767399_002

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about the gruesome scenario awaiting mankind.1 When his story is met with doubt and disbelief, he decides to enter his time machine once again and to travel to the year 902,701. This time he furthermore equips himself with a camera, to substantiate his story by help of photographs. But he never returns from this trip. We chose Wells’s novel not to underline its significance in the genre of socially critical science fiction. Rather, Wells’ thought experiment in time travel here serves as a preparation for sociological considerations on the question of ‘What is Time?’ How does time manifest itself in this example? Which ‘essence of time’ becomes visible in the Time Machine? Travelling through time, described as a kind of gliding by Wells, happens along a timeline which is imagined as running straight, allowing the time traveller to move to any future or past point in time with the help of his machine. This – and it is precisely this that makes the thought experiment charming – is quite fundamentally not in line with our everyday experience. The fate that man must endure without a time machine – that on the one hand time runs out irretrievably and, on the other, that it cannot be arbitrarily extended towards the future by the individual – is cancelled by way of a technological invention. For us, the timeline points just into one direction, and our everyday movement along it cannot be accelerated or slowed down.2 What makes Wells’s time travel remarkable is the fact that the protagonist, in contrast to his contemporaries, objectively returns to the present, which has become the past for him, and that he subjectively remembers it: he knows that he has already been there and, with a surplus of knowledge of the future, he meets people he knows from ‘his’ time and who do not have this knowledge. Due to time travel, his contemporary present becomes the past to which he may return at will by help of his time machine. At the same time the time traveller is capable of changing the course of events – for example, by telling his contemporaries about the distant future.3 1 In the distant future the traveler in time encounters the humanoid Eloi, who spend their carefree lives in childlike naivety, and the Morlocks, apeman-like beings living in gigantic caves below the ground. Soon he discovers that the price the unsuspecting Eloi have to pay for their pleasant lives is that they serve as food for the Morlocks. 2 However, this does not hold for our subjective perception of time, according to which we believe time to run, according to each situation, faster or more slowly. For more on this see further below. 3 Similar motifs are frequently found with (also less-demanding) science fiction, such as in the second part of the Back to the Future trilogy (Director: Robert Zemeckis, 1985, 1989, 1990) where the knowledge of sports results gained in the future serves for making a fortune by way of sports betting.

Time and Continuity

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For us non-time travellers, however, it is true that the past is substantially beyond our ability to act. We may return to places we have visited before, but we cannot live through or change actions and events which once happened there. The only possibility, although limited and very specific, to reach back into the past is with memory. On this, sociologist Niklas Luhmann writes: “Who […] has left his wallet may go back and fetch it: it will be there where he has left it. Who, on the other hand, has spent all his money, is left only with his memory as a mode of re-updating possibilities” (Luhmann, 1980, p.  41). Memory, in this case, means the individual re-imagination of a past event and of the options which were possible then but are impossible now. However, even memory allows for thought experiments: one can ask oneself: ‘What if?’ or ‘What else could I have done?’ – but this does not remove the fact of the past event and its consequences. Time is inseparably connected to irreversibility, or in other words: the essence of time seems lie precisely in producing irreversibility and irretrievability. What is gone is beyond any active intervention. Nothing will ever happen again within exactly the same context and in exactly the same way, producing exactly the same consequences. If now we want to answer the question of what time is, it becomes obvious that we become aware of time – and in which way it becomes a problem – if we encounter indications of the past. We then not only recognize that an event has happened and that it is over, but we may also ask ourselves how long ago it was. And like being able to set a clock, sometimes we wish to be able to turn back time to undo things. That this wish is illusory becomes obvious when we hit the limits of repeatability. Time is irreversible – it progresses inexorably, and the first kiss will forever remain the first. But still this does not explain what time is. However, at least for the purpose of our topic, one cannot not really leave it with Augustine who states: “What, then, is time? If no one asks me, I know what it is. If I wish to explain it to him who asks me, I do not know” (Augustine, 2010, p. 311). Sociology provides a way out of this dilemma which we have already roughly sketched out: the word time refers to dealing with transience and possibility, and many terms and objects connected to the word serve for reassuring this existential problem.4 Only an idea of time allows us to say what has been, what is, what might be, and what has not been, is not, and could not be. With time’s help we distinguish dream, fantasy, prophesy and memory as well as past, present and future. It is worthwhile to explore the problem of time further, by way of looking at the 4 From the point of view of a constructivist kind of sociology we might, alas, put it this way: “to define time as the interpretation of reality with regard to the difference between past and future” (Luhmann, 1976, p. 135).

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individual and his/her time. Neither can nor must anything be said about the nature of time, its shape and the question whether it is linear or curved. If we are interested in time as a precondition for memory, as an aspect of memory or in its ‘ravages’, it is sufficient to consider the question of how humans deal with the problem of before, now and after. Augustine does not leave his readers with the above quoted and somewhat despondent confession: “I know”, he continues his reflections on time, “if nothing passed away, there would be no past time; and if nothing were still coming, there would be no future time; and if there were nothing at all, there would be no present time” (Augustine, 2010, p. 311). 1.2

Experience of Time and Time Consciousness

Attempts at understanding the phenomenon of time can already be found in Greek antiquity. It is the root of the connection between time and space, which is familiar to our modern understanding of everyday life, and which Aristotle, among others, dealt with. According to this understanding, time has always been imagined as being connected to place and movement: How long does it take to cross the room, or how long does it take to get from a front to a rear position?5 In this section, however, we will not go back that far but deal with three prominent perspectives of recent philosophical history. The associated considerations on the issue of time and time consciousness provide important points of reference for considering the phenomenon of memory. The American psychologist and co-founder of pragmatism, William James (1842-1910), formulated fundamental insights on the issue of the consciousness and perception of time which served as inspiration and model for the two other positions to be presented here.6 By the concept of duration (durée), the French life philosopher and Nobel Prize Winner for Literature, Henri Bergson (1859-1941), who may be counted among the modern pioneers of humanistic theories on memory, developed an idea of becoming and vanishing which is connected to the experience of the awakened consciousness. The German philosopher and founder of phenomenology, Edmund Husserl (1859-1938), with whom we would like to conclude our overview, drafted a similar theory of time, 5 On this see the short analysis by Harald Weinrich (2010). 6 This hint comes from Alfred Schütz (1941) who recognized James, Bergson and Husserl as having crucially influenced the philosophy of his time. As he was as familiar with the exchange between Bergson and James as he was with Husserl’s admiration of James’s considerations, he made comparisons between James’s pragmatist psychology and Husserl’s phenomenology.

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also based on individual consciousness. However, his considerations on the inner time consciousness provide a more detailed idea of how the consciousness deals with time. 1.2.1 Time and the Stream of Thought In his main work of 1890, The Principles of Psychology, William James (18421910) introduces the term stream of thought (James, 1890). With the help of the metaphor of a flowing river he tries to answer the question of how thought may move from one subject to another, without creating any feeling of discontinuity. Why do we not perceive it as a break when our attention is moved away from the book in our hands to the drink on the table in front of us, to the TV or to the ringing of the telephone? Why do we have a feeling that our perception is ‘flowing’ without interruption? According to James, such an uninterrupted movement of the mind could not be imagined if our consciousness perceived only one of the currently focused subjects at a time – that is, the book, the drink or the TV. Rather, he assumes that each subject of perception is embedded in an environment to which it is related. As consciousness is provided with ideas of objects and their environments, it includes the environments of the focused-on objects into perception and this way ‘flows’ from one object to another. Accordingly, our consciousness does not only perceive the drink on the table but also the fact that – perhaps together with other objects – it is placed on the table which again is part of the furniture of the room and so on. If attention-driven perception changes, this contrasting embeddedness results in ‘soft’ transitions being created within the stream of thought. These transitions are existent even if we perceive situational changes – such as the glass suddenly toppling over, or the TV set being switched off. Thus, two things are crucial for perceptual consciousness to be experienced as persistent: the object to which consciousness is directed, and the contrast that the object creates against the background of its environment. These are the thoughts James starts from when dealing with the issue of the time consciousness. For, as with the relationship between the subject of perception and the context of the object, reflecting on time requires a particular construction. Thus, according to James, it is not possible to experience time if one imagines each present moment like a string of pearls made of sensory impressions. In this case, one secluded experience of consciousness would be followed by another one, and there would be no connection between different moments. Then, consciousness could only live in each respective moment and would not be capable of collecting experiences and of creating expectations. Thus, with regard to the problem of the time consciousness, there must be a chronological context which makes sure that continuity is established

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Chapter 1

between each subject of perception. This context is provided by the present which, in the individual consciousness is not a short moment that is already over in the same instant, but is perceived and experienced as being extended. From this James concludes that sensory impressions are abstractions by the mind which, like a reverberation or an echo, stay within the consciousness for some time and fade out only gradually. This again means that within the consciousness the past does not start immediately but only develops by the fading out of each present sensory impression. The same applies – to a lesser extent – to the future in the sense of a foretaste of upcoming impressions. James argues that the “lingerings of old subjects, these incomings of new, are the germ of memory and expectation” (James, 1886, p. 375). Only this way, he says, the consciousness is provided with a continuity which may be called a stream. If we relate these considerations to time itself, it becomes obvious that it cannot be experienced directly – according to James, most of it consists of non-existent moments: obviously the past is no more, real present is over before being understood, and the future is as yet non-existent. Given such a problem, the consciousness reaches back to the intellectual construction of a “specious present” (James, 1886, p. 377).7 This present, according to James, is tantamount to a saddle that allows for both forward and backward vision. Quite in the sense of ancient philosophy, James combines the construction of subjectively perceived timelines with the perception of distances within space: A specific point in time corresponds to a specific position in space. Only by way of a spatially derived conception of time, he says, is it possible for the consciousness to classify several moments in time according to the sequence of before and after. Thus, the perception of time requires its spatialization. However, this does not fully explain how time can be perceived as flowing – in which way are these points connected to each other within the framework of a specious present? James categorically rules out any pure sense of time which we would have to find when completely losing ourselves in contemplation and shutting out any sensory impression from our environment. Even in case of secluded contemplation, he states, one reaches back to experiences coming from the experience of fulfilled time. Accordingly, no consciousness can imagine time without any contents of consciousness. And these contents ensure that consciousness perceives time as flowing: according to James, an instantaneously experienced content is constantly compared to previous and subsequent experiences of content, so that the specious present is perpetuated in a continuous stream of consciousness.

7 Above we have been presented with an accordingly-derived construction, in the form of permanent present (Luhmann).

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Since this basic form of time perception is only suitable for grasping very short intervals – as long as the echo of a sensory impression has faded away – we make do with the symbolic concept of counting and measuring. Longer chronological intervals such as hours or days, however, are not imagined according to the perceived length of one hour or one day but as names or streams of data: three hours ago, two days from now, in the morning, at noon, in the evening, yesterday, today, tomorrow. But how is it possible that the perception of time can deviate so much from the measured time? Time in which we experience a lot seems to go by in the blink of an eye, but in our memories, we perceive it as long. On the other hand, a period of time with nothing much happening seems to be very long. But when remembering it later, not much comes to mind – a hospital stay of several weeks may then feel like one day. On this James notes that [t]he length in retrospect depends obviously on the multitudinousness of the memories which the time affords. Many objects, events, changes, many subdivisions, immediately widen the view as we look back. Emptiness, monotony, familiarity, make it shrivel up. (James, 1886, p. 390)

The situation is similar concerning the fact that when growing older we have the impression that chronological intervals are shorter. This impression, James assumes while reaching back to psychological examinations of his time, comes from the observation that the apparent length of a time-interval at a given epoch of a man’s life is proportional to the total length of the life itself. […] it is certain that, in great part at least, the foreshortening of the years as we grow older is due to the monotony of memory’s content, and the consequent simplification of the backward-glancing view. In youth we may have an absolutely new experience, subjective or objective, every hour of the day. Apprehension is vivid, retentiveness strong, and our recollections of that time, like those of a time spent in rapid and interesting travel, are of something intricate, multitudinous and long-drawn out. But as each passing year converts some of this experience into automatic routine which we hardly note at all, the days and the weeks smooth themselves out in recollection to mere contentless units, and the years grow hollow and collapse. (James, 1886, p. 391)

Vice versa, the prolongation of the perception of time in moments of boredom is due to the fact that attention is directed to the passing of time as such. James considers this phenomenon as a result of expecting new impressions which simply will not come – in the light of expectation, each minute becomes an eternity. Yet still, these considerations on the subjective prolongation and foreshortening of time do not answer the question of how it is possible to recognize

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and interpret sequences of time in the environment. A simple explanation would be that the outward processes are forces which are memorized by the brain and that processes happening within the brain are memorized by the mind. On this, however, James notes that the successive sequence of emotions is not necessarily connected to the feeling of a successive process – and in this way he comes back to the problem of the connection of mutually dependent moments of perception in an extended present. The perception of processes must, in every moment, be aware of the shape of a longer process context. If – as suggested by James – we imagine the objective process of continuity as a horizontal line, the process context of several moments of the past, of the present and the future appears as a vertical line moving along the horizontal line. The image of the vertical line – and indeed not the image of a point! – symbolises the simultaneity of several past and future, however topically attributable, contents. Thus, the capability of being aware of time is the result of psychic processes happening around the phenomenon of extended present. Everything beyond this interval results inevitably in the production of signs and symbols, as longer periods of time can only be represented with their help. 1.2.2 Continuity Henri Bergson (1859-1941) – although starting out from different preconditions – also pursues the question of how consciousness experiences time. In his book Time and Free Will (French title: Essai sue les données immédiates de la sonscience), published in 1889, he looks for ‘pure’ or ‘true’ time, a kind of time that is free of any artificially imposed spatial or mathematical reflection. This way he decidedly turns away from space-related concepts of time as they have existed since ancient philosophy and can also be found in William James. He makes it his task to break up the connection of time and space as being naturalized by everyday perception. By the example of the stroke of the church bell Bergson demonstrates that there are two possibilities of perception: the first one is remembering each first stroke of the church clock, meaningfully organising the discreet strokes after the final one and memorising them as the quality of the high noon chime. The second possibility refers to purposefully counting the strokes, ignoring the overall impression of the chiming and analysing the time intervals of the sequence of sounds. In this case the chiming is spatialized, by imagining it as a series of points. From this Bergson concludes two complexes or, to have it in his own words, “two kinds of multiplicity” of perceptions and emotions: “(1) material objects counted in space; (2) conscious states, not countable unless symbolically represented in space” (Bergson, 1950, p. 85). If we follow this line of argument, then we are provided with two ways of perceiving processes in our environment, from which, in turn, two fundamentally

Time and Continuity

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different ways of understanding time can be derived. One of these ways conforms with spatial thinking, by way of which perceptual contents are classified according to an imagined order: when we want to know what time it is, we may count, in the expectation of the bells chiming at regular intervals. Even if we are inattentive for a moment or our listening is disturbed by some other sound, we still know that the sequence of chimes was not, in fact, interrupted. We just imagine the missing chime along a symbolic line and conclude what time it is, without having heard each single chime. From this spatialized way of understanding time, on which the perception and measurement of time in modern societies is based, Bergson distinguishes the time of true or pure continuity. By pure continuity he means a conception of time that does not operate with numbers and thus spatialization, but comes directly from the manifoldness of the states of mind.. On this Bergson writes: “Pure duration is the form which the succession of our conscious states assumes when our ego lets itself live, when it refrains from separating its present state from its former states” (Bergson, 1950, p. 100). According to Bergson, only by ignoring reflective consciousness we are capable of grasping time other than according to the categories of space.8 It is important here that the non-spatial experience of time is not limited to the moment. Pure continuity simply consists of a different way of organising memory; it is not a sequence of separate events that is remembered, one after the other, but a ‘fused’ overall impression. As an example, Bergson gives a melody which is experienced, not as a sequence of single, punctual notes but as an interwoven series in the sense of the whole – as a “continuous or qualitative multiplicity with no resemblance to number” (Bergson, 1950, p. 105). The consciousness achieves this level of experience only if it abstains from imagining continuity symbolically. The slumberous effect of the ticking of a clock is achieved only if one does not think about the sound of the ticking or asks oneself at which tick one will fall asleep. As soon as one ignores perception being tied to spatialized symbols, it becomes obvious that perception may happen in a different way. The experience of time appears as being highly subjective and contingent – we may agree on being bored by something. But the way in which each person him/herself experiences this boredom as time passing too slowly, this cannot be negotiated. 8 Thus, Bergson formulates the objective of his considerations in an appropriately drastic manner (1950, p. 99): “But, misled by the apparent simplicity of the idea of time, the philosophers who have tried to reduce one of these ideas to the other have thought that they could make extensity out of duration. While showing how they have been misled, we shall see that time, conceived under the form of an unbounded and homogeneous medium, is nothing but the ghost of space haunting the reflective consciousness”.

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As it is pure quality and not quantity and is not equipped with any kind of technological aid, true continuity is intellectually difficult to grasp. However, as soon as one starts measuring it by help of suitable technologies – that is: transfers it into quantity – one already enters the logic of space, thus destroying pure quality. What makes the experience of continuity different from the observation of measurable time can be demonstrated by an example: when watching the seconds hand of a watch, one does not measure continuity. True continuity happens as a mutually permeating process of mind processes. Watching the movement of the hand counts individual events; the consciousness on the other hand goes on. If the hand is stopped, in front of our inner eye it may move on independently of external influences – the succession goes on in the inner mind. If the perceiving ego was switched off, the ticking of the watch would be no more than one individual tick in each instant. Thus, imagining time as continuity requires remembering previous events which have been perceived as being similar. Only then, as Bergson states, the qualitative overall impression of ticking can develop: Owing to the fact that our consciousness has organized them as a whole in memory, they are first preserved and afterwards disposed in a series: in a word, we create for them a fourth dimension of space, which we call homogeneous time, and which enables the movement of the pendulum, although taking place at one spot, to be continually set in juxtaposition to itself. (Bergson, 1950, pp. 109-110)

For Bergson, therefore, two realities coexist: on the one hand there is real space, with no continuity but in which events occur, on the other hand there is actual (inner) continuity with different states of mind, referring to the moment, permeating each other. These moments may be approximated to the outer events and be mentally separated from each other. However, this requires a mental operation that compares both realities to each other, resulting in a symbolic idea of continuity which is similar to the principle of the spatial (see Bergson, 1950, p. 109). Against this background, Bergson distinguishes ‘pure’ or ‘original’ perception of time, deriving from individually experienced sequences of events, from an idea of time which has been shaped socially or culturally. He calls the spatial experience of time a “order of succession in duration” (Bergson, 1950, p. 101) which is so dominating that its artificiality can no longer be recognized. Thus, Bergson makes vigorous efforts to unmask this socially and culturally mediated order as being inauthentic. The diagnosis of the present hidden behind his argument describes a spatialisation which slowly permeates qualitative-continuity-related perception. According to Bergson, perception, due to its progressive orientation towards the logic of space, loses the

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quality of original, unobstructed perception: “Consciousness, goaded by an insatiable desire to separate, substitutes the symbol for the reality, or perceives the reality only through the symbol” (Bergson, 1950, p.  128). In other words: perception is covered by a spatialized symbolism of time and is no longer perceived authentically but in the sense of a homogeneous continuity. As a reason for such a deformation Bergson states that a symbolically shaped perception is more suitable for social everyday life, as it conforms with the rules of everyday language. These two qualities of perceiving time can be reconstructed by many subjects of remembrance which can be communicated by using the system of symbols of language and are connected to emotions. Our memory of our first year at school can be called up by reaching back to our knowledge of the conditions of schooling, the location of the school building and how it was built. Yet it may also come as a surprise, for example, when in the hallway of some office I recognize the smell of my school. This recognition is rarely a mere registering, but it is connected to the highly subjective experiences in the hallways and classrooms of the school: our fear of being reprimanded by the teacher when we were late, or the uneasiness of having to sit in the hallway alone, after having been sent out of class. 1.2.3 Inner-Time Consciousness In the case of Edmund Husserl (1859-1938), his work on a theory of time is closely linked to the development of phenomenology, and he has gone down in the history of philosophy as its pioneer and pathfinder. His dealing with the topic of time stretches over many years, in the course of which he developed, changed, worked over or discarded concepts and points of view. Here we will not pursue his search, to be found in many essays, lectures and bequested fragments, in the sense of reconstruction, but we will focus on some considerations which are decisive for thinking about the problem of time.9 At first, Husserl deals with a psychological-genetic definition of time. Accordingly, once again the focus is not on the problem of an objective time outside consciousness but on the question of how temporal objects are perceived by the individual.10 According to Husserl, time can be experienced by 9

10

A detailed reconstruction of the theoretical path pursued by Husserl until he achieved his theory of time consciousness is provided by Rudolf Bernet (1985) in his introduction to his edition of Husserl’s writings on the issue of time. Also, the explanation, presented here, of Husserl’s theory of time is based on these elaborations. In this context, the question remains if the time consciousness may be understood to be an independent phenomenon or only a sub-aspect of other kinds of consciousness, such as perception, empathy or imagination.

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an individual when perceiving permanent objects. As an example of such an object he chooses – like Bergson – the melody which is revealed as such to the consciousness only if the previous notes ‘reverberate’ according to the way in which they are related to each following note. Husserl calls this co-perception or specific way of remembering past phases of objects retention: the consciousness grasps the first information about a subject while at the same time recapitulating the phase of past events. For perceptual consciousness this means that the interplay of retention and now-perception is rearranged in each moment of perception. Concerning this, Husserl speaks of retentional modification.11 With this argument Husserl turns against the assumption that the present can only be experienced as a disconnected series of now-moments. The Now cannot exist now and then be gone in the next moment; from the point of view of consciousness it is extended to a certain degree. We may imagine this as a lunar halo of an immediate past and an immediately-following future which surrounds the present. For consciousness, the present is a field consisting of a Now, a no-more-Now and a not-yet-Now. However, with the concept of retention alone it is not possible to describe the conscious memory of past events. This is why Husserl introduces another term which he calls re-remembering. In contrast to Bergson, for whom the past can only be recalled in the form of symbols or images, but cannot be reproduced, Husserl assumes that the mode of re-remembering reproduces a past perception: by way of re-remembering the object of perception is literally made present. In this context, the difference between the re-remembering mode of retention and remembering is not in the latter being farther away in the past. Rather, re-remembering presupposes the existence of retention. However, there is nothing that still resonates as a current sensory impression; in the consciousness the past becomes newly present. For example, when sitting at the desk and writing these lines I am able to purposefully – and very vividly – remember a boat trip last summer. Husserl wonders how it is possible that I may even remember one or another detail more accurately than I perceived it at the time. He solves the problem by assuming that remembering follows a double intentionality. The experience of present memory, that is my desk-reality, is interwoven with my past experience. However, when thinking about the boat trip I do not reach back to the impressions as they were at the time of making this experience. The original impression, that is the first, unbiased impression of the boat trip, is not drawn from the past but develops in my current present, 11

Those expectations aiming at the future as being connected to a temporal object are called protentions by Husserl.

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in connection with the existing retentions. According to Husserl, memory is a sensation rather than a thought process. The interaction of retention and original impression takes place anew at every moment. Retention enables consciousness to change from one moment to the other, in the sense of retentional modification. The distinction between before and after is made in the course of this constant change and adjustment of the consciousness. Since retentions are understood as impressions that reverberate in time again and again, an inner experience of time becomes possible. A chronological mark is inscribed into the chain of interrelated or interwoven original impressions (such as: what was before, what was then?). Only in this way it is possible for the consciousness to take notice of longer processes – such as a melody. In addition, there develops a horizon between a memorized past and the current present which I may fill up by remembering. Only in this way does it becomes possible to add details to a remembered sequence which may start with the boat trip last summer. While remembering – yet always in the current present – I go through past states of mind which result from retentions: the boat trip, arriving at the island, the visit to the beer garden, the cool drink I had been longing for, and so on. I may continue this until returning to my desk again. For us it is important to see that Husserl’s theory of time, which has proven to be the starting point and source of friction for a number of renowned philosophers,12 is a theory of memory: the experience of time is only possible if remembering takes place. Not least by the motif of the memorising resort he provides a significant model for Alfred Schütz’s social phenomenology, which we will discuss later in more detail. In this context, Husserl develops the concept of the inner time consciousness by way of two different modes of remembering: only due to the combination of retention and recollection is the consciousness capable of experiencing time. Retentive consciousness itself can get by without an idea of time; only by constantly progressing can the consciousness grasp the immanent object of time (such as a continuous sound) as such and attribute its chronological markers. Husserl speaks of temporal positions (Zeitstellen).13

12 13

Here we must firstly refer to Martin Heidegger (1962) and his main work Being and Time. In his later works, Husserl discusses the question of the consequences the problem of the individual time consciousness has for the analysis of practical social life and for the development of an intersubjective history. However, as, first of all, he is interested in issues of the rationality of the historical process and of historiography, many problems have remained unsolved which have to do directly with the issue of perceiving and experiencing time. Also, for this, see the summary and elaborations on the reception history of Husserl’s theory of time in Rudolf Bernet (1985).

14 1.3

Chapter 1

Time and Memory: Summary

Against this background, what can we now say about time, and what can be made useful for a sociological understanding of memory, remembering and forgetting? Time, as we have seen, is no outer, objective phenomenon but is constructed by consciousness. All three philosophers agree that the perception of passing time or of continuity in the sense of a ‘flowing’ of time is only possible if conscious experiences, which have passed quickly, can be recalled. In this way the present existing within the consciousness is extended, both ‘backwards’ and ‘forwards’. On the basis of this experienced extension of the present – called specious present by William James – the consciousness is capable of memory distinguishes between past and future, which does not refer to static states, however. In any new moment current perceptions are compared to memories and referred to expectation, so that the consciousness itself is in a constant process of change. These theses are supported by neuroscientific insights. What happens if the capability of memory is disturbed, becomes clear from reports about people suffering from severe brain injuries due to illness or accidents. One such case is the story of British conductor and choirmaster, Clive Wearing, whose brain, because he caught herpes at the age of 47, is no longer capable of storing sensory impressions and experiences for longer than a few minutes. For him, as his wife Deborah has it, it is “Forever Today”.14 Clive Wearing experiences time only in short intervals, as he does not have any memories which could connect his present to the immediate past. Any present is forgotten after a very short span of time. In everyday practice this means, among other things, that he cannot remember when his wife has left the room – even if she disappeared for only for a moment. For him she has always been gone for ages, and he always welcomes her in an exuberant manner. There is agreement that time is understood to be the result of consciousness. Nevertheless, the philosophers discussed so far do not agree about the question of which status the past has in the present. Whereas James focuses on a flowing stream of perception and consciousness, in Bergson and Husserl we find stronger indications for the past being piled up and being maintained in the present in the long run. Accordingly, the example of the melody, to which both theoreticians of time refer, does not look like coincidence: in that the melody provides the context or frame for each note, the past literally reverberates in consciousness. For James, whose considerations are much more oriented towards psychological issues und who – in contrast to Bergson and 14

This is the title of the book Deborah Wearing (2005) published about her husband.

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Husserl – conceived of time in terms of space, the present is ultimately represented by a sequence of very small units of time which always fade away. This spatialized way of thinking emphasizes less the continuity of the past in the present than the smooth, flowing transitions that consciousness makes possible between individual moments (see Klose, 2009). However, the fact that time results from the difference between past, present and future does not mean that the mind process which constructs them could go back to the past or forward to the future. Time consciousness and remembering only always happen in the present. This present is different for every consciousness, but by the spatialisation of time, such as with the help of measuring tools like clocks or calendars, a culturally specific heuristic has been created by means of which remembering can be systematized. If we succeed in attaching a certain date to an even, we have experienced, we may connect our own memories to those of others. Then together we may remember what we were doing last Sunday or on New Year’s Eve. In this way our memory is not oriented to the subjective experience of time but to a socially standardized calendar dates with which you and I may enter into a memorising communication. In the fifth chapter we will return to this concept of social time. In this chapter quite a few things have already been said about the experience of time and the process of remembering. Everything we have discussed so far has referred to consciously reflecting on the past. However, as memory includes much more than just the capability of indulging in memories on our own or in the company of others, we must take some further aspects into consideration. In the following chapter this will no longer be done through conscious reflection on individual time, but in view of the (after)effects of experience on the body and consciousness.

Chapter 2

Trace, Selectivity and Orientation The fact that we usually turn towards the disciplines of psychology or the neurosciences when confronted with issues of the memory is due to the fact that the ability to remember has always been associated with the ‘head’ or ‘intellect’ and later with the brain. At the beginning of the 20th century there were considerations which even granted the capability of storing experiences to the body which was, thus, said to accordingly be able to adjust its further or future behaviour. This is obvious in physical routines such as cycling or swimming. Once our body has ‘learned’ the necessary motion sequences by way of constant practicing, it is usually able to perform them even if we have not been cycling or swimming for a long time. This does not require any conscious memory. Scars, to give another example, as traces of past injuries may remind us to avoid certain behaviours or situations. Furthermore, the scar tissue will show forever that an injury once happened at this place. As soon as we consider the scars of other people or perhaps meet people whose scars have been purposefully created for reasons of membership of a cult and have a symbolic meaning among the group they belong to, we arrive in the realm of social memories. Since concepts and traditions of thought from psychology and neuroscience have repeatedly inspired sociological thinking, we first look at individual memory, remembering and forgetting. In a first step we will look at the ability to access the past. Then we will turn to some earlier theories dealing with materiality as well as remembering and forgetting being tied to situations. Initially, our focus is not on the mind but on the body as memory. 2.1

Current Recourses

Everyone knows this situation: we try to remember something, but suddenly and without warning our memory betrays us. The neurologist and founder of psychoanalysis, Sigmund Freud (1856-1939), analysed this phenomenon in his writings The Psychopathology of Everyday Life, by the example of “temporary forgetfulness of proper names” (Freud, 1914, p. 3). He starts out from the point of having himself experienced something like this while on a journey: “I journeyed by carriage with a stranger from Ragusa, Dalmatia, to a station in Hercegovina. Our conversation drifted to travelling in Italy, and I asked my

© Brill Fink, 2022 | doi:10.30965/9783846767399_003

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companion whether he had been in Orvieto and had seen there the famous frescoes of ----” (Freud, 1914, p. 5). Whatever he does, Freud does not recall the name of the artist. Instead of Signorelli – the correct name – only names such as Botticelli or Boltraffio come to his mind. Indeed, both names are somewhat similar to the one he was looking for but are “immediately and definitely” rejected as being “incorrect” (Freud, 1914, p. 5). Along the lines of this event, Freud makes suppositions concerning the regularities of false memories, and he encounters two ways of forgetting: the simple forgetting of personal names, which happens without any deeper reason and is of no further psychological relevance, and a way of forgetting “which is motivated by repression” (Freud, 1914, p. 1). Even without following Freud’s depth analysis approach any further, this example allows us to recognize the ideas of memory which are connected to the everyday experience of temporary forgetfulness. If we are troubled by temporary forgetting, we assume that the memory content we are trying to remember – in this case the name of a person – has dropped out of our memory. Furthermore, we assume that all we must do is search it piece by piece to find the lost object and make it available as a memory. But as Freud recognizes, this search rarely leads directly to its goal. Rather, he observes a paradoxical effect. The more intensive our efforts to find the content stored in our memory are, the more stubbornly it seems to evade our conscious grasp. Fortunately, we know that usually this is not the case in the long run: in most cases this temporary forgetfulness disappears as spontaneously as it appeared. Then it seems as if the supposedly lost memory content never went away but had just left its place for a period. In Freud’s example, temporarily forgetting a name does not result in any grave inconvenience: his conversational partner assists him with his reconstruction attempts and tells him the correct name of the artist, which Freud recognizes “at once and without any hesitation” (Freud, 1914, p. 5). This situation would be less convenient if we met a person whose face is familiar but whose name we do not remember. As asking this person directly about his/her name would be embarrassing, strategies must be found which might hide this temporary oblivion during the conversation. One engages in a friendly chat, acts as if one is familiar with the other person and bridges the time until – hopefully – one remembers the name again. We know a number of metaphors that illustrate the fact of temporary forgetfulness with the help of a spatial idea of memory: forgetful people are accused of having a ‘memory like a sieve’; purposeful attempts at reconstructing memory contents are often described as ‘rummaging through the memory”; sometimes the reason given for temporary oblivion is that momentarily one’s mind is somewhat ‘untidy’; and the forgotten content is said to have ‘escaped one’s

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memory’. Also, Freud understands suppression as a spatial process and speaks of “topics of suppression” (Freud, 1963 [1915]). Accordingly, as Harald Weinrich notes, [t]he metaphor of the ‘storehouse’ of memory also has a privileged place in Freud’s work, though it is given an upper-middle-class twist and divided in an interesting way into two paces. Freud imagines a ‘drawing room’ to which a large anteroom is attached. Everything unconscious flounders about in this anteroom, while consciousness finds its place in the drawing room. It is characteristic of Freud’s psychoanalysis that on the threshold between these two rooms is posted a censor ‘who summons up the individual mental impulses, examines them, and does not allow them to enter the drawing-room if they do not meet with his approval.’ Mental impulses are in movement between the ‘anteroom of the Unconscious’ and the drawing as the space in which consciousness resides. (Weinrich, 2004, p. 133)

Given all these images, we may imagine the individual memory as a spatial store: the sieve is a porous container out of which the memories drip and disappear; rummaging around the memory assumes the existence of a room where one can dig about and discover; speaking of untidiness makes us imagine a junk room whose chaos prevents us from finding memory contents; and if something is said to have escaped, we must assume that previously it was at its proper place. Each of these spatial images of the memory has its positive aspect that suggests a ‘good’ memory: instead of a porous sieve we may imagine a closed vessel into which memories can be put and taken out again; trial-and-error-based rummaging around becomes problem-free retrieval if the individual memory is organized like a library, a magazine or an archive or even has the capacities of an elephant;1 the untidy and dark lumber room has its positive counterpart in the well-sorted and brightly-lit attic;2 and if something has escaped our memory, there is a German saying: ‘wieder einfallen’ (lit. dropping back into place) evokes the image of something that has been hovering somewhere in the air, dropping down again to its proper place. According to literary scholar and cultural scientist, Aleida Assmann, who has analysed spatial metaphors for the memory, such images in the context of the memory refer to a “constituting language which first of all makes the 1 The image of the memory of an elephant is also found in literature which gives advice regarding forgetfulness – such as Alain Lieury (2013). 2 Dutch psychologist Drouwe Draaisma (2015) precedes his foreword to his Forgetting with the historical photograph of a library: the ‘upper storey’ of the Archive of Drenth at about 1900. With the example of this picture, he unfolds the problem of the space metaphor, by making clear that the memory does not work like a well-organized reading room where, by help of a register, one will easily get along at any time.

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object accessible” (Assmann, 1996, p. 16). As, Assmann says, the phenomenon of memory cannot be directly described, it is metaphors which make the memory accessible at all. At the same time, they lastingly influence our idea of what it is: “Thus, the question about memory images at the same time becomes the question about different models of memory, about their contexts, needs, figurations of meaning” (Assmann, 1996, p. 16). If memory is imagined as a sieve, lumber room, library or archive, there is always the idea of a room behind it which shows different degrees of order on the one hand and of extension on the other, and functions as a memory store. Memory contents may be stored there and retrieved when needed, that is: when remembered. On closer inspection, however, this idea of the memory as a store quickly reaches its limits. Let us once again turn to Sigmund Freud’s temporary forgetfulness. During the conversation with his partner, he does not succeed with remembering the correct name of the artist, although it “was just as familiar to [him] as one of the substitutive names – Botticelli – and somewhat more familiar than the other substitute– Boltraffio – […]” (Freud, 1914, p. 5). Thus, Freud’s mistaken memory cannot be immediately connected to the memory content. Only by taking the situation in which the conversation happened into consideration Freud succeeds with attributing his temporary oblivion to the unconscious working of psychological suppression: There were motives which actuated the interruption in the communication of my thoughts (concerning the customs of the Turks, etc.), and which later influenced me to exclude from my consciousness the thought connected with them, and which might have led to the message concerning the incident in Trafoi – that is, I wanted to forget something, I repressed something. To be sure, I wished to forget something other than the name of the master of Orvieto; but this other thought brought about an associative connection between itself and this name, so that my act of volition missed the aim, and I forgot the one against my will, while I intentionally wished to forget the other. (Freud, 1914, pp. 7-8)

The associations evoked by the sound of the correct name in the context of the topic of the conversation make Freud purposefully yet at the same time unconsciously forget or remember falsely. As a consequence, the correct name is replaced by two names which may be understood as substitutes for that which has been supressed. The present provides the incentive for remembering and channels the way in which we remember. This also applies to Freud’s false memory, and it means that there cannot be any original storage of the past and that consequently the memory cannot be a kind of store or vessel. Through the act of remembering the past is always newly created in the context of different situations, each of which is present in its own way.

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This can be shown particularly clearly by an example which – fortunately – occurs far less frequently than the temporary forgetting of names. We are talking of heartbreak which, when it comes to remembering, has its own dynamics. When a love relationship is over, there usually appear emotional states which make the individual looking back see the time spent together in a specific light. In this context it may be that the current state does not allow for any memory of the happy relationship and the love of the former partner, and if it does, it happens in the form of remembering a time which is painfully recalled as being irretrievably lost. Over time, however, the failed relationship will probably be judged differently: dealing with the past becomes increasingly more relaxed, the pain of parting, disappointment and sadness fade away and, as a consequence, the beautiful aspects of the now long-departed relationship reappear. For this example, it is true that chronological distance correlates with a change of the memory of the past. Nevertheless, certain physical-sensory perceptions such as the smells and touches we associate with the broken relationship will accompany us for quite some time and will, again and again, evoke images of the past we do not, or at least not consciously, remember and whose appearance we cannot control.3 2.2

Impressions

Given the weaknesses of a spatialized concept of memory, there is the question of what else memory is supposed to be. With what might memory be compared to if it can no longer be understood as a more or less flexible and structured container? The considerations on the phenomenon of time in the previous chapter may help us find an answer to this question. As we have seen, the process of time and continuity cannot be stopped, every moment will inevitably be over. Against this background, we have discussed time as a theoretical construction with which we can understand our being within a continuity. If we want to revive the past, this is only possible in the present – never again we will encounter the original impression or the past event itself. Instead, we construct an idea of the past by help of the impressions the perception of events has left. As we cannot consciously reach back to a large part of these impressions, we must gradually distinguish between two sequences of perceptions: those that have been memorized by the body or the brain and which remain 3 In the event of mourning, the interplay of moments of forgetting and moments of remembering come to mind, which may result in different consequences for relief (see Jakoby, 2014).

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latent, so to speak, and those which can furthermore be consciously reflected on and articulated. As memory is not a container into which we put something or take out something, we must adopt a concept of memory which takes into account the aspect of an imprinted, theoretically or practically trained sensory perception. The main focus is on the fact that our routines of movement and perception as well as our consciousness pursue traces left by past events. This quality of memory we call selectivity, as both body and thinking follow paths which have already been cleared by previous influences. Other possibilities of behaviour, perception or reflection are ignored by the selectivity of memory or are not taken into consideration at all. The following subchapter is about analysing the selectivity problem in connection with the corporality of memory. With the help of the line of theory used here it can be shown that conscious remembering may be based on bodily structures. 2.3

Predetermined Perception

That the body is no memory but has one is one the errors of a dualist philosophical tradition which wanted to strictly separate body and mind from each other. Indeed, we might say that there are two kinds of memory: one could be equated with trained and then automatic sequences of movements, the other one would be equivalent to experiences or to the knowledge collected in the course of life. A closer look at such a distinction cannot be maintained: sensory perception has a past and is the result of sometimes laborious and lengthy practice. For example, the wine connoisseur is able to test wine not only according to measurable features, by identifying acidity, colour, vine or growing area, but he/she will also appreciate it due to his/her previous consumption of wine. Other than the layman or -woman, the expert will perceive nuances such as a ‘steely’ and ‘wild berries’, as his/her taste has ‘developed’ over long years and has been adjusted to wine. Accordingly, the perception of a glass of wine is completely different from that of a passionate beer drinker who usually tolerates wine only on ceremonial occasions and then wants his/ her glass of red wine because he/she does not like white wine. When it comes to the physicality of memory, the ancient doctrine of classical conditioning seems to hold true: through voluntary or forced practice, the perception of situations is determined in such a way that only certain aspects of a situation are grasped and others are ignored. Here we may therefore state that the memory’s relation to the past consists mostly of controlling current perception by help of structures gained from past perceptions.

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As we have seen, the idea of memory as a place of storage – such as in the sense of a briefcase one constantly carries around – results in the problematic assumption that the current, sensory, perception and the processing of this stimulus information have nothing to do with the performance of memory. According to this assumption, the perception of and reflecting on an event would happen separately and independently of each other: First, the organism takes in a supposedly objective information from its environment via its senses in order to process it afterwards. Such a view is problematic, as the memory must be much more understood as a trace of individual experiences which has been burned into the body or as an influence which again influences the organisation of perception i.e. explicitly interacts with it. The selection work of our memory ensures that not all data perceived by our senses is processed. What has been processed, does inevitably leave traces, due to the neurons being newly networked. This knowledge, which at first cannot be consciously reflected on, influences any further perception and processing of sensory information, which again may be connected to certain reactions of the body. For an organism this means that it can learn much without actually reflecting on it. The fact that our consciousness and our perception do not take in everything offered to our senses is called selective perception in psychology. But why should our sensory apparatus selectively perceive the stimuli it is offered from the environment? The body of humanities theories we find a plethora of answers to this question, three of which we would like to discuss here. These are some aspects of Henri Bergson’s (whom we have already met) philosophy of life, the phenomenology-oriented reflections of French philosopher, Maurice Merleau-Ponty (1908-1961) as well the theory of relevance from Austrian sociologist, Alfred Schütz (1899-1959). 2.3.1 Body and Mind That our perception is determined by the selectivity of memory is an insight which had already been presented towards the end of the 19th century by Henri Bergson in his main work Matter and Memory, published in 1896. Bergson’s starting point is his discussion of the philosophical positions of idealism on the one hand and of realism on the other. He believes both approaches to be exaggerations, as idealism reduces matter to sheer imagination, whereas realism defines objects as something which is external to consciousness and only creates imagination. Bergson assumes that both points of view are partly correct and are not mutually exclusive. Rather, the relationships he describes are interdependent, but this can only be assumed if one makes one step back when defining matter.

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For, he says, the apparent incompatibility of matter and intellectual ideas is dissolved by reducing everything to the common denominator of the image. Matter, in our view, is an aggregate of ‘images’. And by ‘image’ we mean a certain existence which is more than that which the idealist calls a representation, but less than that which the realist calls a thing; – an existence placed half-way between the ‘thing’ and the ‘representation’. (Bergson, 1929, p. vii)

According to Bergson, the intersection of mind and matter is marked by memory, since large parts of our ideas of objects only develop from recognition, that is remembering. With the immediate and present data of our senses we mingle a thousand details out of our past experience. In most cases these memories supplant our actual perceptions, of which we then retain only a few hints, thus using them merely as ‘signs’ that recall to us former images. The convenience and the rapidity of perception are bought at this price; but hence also springs every kind of illusion. (Bergson, 1929, p. 24)

Thus, as result of each act of perception, immediate sensory stimuli are mixed with moments of recognizing past images – the latter resulting from the combination of stimulus and remembering. Bergson does not understand the brain exclusively as an organ for reflection and thinking but as a tool of initiating action. The image includes the pure view of an object as well as its behaviour when something is done with it. The objects of the environment influence the body; the body, by way of its deeds, works on the objects. “Therefore in the form of motor contrivances, and of motor contrivances only, [the body] can store up the action of the past” (Bergson, 1929, p. 87). It is thus, not the brain that is the store of memories but the body, into which on the one hand certain processes are imprinted as motor skills and into which, on the other hand, new images are inscribed. It is immediately obvious that Bergson distinguishes two ways of organising the recourse to the past. Recollection happens in two ways: a memory collects and stores the image of each perceived moment, plus place and date. “By this memory is made possible the intelligent, or rather intellectual, recognition of a perception already experienced; in it we take refuge every time that, in the search for a particular image, we remount the slope of our past” (Bergson, 1929, p. 92). But since any perception happens in a continuity and from each memory process there results inward or outward movements of the organism, apart from this reflecting memory there also develop experiences of quite a different kind. This second memory is equivalent to a past which is stored by each moment of the present, in the context of which only what has resulted from

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the movement of the body is preserved, from its actual actions.4 According to Bergson, this bodily memory finds It has retained from the past only the intelligently coordinated movements which represent the accumulated efforts of the past; and it recovers those past efforts, not in the memory-images which recall them, but in the definite order and systematic character with which the actual movements take place. In truth, it no longer represents our past to us, it acts it; and if it still deserves the name of memory, it is not because it conserves bygone images, but because it prolongs their useful effect into the present moment. (Bergson, 1929, p. 93)

Bergson distinguishes a memory which creates ideas from a memory which repeats them. Only the former allows for reminiscence, for daydreaming or for visualise the decision and the effort to learn a poem by heart. To do this it reaches back to individual images made by the consciousness and supplemented by information about time and place. In this context, Bergson says, the process of memorisation stands outside of time (see Bergson, 1929, p. 95). One does not remember when one has retained more or less verses and rhymes in mind and when one has succeeded to a greater or smaller extent – the only thing important is that at some time one is capable of reciting the poem. This recitation will then be so well-practiced and automated that it is a part of ourselves, like a habit or a routine. If, however, the habitual memory is so useful or practical for coping with life, we really must ask ourselves – along with Bergson – why we need a reflective memory at all. In addition, the embodied memory that determines perception ignores everything not useful against the background of previous action. The spontaneously reflective memory which has stored memory images releases them every time the tension of active consciousness subsides somewhat. This explains both the dream and the capability of associative thinking. However, the appearance of the remembered images – as in a dream – cannot be controlled. Bergson points out to the fact that, to have safe access to knowledge generated in the past, one must systematically memorise the relevant images. But there is a certain effort sui generis which permits us to retain the image itself, for a limited time, within the field of our consciousness; and, thanks to this faculty, we have no need to await at the hands of chance the accidental repetition of the same situations, in order to organize into a habit concomitant movements; we make use of the fugitive image to construct a stable mechanism which takes its place. (Bergson, 1929, p. 98) 4 James Burton (2008), who pursues the question of or in how far Bergson’s theory of memory is congruent with the store metaphor, calls this aspect of memory “non-archival memory.”

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This short sketch of Bergson’s considerations should suffice to explain the origin of a central motif of memory theory. Quite obviously, with regard to issues of memory it is not enough to exclusively deal with conscious remembering. Indeed, the experience of each moment, incessantly happening in the course of continuity, does create remembered images which can be memorized, but due to the reactions of the organism to what it perceives from its environment it is imprinted as a kind of movement memory. Then, with each new experience, we unconsciously recall this imprint, which applies to both practical problem-solving and to the entire perceptual apparatus. It can therefore be stated that the past not only co-determines thought and action, but also every experience and behaviour, every perception. With Bergson we can already see that we know more than we can reflexively infer simply because of the way we have become, and that our body – including possibilities to think5 – is a result of its own past in the sense of a history of adaptation to the environment around it. Furthermore, it is now clear that the recourse to the past – no matter whether we are aware of it or not – can only ever take place in the here and now; that is, in the present. The past is always present within us and with us. According to Bergson’s analysis, by memory we mean the disposition, resulting from past experience, of any movement of thought, action and behaviour. 2.3.2 Perception and Memory In his phenomenology of perception, Maurice Merleau-Ponty develops Bergson’s idea of memory-mediated perception further. Following Husserl’s phenomenology as well as the insights of gestalt psychology, he raises the question of how perception as cognition and sensation happens at all. Like Bergson, he rejects the idea that our senses perceive objective data, free of individual influences, of the objects we encounter. Perception, Merleau-Ponty says, does not only refer to objects as such but also to their environments and the spaces in-between. The impression of a perceived object is not due to this object itself but to “the foreshadowing of an imminent order which is about to spring upon us a reply to questions merely latent in the landscape. It solves a problem set only in the form of a vague feeling of uneasiness […]” (Merleau-Ponty, 2002, p. 20). Only perception combines individual

5 Lorenz Engell (2001a, p. 79) calls this “reality of the past which is outward to consciousness” a “virtual state” which can be “seen” by way of conscious remembering. Furthermore, he states that such a reality, which Bergson sometimes calls “spirit”, gives reason to the “subjectivation performance happening outside the consciousness within an independent space of virtuality, which is traditionally attributed to consciousness”.

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impressions or data into an overall picture; it creates a synthesis of the most disparate elements. According to Merleau-Ponty, in this context there is no comparison of the similarities of individual impressions – rather the focus is on a similarity which results from the perception of past syntheses. In other words, what consciousness is provided with by perception is arrangements of objects in the context of their environments or ‘fields’. How these syntheses happen is explained by Merleau-Ponty by making clear that perception cannot be equated with memory: A field which is always at the disposal of consciousness and one which, for that very reason, surrounds and envelops its perceptions, an atmosphere, a horizon or, if you will, given ‘sets’ which provide it with a temporal situation, such is the way in which the past is present, making distinct acts of perception and recollection possible. To perceive is not to experience a host of impressions accompanied by memories capable of clinching them; it is to see, standing forth from a cluster of data, an immanent significance without which no appeal to memory is possible. To remember is not to bring into the focus of consciousness a selfsubsistent picture of the past; it is to thrust deeply into the horizon of the past and take apart step by step the interlocked perspectives until the experiences which it epitomizes are as if relived in their temporal setting. To perceive is not to remember. (Merleau-Ponty, 2002, pp. 25-26)

Unlike in Bergson, perception is not controlled by more or less consciously reaching back to memorized images. Rather, it reaches back to structures, orders and connections provided by them. In Merleau-Ponty the focus is not on any conceptual-thematic memory unit but on the result of a comparison that is carried out at the moment of perception with a processing pattern that was gained from the synthesis of a preceding context of experience. Merleau-Ponty unfolds the significance of the body in his reflections on forgetting, which are inspired by psychoanalytical arguments. As an example, he uses the case of a girl suffering from aphonia. Due to a childhood trauma, she had first temporarily lost her voice at a young age; when, some years later, the mother forbids her daughter to meet a man she has fallen in love with, once again she sinks into pathologic silence. Merleau-Ponty interprets this aphonia not as a conscious refusal to speak but as an actual loss of voice. According to a psychoanalytical interpretation, what has been forgotten is not something which has coincidentally fallen out of the memory but something that “belongs to an area of my life which I reject, in so far as it has a certain significance and, like all significances, this one exists only for someone” (Merleau-Ponty, 2002, p. 187). With the help of forgetting, Merleau-Ponty states, it is possible to reject memories. In this context, oblivion appears as a protective device – however not in the sense of a purposeful action. He writes:

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Chapter 2 Thus, in hysteria and repression, we may well overlook something although we know of it, because our memories and our body, instead of presenting themselves to us in singular and determinate conscious acts, are enveloped in generality. Through this generality we still ‘have them’, but just enough to hold them at a distance from us. (Merleau-Ponty, 2002, p. 188)

Impressions that are received through sensory perception are not always and automatically noticed and made available to the reflective consciousness. Conscious perception only happens if “they adhere generally to that area of our body and our life to which they are relevant.” (Merleau-Ponty, 2002, p. 188). It is therefore not about any conscious perception but about pre-reflectively ignoring the entire field of possibilities – in the case of aphonia it is not that one does not say anything to the other in a telling and communicative way but that the other is non-existent as a communicative partner. According to Merleau-Ponty, who bases these on the research of Swiss psychoanalyst Ludwig Binswanger, such a state is achieved if one pretends to be something without reservation: Loss of voice does not merely represent a refusal of speech, or anorexia a refusal of life; they are that refusal of others or refusal of the future, torn from the transitive nature of ‘inner phenomena’, generalized, consummated, transformed into de facto situations. The body’s role is to ensure this metamorphosis. It transforms ideas into things […]. (Merleau-Ponty, 2002, p. 190)

Without reflecting on past and future, the voiceless girl has retreated to the pure present. In this state she is not capable of learning or understanding. In a way, she has become “arrested in a bodily symptom, [her] existence is tied up and the body has become ‘the place where life hides away’” (Merleau-Ponty, 2002, p. 190). Whereas the body may close off from the world, and whereas the consciousness may silently turn towards its memories, the body is at the same time the gate of consciousness to the world, by confronting it with situations. Not by way of conscious reflection, but by way of the body the ill person may find his/her voice again, “as we seek and recover a name forgotten not ‘in our mind’, but ‘in our head’ or ‘on the tip of our tongue’” (Merleau-Ponty, 2002, p. 191).6 In a far more differentiated way than Bergson, Merleau-Ponty supports the thesis that the body is a malleable and shaped instrument of selective perception, allowing for meaningful reflection only in exceptional cases. Nevertheless, the body must be understood as a memory which, due to its 6 Elsewhere he extends his theory of bodiliness to sexual perception.

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own past experiences, cannot help but ‘see’ things in a very specific way. Thus, the phenomenological approach distances itself from the assumption that objects could be grasped ‘objectively’, on the basis of the characteristics attached to them. That the memory must be understood not as an aspect of mind but as something which is essentially physical is something Bergson and Merleau-Ponty agree on. According to phenomenologist Edward S. Casey, this point of view is a novelty in Western philosophy (see Casey, 2000, p. 147).7 2.3.3 Memory and the Structure of Relevance Alfred Schütz, in his theory of relevance, develops a similar position. Also, he formulates a perception theory which relates strongly to the coming into being of consciousness and its experiences. In contrast to Merleau-Ponty, however, Schütz hardly relies on psychological explanations of the relationship between body and consciousness. His egologic approach, starting out from individual consciousness, involves the interactions of the consciousness with its environment to a far greater extent. As early as the 1920s, Schütz starts transforming aspects of Henri Bergson’s theory of time and later also Edmund Husserl’s phenomenology into a social theory oriented towards action theory. His starting point is his dissatisfaction with the concept of social action.8 Weber understands any kind of action as doing, tolerating or refraining, insofar as it is connected to a subjective meaning. What makes this action social is that it is directed at others. Now Schütz wants to find out about the nature of this subjective sense and how it is at all possible that our actions are oriented towards others – and that these others indeed understand our actions this way. He finds no answer in Weber to such questions, which are directed at the presuppositions of a theory of social action.9 When pursuing the problem of meaning with social action, he assumes an individual being provided with a prior world that existed before he was born, with which it entertains a dialogue, and finally a follow-up world which will go on to exist after the individual’s death.10 Action is not only oriented at these 7 8 9 10

Edward S. Casey continues the approach in the context of his theory of body memory. However, he laments that both thinkers just speak of a habitual memory which is not capable of grasping further problems of the body memory. As it is well known, Weber (1979) defines the sociological concept of action – a fundamental element of his understanding of sociology as such – in the first paragraph of his work Economy and Society of 1921. A detailed presentation of how Schütz developed into working on such research questions is found Matthias Michailow’s, Gerd Sebald’s and Ilja Srubar’s (2006) introduction to the first volume of Schütz’s complete works edited by Matthias Michailow (2006). On this see Schütz’s (1967, pp. 207‑214) considerations on the issues of history and past.

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three temporal sections of the world; it is motivated by everything which has happened to the individual so far. Thus, meaning is the ‘true’ reason or motive for action, whereby it is not clear if the person acting is aware of this meaning. The fact that the reason I give for my actions need not necessarily have to do anything with my actual motives is something which cannot be grasped by Weber’s concept of meaning.11 When wanting to buy a new mobile phone, I could give as a reason that the battery of my old one is weak, that the memory space is insufficient for some attractive applications, and that my dealer’s current offer cannot be beaten. My motives, which I have not yet considered and which perhaps I do not like to admit, may be derived from the fact that currently I have got the money, that an advertisement has informed me intensively about the great performance of this device, or that all my friends have already bought exactly this kind of phone and that I must go along with them. It is easy to see that such considerations are a memory problem because the meaning of a certain action always comes from the past. For Schütz there also exists another problem. In my life so far, I have experienced much, without being able to clearly determine which aspects of my past influence my current actions. For a social being, the more or less reflected decision about what is relevant in a current situation and what is not cannot be exclusively derived from individual history – it is considerably co-determined by society. Let us at first follow some stages of the development of Schütz’s thought, where he discusses the issue of memory and remembering, in order to then formulate a theory of relevance. Schütz’s relevance theory provides answers to fundamental questions when it comes to the effect and functioning of social memories – starting out from a socially shaped individual. a) Memory as a structure of meaning: Even before Schütz includes Husserl’s philosophy in his own reflections, he makes a discovery in Henri Bergson concerning the preconditions for a theory of the meaning of action. He believes the latter’s theory of time and reflections on memory to be a suitable format for theoretically grounding Weber’s approach. In the 1920s he wrote a number of manuscripts documenting Schütz’s search and exploration. None of these works were published by him. The most informative of Schütz’s preliminary works concerning the great significance that the problem of memory or remembering has in his thinking can be found in the manuscript published by his estate on Life Forms and 11

A differentiated consideration of Weber’s concept of meaning and its consolidation by Schütz – particularly in view of the reference to the past – is provided by Gerd Sebald (2014, pp. 83-96).

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Meaning Structure. This work aims at grounding the social sciences on the experience – which cannot at all be taken for granted – that there also exist other individuals or a You (see Schütz, 1982, p. 32). In the egological and, according to a modern understanding, sometimes psychological preliminary passages Schütz reaches back to two theoretical figures coming from Bergson. On one hand, he adopts the concept of continuity, in order to derive the development of an ego-consciousness. On the other hand, he makes use of the ‘memory image’, with which he attempts to comprehend a stepping out from the eternal becoming and ceasing to exist within the flow of continuity. Like Bergson and Merleau-Ponty, Schütz rejects the one-sided assumption of an objective world outside the consciousness. The world exists only by experiences. What cannot be experienced indirectly or directly does not exist. The memory registers all experiences in the course of continuity, in their diversity; only exceptionally a connection between the memorized and the reflective consciousness is established. The latter is capable of moving out of the flow of continuity and of comparing a current experience with a past experience. From this act of reflection, which may be called remembering, the ego-consciousness develops: Only by remembering a Before have I been able to get hold of the qualitatively different Now. I ‘have made’ present the immediately following Now only through lettering it became rigid, through fixation by fiat as the Now which just was. as one qualitatively different as the other. Intentionally disrupting the eternal stream, I formed an image of my inner ‘condition’ out of the Now, which is just forming itself, and the Now which just had been. This image was preserved in my memory; through comparison, it shows to me my present ‘I am’ in contrast to my ‘I was’. (Schütz, 1982, p. 34)

This is not an interruption of continuity but a change of experience. To a certain extent the memory allows for turning away from experiencing the external and for orientation in the sense of introspection. Later Schütz will call this remembering, i.e. he will understand it as an active process of looking inwards or of drawing out (see Schütz, 1967, p. 44). At the same time the memory registers this process in which itself was involved, and it changes in the sense of a feedback effect. That there exists for the consciousness an outside world results from organising experience according to the criteria of space and time. These criteria help the ego with objectivising itself and with recognising objects in the world, which also include its own body. Further experience is controlled by the constant adjustment of the memory and organisational attempts by the consciousness. This is easy to understand if one imagines having turned to a certain object, such as something difficult to read, in a very concentrated way over a long period of time. If one is interrupted, for example by a phone call,

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it takes some time until perception has readjusted from the visual-cognitive focus on what is being read to auditory conversation.12 Comparing a current experience with a past experience stored by the memory creates a memory image which again has the quality of an experience.13 Thus, we may remember a memory. However, nothing has been said about linguistic symbols which, in the form of concepts, make experiences of their own kind possible. Schütz, therefore, goes on to ask how the memory image becomes a concept. Once again, the first steps are made by the individual consciousness. As the consciousness seems to have an ‘instinct’ about the direction of continuity, the memory is able to make comparisons between a previous experience, which has been stored as a memory image, and a current event. However, it by no means keeps all the ‘copies’ of a comparison. It changes or updates the earlier memory image, by adding the difference from the new to the old. All aspects of the new, which are already present in the old, are forgotten. Later Schütz will exchange the concept of the memory image – much criticized in Bergson – for the concept of the schema – however he then develops the basic elements of his understanding of the schema of experience.14 On this Schütz writes: Our memory does not maintain our experiences unchanged, after they have passed away. It itself both evoked and underwent the change which occurred in the passing-away of the experience. It does not preserve the experience; instead, it preserves a symbol of it. Like any symbol, this symbol is not absolute; it is valid only for a specific Now and Thus. In other words: our memory does not preserve the experience but its meaning; that is, exactly the meaning which it acquires in the Now and Thus which emerges out of it. (Schütz, 1982, pp. 45-46)

Meaning develops in the course of remembering, from comparing the current experience to a past experience. It is a symbol of a current experience made by the ego and is stored as a memory image for future comparisons. This can be illustrated by the development of one’s own musical preferences. Sometimes, when listening to a piece from a certain genre for the first time, it does not 12 13

14

Schütz calls this “apperception, subsumed under the powerful primacy of action, already selects among the images. This selection is determined by the apparently potential action which is supposed to release just this apperception in the I.” (Schütz, 1982, p. 40). Schütz is aware of the problematic nature of the metaphor of the image – first of all he is interested in a copy of all qualities of experience. Nevertheless, he calls the current experience a ‘image of perception’, and the past event is compared to what he calls a ‘memory image’ (Schütz, 1982, pp. 47‑48). Before concluding on the schema concept in the context of memory and remembering, Schütz makes do with the term ‘quality image’ which is inspired by Bergson (Schütz, 1982, p. 43).

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really appeal, much of it sounds ‘the same’. However, as one begins listening to more of this kind of music and becomes more familiar with the stylistic features of the genre, one learns to distinguish more and better. Songs that ‘untrained’ people would describe as ‘very similar to each other’ now appear highly different, as, through prolonged exposure to this kind of music, you have developed a ‘more refined hearing’. What makes little sense to laypeople and is thus rejected as ‘noise’, opens up an ever more branching world of meaning for the expert. If Schütz has previously been dealing with the symbolic relationship between the lasting ego and its memory images, he now pursues the question of how these inner symbols, called meaning, can develop into a language which is not only valid for one single ego – in the sense of a private language – but also for a You. Since those questions regarding memory as being connected to others are aimed at the concept of language and social type as well as the social stock of knowledge, we will deal with these aspects elsewhere. However, here we would like to shed some more light on one important memory phenomenon from Schütz’s universe of theories which is also connected to the individual. b) The issue of relevance: the core of any implicit theory of memory and remembering – which Schütz hardly labels as such – is the concept of relevance, or more exactly: of the relevance structure.15 For Schütz, the lifeworld, as well as the social stock of knowledge within it, is constituted from the contributions of individuals. The knowledge of the lifeworld is layered ever higher, in the context of which the metaphor of stratification clarifies that there is a visible surface (the present), hidden lower layers (recent past) up to deep layers hidden at the very bottom (the more distant past). The lifeworld provides the framework under which the individuals encounter the situations in which they are involved. In other words: why is it that, when looking out of the window, I take notice of some things but not of others? Obviously, right from the beginning I have learned about what to notice and about what I may ‘overlook’. According to Schütz, this knowledge of what matters has developed over many generations and must be understood as a socially-formed order, precisely as a relevance structure. Our perception has developed in a culture-specific way, producing the result that two individuals belonging to the same culture do not see completely different things but are quite likely to look at the same objects. 15

The theory of relevance comes from Schütz’s early works and was only published from his literary remains, under the title Reflections on the Problem of Relevance (Schütz 1971). A revised version is found in the also unfinished work The Structures of the Life-World, finished by Thomas Luckmann (1973).

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Both have learned how to organise their perceptions in similar ways; at first glance, the same objects are relevant for them. We may say that perception is based on a memory, understood as an order based on past experiences, which has an individual-subjective and a collective-objective component. I ‘see’ only that what I once learned to ‘see’ directly or indirectly and usually mediated by others. To illustrate these thoughts and to develop the consequences that derive from them, Schütz reaches back to an allegory by ancient sceptic, Carneades. Carneades dealt with the concept of probability and denied that there is any universal truth – after all, he said, all believing-to-be-true is based on probabilities. This statement derives from the insight that certainty always depends on the observer’s point of view and is only valid for the time being. Any idea may only be assumed to be true or certain until it has been refuted. Carneades’s allegory refers to the uncertainty of a situation in which one must decide how to perceive things because the information provided by the senses is not sufficient for a clear decision. Schütz tells this story, however he is less interested in providing evidence for uncertainty but in the preconditions or relevance structures according to which the situation is finally interpreted in one way or the other. In the following, somewhat longer, quotation we let Schütz speak for himself: A man enters a poorly lighted room and thinks he sees a coiled rope in the corner of the room. But he sees the object only dimly. Thus, he asks himself whether it is then really a coiled rope. Couldn’t it also be a tightly coiled snake? That is also possible. […] Since the second possibility is similarly probable, the man will mistrust his first impression. He becomes unsure and oscillates between the two possibilities. He goes closer to the object. It does not move. Coiled ropes do not move; perhaps the object is indeed a coiled rope. Now the man remembers the fact that snakes have a colour similar to the object in the corner, and in addition to this he recalls the fact that snakes become torpid in the cold of winter and do not move. Since it is now winter, lack of movement cannot count as a sufficient reason to consider the object a coiled rope. Therefore the man makes an inspection tour […] around his representation. He finds in the process that every alternative has its own weight that balances the weight of the other alternatives. Therefore he has no basis for deciding to give assent to one or the other alternative. In this state of affairs, which of the alternatives he will give more credence to, or which alternative he will be inclined to annul, will depend only on whether he is fearful or not. If he wants to achieve a higher measure of certitude, he will have to look for further bases for a decision. Consequently, […] he will have to make use of the method of the Athenian courts […]. This means that the man may not rely on individual ‘symptoms’, but rather must take into consideration the connection of all symptoms, the ‘syndrome’. If the syndrome contains no counterindication, he will be able to say that the representation is ‘true’. If the man takes a stick, touches the object, and it still does not move, he will have

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acquired the conviction that it indeed cannot be a snake. With this last proof he has completed the tour of inspection in all its necessary details […]. Now he can assent to the conviction that it must have been in error to have taken the object for a snake. (Schütz & Luckmann, 1973, pp. 185-186)

Throughout this story Schütz unfolds his theory of the relevance structure, in the context of which he hardly mentions the terms ‘memory’, ‘remembering’ and ‘forgetting’ but which is nevertheless a differentiated tool for comprehending mode of action of social memories as mechanisms of a selective way of dealing with the past. Schütz distinguishes three dimensions of relevance which he calls topical relevance, interpretational relevance and motivational relevance, and then differentiates further. In the following we are going to discuss this relevance typology by three steps each, by describing each term while connecting to Schütz and – as far as possible – by illustrating it with the help of Carneades’s allegory. We will then complete each of these manifestations with a memory-theoretical classification. With the term topical relevance Schütz wants to answer the question of why, at a given moment, certain things move into the focus of our perception, that is why we, and not others, become aware of them. First of all, he turns to the possibility that something really ‘suggests itself’. This he calls “‘imposed’ thematic relevance involv[ing] the conspiciousness or outstandingness of the unfamiliar in contrast to the familiar background” (Schütz & Luckmann, 1973, p. 190). When the man from the Carneades example enters a room he knows well, its location, its measurements as well as that the objects in it are sufficiently determined and part of his habitual knowledge. Entering the room happens in the automatic expectation to find everything as it always is. As long as nothing has changed, the current perceptions stay in the background of consciousness, orientation within the room happens in a routine manner, and the man may go on dwelling on his own thoughts. Now, however, there is a strange object there; the routine of automatic perception is irritated, and the object must be made a subject of consideration. Doing so, our man drops the thought he has been dealing with parallel to his habitual movement and is compelled to turn to the now-problematic object. From a memory-theoretical point of view, the memory determines the routine of perception and movement. Memory helps the man not to have to orientate himself again and again in familiar surroundings. As a routine of consciousness, he compares the sensory impressions he is provided with to the usual patterns of perception and movement. What remains relevant at first is the thought our man pursues and which he can ‘afford’ because of the work of his memory. Only the unfamiliar in the context of the familiar causes the memory to sound the alarm, whereupon a decision

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must be made whether to take up a new topic or to keep the old one – due to an irritation that has been dismissed as unimportant.16 As a second kind of topical relevance Schütz identifies relevance as a result of voluntary attention. He calls this motivated topical relevance which may either appear as a change of subject or as a development of a topic. In the case of the change of subject, now the story of the man entering the room may be changed so that this room is now unknown to him – he knows the space only from what a friend has told him. Our man bases his expectations on the general ideas one has of rooms. This time he cannot afford to dwell on other thoughts. Because the room is unknown to him, he will be highly motivated to turn at once to possible irritations. The change of subject has already happened before the room was entered. The memory provides perceptual routines and puts the memory on the alert before the sensory impressions have connected to the situation. The background routine is partially suspended and the consciousness is attuned to the relevance in an uncertain situation from the outset. Now, however, it will be prepared for encountering the unknown object in the room. For the problem of the change of subject Schütz falls back on a motif of Husserl’s that we have already encountered in the context of his theory of time. According to this motif, each topic has an inner and an outer horizon. The outer horizon contains the retentions and memories which refer back to the original constitution of the current theme. Furthermore, everything that is linked with the theme in passive syntheses of identity, similarity, etc., belongs to the outer horizon. (Schütz & Luckmann, 1973, p. 193)

The inner horizon, on the other hand, includes all elements into which the theme may be subdivided. Following the phenomenologist Aron Gurwitsch, Schütz introduces the concept of the hermeneutic field. This field consists of topical relevances “which implicitly belong to the theme and were originally stored in prior experiences or are given in the actual experience” (Schütz & Luckmann, 1973, p. 194). Now, it is in accordance with the motivated thematic relevance in the course of developing a topic that one is not satisfied with the contents just perceived and wants to know more. By orienting within the thematic field one 16

Concerning the imposed topical relevance, Schütz furthermore distinguishes other kinds which cannot be discussed here in detail. Among these there count leaping from one topic to another when changing the meaning structure of a field of reality, changing the tension of consciousness within one field of reality, or socially enforced attention. (see Schütz & Luckmann, 1973, pp. 190‑195).

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may further pursue the main topic with the use of sub-topics. This theoretical movement, however, is path-dependent, as “the thematic field is ‘practically’ more or less circumscribed, that is, in view of the actually present, prior history of the experience” (Schütz & Luckmann, 1973, p. 195).17 The man entering the room already expects to encounter unfamiliar objects. When becoming aware of an object, he starts analysing it. He recognizes it as a rope, which usually has no place in a living room. By its particular design he notes that it must be a climbing rope. This way, within the topic and as a result of his decision to dwell on this object, he connects the impressions of the situation to his own topicspecific prior knowledge. In other words, he starts remembering his experiences with ropes. Going beyond the selectivity of the memory, which initially allows him to ‘blindly’ become oriented in situations, he may consciously turn to the inner horizon of a topic which is defined by the thematic field. As a third aspect of topical relevance Schütz identifies a consciousnessspecific selectivity which follows a somewhat complicated chronological structure: hypothetical relevance. It arises from a situation in which something unfamiliar stands out from the background of the familiar. However, we assume the case that the event will soon be over but still requires a reaction. This would be the case if the man sees the tangle and immediately leaves the room. At the door he starts thinking if this could have been a snake or a rope. In doing so, he develops hypotheses. The hypothetical relevance is transformed into a valid relevance or rejected. If such confirmations or annulments are independent of our action, one must often simply ‘wait’. Then the expectations of future events, ignoring all the other meaning structures characterizing them, are also adjusted to find out whether a past, hypothetically relevant event was ‘really’ relevant or not. Finally, many routine ‘safety precautions’ have originated from hypothetical relevances. One can ‘often not afford’ to suspend rules of conduct until the facts of the case are definitely settled. (Schütz & Luckmann, 1973, p. 196)

In contrast to the other kinds of thematic relevance, hypothetical relevance shifts the grasping of a topic towards the future. Since all we can fall back on are experiences, it is a prior memory and therefore an aspect of memory which is crucial for the following relevance structures. Schütz opens up a second category of relevance in view of topics which no longer ‘impose’ themselves on the consciousness because they are already existent. He calls them interpretative relevance. If in the case of imposed thematic relevance a pre-conscious selection – executed by the memory – was 17

This is why Alfred Schütz and Thomas Luckmann call the topical field a ‘practical’ one.

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in the foreground, it is now about a process of consciousness in which a current topic is “brought into coincidence with ‘relevant’ elements of knowledge” (Schütz & Luckmann, 1973, p. 198). In this case, a lot happens by way of interpretative routines: an assessment happens if something is already known. In this case Schütz speaks of an imposed interpretative relevance. It is no longer about topic-related selectivity in a certain situation but about aspects resulting from looking at an object which has already thematically come into existence. It is now crucial that certain aspects are emphasized, and others are neglected. Only the former of the two are interpretatively relevant. If the topic is now made congruent with experience-communicated knowledge elements, this congruence need not be complete – a typical similarity is enough. The coincidence then concerns only typical similarities. for us the most important case is the one with the greatest frequency in the orientation of daily life: the coincidence between the theme and the type stored in the stock of knowledge. The relation to specific prior experiences is in this case ‘indirect,’ insofar as the type is sedimented in just these prior experiences. In all these cases, there are gradual transitions from coincidence to partial coincidence to lack of coincidence. The ‘extent’ of the coincidence must suffice for mastery of the actual situation […]. (Schütz & Luckmann, 1973, p. 200)

However, as soon as one aspect of a topical subject looks unfamiliar, no interpretation routine is possible. Then an interpretation of the problem is required which Schütz calls motivated interpretive relevance. In view of the Carneades story, the focus is on the question of how “the theme ‘object-in-the-corner’ and the element of knowledge ‘typical-coiled-rope’” (Schütz & Luckmann, 1973, p. 202) can be made congruent with each other. If, however, the man has never seen a rope before but has seen a ball of wool, he may associate the two facts with each other. At that moment the ball shape is identified by comparing similarities – the colour or material of the rope is irrelevant. Given this uncertainty as to whether the object in the corner is a harmless rope or a dangerous snake, it may be that the colour still becomes relevant. For example, we can imagine that by the basis of the colour of the object our man is able to decide that it is not a snake at all. He’s never seen a neon-coloured snake before. In this case the colour would be relevant for the interpretation in the second instance. Things are different, however, if the man is an anxious person and not capable of making a decision based on the colour. He must then go on with the process of interpretation drawing on his experiences as well as on the learned capability to interpret. In any case, he depends on a knowledge structure and a selection principle – his memory.

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In general, the structure of interpretational relevance is determined by the principle of compatibility: compatibility between the current theme (its determinations that are presented as ‘typical’) and the interpretational schemata in the stock of knowledge – but compatibility also between the interpretational schemata in their relation to one another; and frequently more than one schema is interpretatively relevant. […] Here only the conclusion is to be drawn: ‘motivated’ acts of explication are also not absolutely ‘free’. Rather, they are ‘prescribed’ by the situation and the current theme as well as by the current state of knowledge and the ordering of the interpretational schemata in the stock of knowledge.18 (Schütz & Luckmann, 1973, pp. 207-208)

Interpretation relevances happen in a border area between memory and recollection. At first, they belong to what Schütz calls the pre-predicative realm. They are not reflected on, either consciously or linguistically. However, an uncertain situation may require interpretations which result in the targeted and remembering search for relevant experiences. The third relevance structure elaborated by Schütz describes a memoryspecific behaviour which can be attributed to the realm of experiencemediated practices, routines and habits. Motivational relevance refers even more to the biographical development of the person acting or behaving and distinguishes between a ‘free’, future-oriented, and a ‘tied’ chain of motivations, the latter coming from sedimented motives and, thus, referring to the past. These considerations are based on the initial question of why our man has an interest in making a decision between the two alternatives of snake or rope at all. He could just as well make other unclear objects in the room a topic of his considerations, such as the question whether there is a suit hanging on the wall or whether someone is standing there. His decision for the interpretational problem of snake/rope can neither have been initiated by any imposed thematic relevance nor by any interpretive relevance. The topic as well as all the possibilities of assessment and interpretation are given. When entering the room, the man follows a blueprint for action. He wants to have a nap and would not like to know that there is a snake nearby at all. Thus, what he believes to be important is meaningfully connected to his intentions. “That is, motivational relevance puts conduct in the current situation into a meaningful relation with life-plans and daily plans, in the case of both routine prior decisions and ‘extraordinary’ decisions” (Schütz & Luckmann, 1973, p. 210).

18

Elsewhere we are going to deal in more detail with the memory-specific significance of the concept of the stock of knowledge which is crucial for Schütz’s social phenomenology.

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Plans are always made before acting. Schütz calls this teleological kind of motivation the for-the purpose-of motivation, coming from past experiences but motivated by taking certain sub-actions into consideration which lead towards the intended goal, and to carry them out if necessary. Nevertheless, the chronological perspective of this relevance structure points is directed to the future and is connected to the semantic and syntactic facts of language: The linguistically objectivated time-perspectives decisively influence the usual thinking about the courses of acts and the chains of motivation. Everyone is socialized in such forms of habitual thought. As a consequence he has at his disposal linguistically objectivated forms of habitual thought about timeperspectives, which are to a certain extent ‘detached’ from the basic temporal structure of the flow of experience, the courses of acts, and the chains of motivation involved in them. With the help of such forms he can explicate his own action just like the action of his fellow-men. Along with this there is the possibility that typical styles for considering courses of acts and contexts of motivation will be developed within social groups and societies which are confronted by typically similar situations and undergo a typically similar fate – as, for instance, predominantly ‘teleological’ or predominantly ‘causal’, typically ‘dynamic’ or typically ‘static’. (Schütz & Luckmann, 1973, p. 215)

In the Carneades example, the man needs further information to be able to distinguish the rope from the snake. He plans how to proceed, by deciding to touch the ball with a stick, to provide better lighting for the room, and so on. Through these plans of action, he obtains further interpretative material which, he hopes, will help him to make a more viable decision which is directly relevant to his survival. This chain of motivations, directed at the future, can also be viewed at the other way round. If, the situation was initially open under the teleological aspect, this changes when the motives, and therefore the relevances, are derived from the past. The situation then no longer appears free but as one which is determined by past experiences (see Schütz & Luckmann, 1973, p. 215). If we want to know why the uncertainty about the object being a rope or a snake is important for the man, we must ask how he knows that a rope in the living room is acceptable, but a snake is not. In this case it is not the intended goal which creates relevance but what the man, and furthermore what ‘the people’ in general, know about snakes. For example, from his indirect, perhaps even direct, experiences he knows that sometimes snakes bite and that snakebites are very unpleasant, possibly even lethal. Schütz calls this complex knowledge of the snake a ‘type’ or a syndrome, an interplay of hypothetical expectations, skills, routines and emotional states – the man has a certain ‘attitude’ towards snakes, in the sense of a habitual possession (see Schütz & Luckmann, 1973, p. 217). “An attitude, therefore, is ready under typical

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circumstances to put into motion typical ways of conduct – and, indeed immediately, without having first to ‘plan’” (Schütz & Luckmann, 1973, p.  218). As a syndrome, the attitude can no longer be referred to a single experience or acquisition situation, as it combines many structural aspects. Thus, one may not even consciously remember the attitude as a relevance structure – it is caused by a certain trigger information and is simply there. Schütz points out the fact that in most cases this trigger information is “inaccessible to the immediate grasp of reflective consciousness” (Schütz & Luckmann, 1973, p. 219). He calls motivational chains referring to sedimented and often connected elements of past experiences because-motivations – in contrast to the teleological for-the purpose-of, they are diffuse and can only be determined by recourse to past events. Schütz concedes that thematic relevances, interpretational relevances and motivational relevances can only be distinguished ideally but are in fact intertwined or inseparably linked. Even if he mentions this only in passing, it is obvious that relevance structures describe basic mechanisms of individual and collective memories. In this context, the concept of relevance helps us to understand each current-situation-related perception as well as according path-dependent dispositions for action. An essential motivation in this context, is a selectivity shaped by experiences which is mostly habitual, and which one is only partly aware of – it is pre-predicative. A differentiated concept of the relevance structure offers an added value compared to a comprehensive yet diffuse concept of selectivity.19 This added value consists in the fact that thematic relevance takes into consideration that consciousness reflects on the world of objects and, starting from this, illuminates the emergence of a theme. The lifelong trained perceptual capability that consciousness may access is a memory process distinguishing important from unimportant topics. Interpretational relevance makes visible how, in the case of uncertainty and ambiguity, an already existing topic is dealt with. It provides information about the path-dependency20 or pre-determinedness of problem-solving processes 19 20

Gerd Sebald supports a position which is in line with his, and furthermore he suggests changing the terms ‘frame’ and ‘convention’ into ‘typology’ and ‘relevance’ (see Sebald, 2012, p. 203). By path-dependency we mean a basically reconstructable causal chain of individual events which, however, can only be traced back in exceptional cases. The path as a unit of meaning is not predetermined (in the determinist sense) but develops, similar to the process or the trajectory, from retrospective observation. The chain of events, however, is neither coincidental nor contingent. In other words: things may be based on a causal chain which is not congruent with the retrospective attribution of meaning (memory of events). Without the assumption of path-dependency, no action would make any sense.

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mediated by the past. Through the concept of attitude, which is designed as a syndrome or a network of experiences and layered traces of experiences, for example in the sense of emotions and routines, light is shed on the fact that perceptions do not coincidentally arouse certain ‘ideas’ but create quite specific association patterns which have developed in the course of an individual’s life. The theory of memory implied by Schütz can be further elaborated with regard to social groups and societies if we take a closer look at his concepts of types and stock of knowledge, which we will discuss later (see Chapter 5). 2.4

Selectivity and Memory: Summary

In this section we have seen that the ‘work’ of the memory covers much more than the conscious retrieval of stored knowledge. Bergson and Merleau-Ponty clarify the fact that our memory includes everything that has been inscribed or imprinted onto us as a result of past experiences through movements of the body – and this includes the movements of the mind. In this context, imprinting or inscribing are only metaphors for a more or less delicate control system – we are not so much dealing with patterns applied to a virtual subject as with a complex structure of associations or an architecture of combinations. This inner as well as outer sensorium, which evolves with every moment, structures our perceptual capability on the one hand, and on the other provides us with an arsenal of behavioural dispositions. Schütz follows on from insights of this kind but gives the organism’s environment a higher status through his concept of relevance. He not only assumes that in a given situation one will behave as determined by the development of the individual sensorium in the sense of path-dependency. Rather, he answers the question of how this sensorium is typically organized. Thus, his relevance theory provides answers to the question about a social or culture-specific order of individual memories.21 In the following chapter we will deal with the consciousness of the past, and we will clarify some crucial concepts connected to the issue of memory.

21

His strong emphasis on interpretation may easily result in the impression that Schütz drafts a cognitive theory of the consciousness while neglecting the non-declarative or implicit knowledge inscribed in the body. In fact, he does not lose sight of this fundamental aspect, as his concept of motivation is clearly pre-predicatively oriented – only in exceptional cases does the consciousness have access to the actual driving forces of behaviour and action which derive from its history. In other words: in Schütz, practice always, and necessarily, precedes interpretation and reflection.

Chapter 3

Consciousness of the Past When entrusting ourselves to an experienced person – such as in case of a medical operation or when embarking on a plane journey – we have an expectation: the person is supposed to carry out the procedures on which our life and our health depend with the routine of a long professional life. Sometimes this is connected to the assumption that the necessary actions have so utterly become second nature to this person that he/she is able to perform them ‘automatically’ in his/her sleep. In this case we associate experience with the rising probability of success as a result of repetition, practice, adjustment of perception to everything that is important, excluding reflection and reasoning, as well as, finally, through forgetting about the laborious procedures of acquisition. There are good reasons to not trust this everyday understanding of experience. One of these reasons is the origin of the word: according to the etymological dictionary of German language, experiencing comes from ‘travelling’, ‘moving through’, ‘passing through’ and is today used in the sense of ‘researching’, ‘getting to know’ and ‘going through’. As an adjective, the word means ‘prudent’ or ‘skilled’, and as a noun is means the same as ‘perception’ and ‘knowledge’ (see Duden, 1989, p.  160). Obviously, it is not about acquisition processes having been forgotten and movements automatized but about the person being capable of bringing together or having ‘on the radar’ many events related to its subject matter. In addition, he/she should be capable of providing for all contingencies in different or completely new situations. When reformulating our expectation of dealing with an experienced person, we would probably agree on saying that this person is ‘skilled’, and is skilled enough that, if necessary, he/she can even explain to us what is going on. Presumably, experience is connected to the memory of past events which were experienced in such a way that they have contributed to being skilled. Experience then is less connected to routine than to cognitive structuring. The following chapter focuses on the individual consciousness’ way of dealing with its past. To be able to understand and appropriately analyse these connections, some basic concepts must be assessed and sometimes clarified concerning the scope of their normal everyday meaning. We start with clarifying the concept of schema, then we will briefly discuss the problem of oblivion or forgetfulness, to then distinguish the concepts of event, experience and being experienced from each other. Then, as a conclusion, we will deal with the equally memory-theoretical relevant concept of personal identity.

© Brill Fink, 2022 | doi:10.30965/9783846767399_004

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Chapter 3

Schemata of Experience

The memory is no store but a selection mechanism. Yet still, it returns to something which, as a result of experiencing events, has remained as a trace in the body. For the kind of knowledge we are sometimes aware of, although we frequently are not, there are different terms such as habit, routine or practice according to which we perceive or act on. For memory research, however, one term is crucial: this is called a schema – usually predicative or utterable – which is available in the form of knowledge. This explicitly does not cover implicit, non-declarative knowledge. However, with the help of the concept of schema it can be easily demonstrated how the continuity of knowledge, or in our case: a consciousness structure, changes. The concept of schema is not only used in the sciences but has also a meaning in everyday language. For example, when encountering people unwaveringly and ‘mechanically’ fulfilling their tasks even under adverse circumstances, we get the phrase ‘by the numbers’ in mind. In this, critical, sense, ‘by the numbers’ means (excessively) inflexible perception and action patterns, which enables the person a degree of routine but at the same time results in tunnel vision; and in the worst case, incapacity. It is particularly in situations requiring a creative way of dealing with unusual problems, ‘by numbers’ – which we often believe to find with highly bureaucratized procedures – that action is blocked and the desired success prevented. The inflexible and routine pattern allows for neither spontaneous, innovative solutions to problems, nor to adjustment, nor does it allow for reflecting on one’s own actions. So it seems as if here we have to deal with the opposite of habitualized skills, such as playing music: whereas ‘by numbers’ suffers from its unreflective inflexibility, the laboriously practiced mastering of a musical instrument, in the best sense of automatisation, must elude precisely the reflective grasp of consciousness in order to sound superior, masterful and easy. In psychology, on the other hand, the concept of schema refers to cognitive orders that serve to recognize specific situations.1 Here, schemata are “skeleton-like knowledge structures which are enriched with the specifics of a current problem if the person encounters a suitable type of problem […]” (Wild & Möller, 2009, p. 6). It is important to see that schemata do not represent specific knowledge contents or concrete memories of past events but 1 This is not meant to suggest that there is agreement on the concept of schema among psychological schema research. However, a detailed discussion of different schema theories would not only go beyond the scope of this book but would also miss the object and purpose of this study.

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structures, abstracted from concrete experiences and gained by impressions, which control the perception and information processing of individuals. They ensure that situations and facts are not always perceived as being new. This idea, which follows on from Bergson and Merleau-Ponty, leads us directly to the realm of memory: by establishing connections between learned patterns, schemata enable the recognition of similarities in constantly renewing situations, thus relieving the individual. The complexity of a situation which, at first, is a problem for every perception, is reduced and can be deciphered along a known coordinate system. Schemata function as mediators between the abstract and the concrete as well as between the known (redundancy) and the new (variety).2 The high degree of abstraction of schemata allows for attributing a series of highly different facts to one schema, and to remember them as known, whereby subtleties and specifics of the situation can be forgotten (redundancy). For example, (not only) at the supermarket we will recognize an apple as an apple, no matter if it is red, yellow or green, big or small. As schemata are connected to each other as in a network, by its appearance, represented by the abstract schema ‘apple’, we will be able to distinguish it from a pear or a melon. At the same time, schemata allow for recognising differences and, thus, the new if situations can indeed not be understood according to existing schemata (variety). If our eye catches an as yet unknown tropical fruit, at first it cannot be attributed to one of the schemata rooted in our memory. An elimination process happens: for a pear this fruit is too big, for a pumpkin it lacks the typical surface structure and colour, for a honeydew it is not round enough, and it also cannot be a somewhat strange-looking cucumber as it is a fruit. Only a look at the label tells us that it is a papaya. Through the associated learning process – which is perhaps supported by buying and eating the papaya – a ‘papaya’ schema is added to the memory which in future situations will make us recognize: remember, this fruit. The insight that schemata are crucial for memory, recollection and oblivion goes back to the British psychologist, Frederic C. Bartlett (1886-1969). He succeeded in demonstrating that individuals perceive and attribute meaning to current events against the background of stored, past experiences. In this 2 The conceptual duo of redundancy and variety comes from systems theory, in the context of which it revisited later. Connecting to Claudio Baraldi, Giancarlo Corsi and Elena Esposito, redundancy describes the “extent to which the knowledge of an element reduces the degree of information of others. Along with the similarity of elements there rises the redundancy of the system.” Variety, on the other hand, refers to the “multiplicity and heterogeneity of the elements of a system – thus also the improbability that any element could be foreseen because of knowing other elements” (Esposito, 1997, p. 151).

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way Bartlett widens the narrow view of psychology attempting to research a memory which is cleared of any individual, social and cultural contexts and influences.3 In this context, Bartlett’s studies may be understood as a corrective to the experiments by the German psychologist, Hermann Ebbinghaus (1850-1909), who is considered the pioneer of a “memory psychology proceeding as objectively and exactly as possible and obliged to the ideal of the natural sciences” (Kölbl & Straub, 2010, p.  24; see Ebbinghaus, 1998; see Rieger, 2001). Ebbinghaus focused on the memorising of memory contents. In order to experimentally trace down retention performances as ‘pure’ memory performances which are independent of individual experiences, stocks of knowledge, social and cultural contexts, he drew up a list of meaningless syllables. In a self-experiment, he memorized this list by heart, making several attempts, until he was able to reproduce it without a mistake. Then he had two breaks of different lengths, after which he tried to reproduce the list without any errors. Then he related the number of attempts he needed to once again reproduce the list without any errors to the number of the initial attempts and to the length of the breaks (See Kölbl & Straub, 2010). This way Ebbinghaus was able to develop the so-called Forgetting Curve which makes visible “that in the time immediately after the first learning attempt forgetting happens particularly fast, then increasingly more slowly, until there remains an ‘unforgettable rest’” (Kölbl & Straub, 2010, p. 20). Ebbinghaus is considered a pioneer of experimental memory psychology, however his method was soon criticized. For example, Bartlett assumes that humans are provided with a complex repertoire of situational reaction patterns and that the individual does not react to simplified stimuli, such as senseless syllables, with simplified reaction patterns. Rather, Bartlett stated, dealing with senseless syllables, which is uncommon for most humans compared to their everyday tasks, must result in much more complex reactions (see Bartlett, 1930). Consequently, if individuals are confronted with senseless syllables, processes of interpretation and meaning attribution happen which 3 Mary Douglas sheds an extremely critical light on Bartlett developing from a psychologist being open-minded towards ethnological and sociological explanation patterns to becoming a strictly experimental psychologist. Bartlett’s schema theory belongs to the period when he started turning away from the inclusion of social influences towards his way of explaining the constitution of consciousness processes. In earlier works Bartlett had intensively dealt with the memories of primitive peoples and, while doing so, had integrated the concept of a ‘collective consciousness’. In view of this early period of Bartlett’s work, Douglas comes to the estimation that “the power of cultural convention to control perception and recall” had been Bartlett’s main interest” (Douglas, 1986, p. 87). The according attempt to write a book on conventions and to substantially develop further German gestalt psychology in this context may have been one of the reasons for Bartlett’s reorientation.

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are most closely connected to the schemata stored by the consciousness. This, however, means that something like completely ‘senseless’ syllables in the strict sense […] does not [exist] at all, as humans attribute meaning even to material which at first sight does not make sense. Thus, a syllable might be coded as an abbreviation for a word which makes sense for a certain individual, or as a marker for remembering a personally important event. (Kölbl & Straub, 2010, pp. 23-24)

Bartlett’s approach to the psychological research of memory is therefore fundamentally different from Ebbinghaus’s experiments. His research happens in everyday situations in which the test subjects must retell the Native American fairy tale, The War of the Ghosts, which was previously unknown to them and comes from a completely different cultural background. Among the crucial results of these analyses there counts the insight that memorising performances does not at all happen reproductively, in the sense of producing a true copy, but actively and constructively on the basis of previous, not least implicitly acquired and socio-culturally variable schemata and scripts. This becomes obvious, among others, by the reproduction usually being shorter than the original narration, by names being remembered incorrectly, and by the renarration showing a number of typical mistakes which are frequently connected to one’s own – cultural, social or personal – experiences, expectations and the available linguistic means of expression. (Kölbl & Straub, 2010, p. 24)

Schemata and scripts – meaning process schemata, that provide cognitive structures for the perception of categorized actions (such as a visit to the restaurant or the theatre) – are deeply rooted within us as part of our implicit memory. This does not mean, however, that their action confronts us with an original past ‘as it was’. Indeed, Bartlett considers schemata to be historically grown structures: “The influence of ‘schemata’ is influence by the past” (Bartlett, 1977, p. 202). Nevertheless, schemata do not completely determine the present but provide the organism with a kind of toolkit with which it categorises current situations and attributes meaning to them (see Bartlett, 1977, p. 208). In other words: the working of schemata includes considerable degrees of freedom for situational, present-time interpretation processes. Bartlett goes as far as to consider the reflective handling of schemata the core of the process of remembering and the precondition for consciousness.4 Due to their 4 In his book Bartlett describes this by saying that the organism must find a way “of turning round upon its own ‘schemata’ and making them the objects of its reactions”, so that a conscious dealing with ‘schemata’ and their development becomes possible. Then the insight gained by the individual would have to be: “’This and this and this must have occurred, in

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nature of being incorporated, schemata are not per se accessible for conscious reflection, but they are the foundation for recollection and, thus, memory. What is remembered by way of schemata and scripts thus represents an active construction: schemata based on imprinting continuously and actively organise perception and remembrance in each specific present, by unfolding from moment to moment in the course of social practice, thus keeping themselves open to change.5 3.2

Forgetfulness

If we look up the word ‘forgetfulness’ in a (German) dictionary, we find definitions such as ‘losing something from one’s (mental) possession’. The connection to ‘losing’ is the first indication that this is a process which is not consciously controlled. Something has been lost which originally was possessed.6 I can only forget something that I once knew –whereas knowledge, as we have seen, does not always have to be conscious and accessible to reflection. From everyday language we know meanings of ‘to forget’ with which to express consciously giving up on knowledge – such as when someone says that we might ‘forget about something’. It is obvious that the implementation of such a suggestion is not easy and may even result in the opposite. The decision about which contents of our stock of knowledge are available for reflecting access is only to a very limited degree made by the individual’s consciousness. Nevertheless, the memory is in charge of selecting what is perceived and provides the basis for orientation in any situation. It is the memory which organises the organism’s situational adjustment, by selecting from its evolved structure those aspects that appear useful to it for coping with situations, by comparing similarities (recognizing). It starts with the most recently used processing routines and, if it does not immediately find an adequate solution, feels its way along traces into more remote areas. Even there suitable ‘formulas’ are not necessarily to be found; the situation becomes problematic. One is helpless, or one must now switch on one’s consciousness to find a solution to the problem. In doing so, order that my present state should be what it is’. And, in fact, I believe this is precisely and accurately just what does happen in by far the greatest number of instances of remembering […]” (Bartlett, 1977, p. 202). 5 This also explains Bartlett’s disinclination towards the inflexible concept of schema (Bartlett, 1977, pp. 200‑201). However, given the fact that he does not have any alternative – he himself suggests an “organized setting” but does not make systematic use of it – he keeps it. 6 For the following explanations we refer to Oliver Dimbath’s (2014) considerations on the issue of forgetting.

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one may come to the conclusion that this is something one has never encountered before, or that one has forgotten. We have already shown that, in the course of experiencing, many more impressions remain in the organism than we can grasp with the aid of thinking. Over the period of this experience, however, these impressions are constantly modified and, when the memory makes its comparisons of similarities, they are partly overwritten. Against this background, one can say that we have forgotten much of what we know because it is structurally inscribed into the body. Forgetting then describes the fact that we have at our disposal something that we can currently access neither ‘automatically’ nor consciously. However, this knowledge is not lost simply because access is blocked due to the processing routines of our memory. According to the dictionary definition, however, we must admit that this is precisely the same as losing something from our ‘intellectual property’, thus, from the consciously accessible stock of knowledge. Although this is not quite in line with everyday understanding, with this quality of the brain we can speak of forgetfulness. This does not only refer to the problem of not meeting the expectation of memory that others have placed on us. Most of all, it refers to the fact that, when comparing similarities, the selectivity of the memory moves first and foremost on ‘beaten tracks’ and only feels its way into the branches or the overgrown areas of the neuronal traces of our experiences if the results are unsatisfactory. As the memory is supposed to help to appropriate orientation as quickly and effectively as possible and does not ‘think’ for long under the conditions of everyday practical pressure, it prefers proven routines and displaces, overwrites or ignores peripheral or obsolete structural aspects. In other words: the most prominent task of the memory is separating everything irrelevant and thus: forgetting. Seen this way, forgetfulness as a quality of the organism does not contradict the memory but functions as its precondition7 – however, only then when our consciousness confronts us with a problem which ‘usually’, based on our experience, we are supposed to be able to cope with. However, we should distinguish forgetfulness as a quality from another definition of the word. This refers to a kind of forgetting which is instrumentally used in social relationships, by 7 In this sense, we may also understand the contribution by Burkart Liebsch who, by referring to Nietzsche and Heidegger, states that there is an inner connection between forgetting and remembering in the context of which forgetting must precede remembering: “As a consequence, by way of remembering a memory-constitutive kind of forgetting comes up, i.e. a kind of forgetting which only allows for remembering and functions like a horizon against which anything remembered must gain shape. It may well be that we are uncircumventably forgetting beings. No self which develops by way of remembering may lift this constitutive forgetting” (Liebsch, 2002, p. 214).

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an actor trying to exploit the forgetfulness of others. As this is a case of social forgetfulness, we will not further discuss this point here and will return to it later. 3.3

Remember/ing as an Intentional Act?

We intuitively tend to see remembering and forgetting as being in opposition to each other. Thus, by memory we mean a bracket around these two processes, while at the same time assuming that the knowledge stored in the memory can be retrieved when needed – or indeed that it cannot. Such an idea assumes that the memory assists the will; the planning consciousness would always participate in all memory processes. However, what then are we supposed to describe the behaviour described by Bergson, which in the course of learning processes have become so habitual that we ‘behave’ like that without thinking about them any further? In this case we fall back on – implicit or nondeclarative – knowledge we have acquired in the past and which we now have at our disposal quite automatically in certain situations. Conversely, it may also be that we believe ourselves to be capable of doing something which, however, does not work – we have forgotten how to do it or we are ‘out of practice’. In such a case, our skill at recollection is not in line with what the body ‘remembers’. In addition, there is the reversed case, when only after having thought about it for quite some time we remember what it must have been like in the past: ‘Now I remember!’ Usually we use the word ‘remember’ when thinking about something of the past – and usually we give expression to this thinking with words. Thus, remembering would have to be called something declarative; we listen to what our inner self tells us, we re-member and are able to retell the story. However, as we have learned in the meantime, memory is more than what we can or cannot remember. Forgetting is not only knowledge which is irretrievably lost but also knowledge we have no access to momentarily, but which may soon be activated again. Usually, we are even capable of recalling a skill we practiced in the past, without remembering all the details of the lengthy process of learning it. Against this background, the memory might be imagined as a switch, turning on or off connections once installed in the brain. The brain adjusts to everyday situations and very soon develops routines, to keep its processing capacity ready for ‘unusual’ things. Everything which is momentarily irrelevant is switched off. This holds both for remembering and for perception. That what has been switched off is called ‘forgetting’ because currently it is not made available: I have forgotten where I put the key because the milk was boiling

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over. Then, in the course of remembering, I try to tell myself about the places where I might have put it. I search the flat. When finding the key on the sideboard, I remember at once the circumstances under which I put it down and rushed into the kitchen. For a better understanding of what we are capable of remembering and of what we believe to be forgetting, it is worthwhile to clarify some terms. When dealing with things past, we should distinguish between a past event, the thus connected experience and remembering as being involved in it. 3.3.1 Experiencing and Learning Sometimes we speak of remembering when trying to say that the body is capable again of something which was practiced over a long period but had been subsequently forgotten. The body of the sportsman who, after an injury, had to have a longer break, ‘remembers’ reflexes and movements, and this enables him to be fit again more quickly. However, when dealing with issues of social remembering, it is more natural to develop a concept of conscious remembering, as it provides a basis for investigating how we speak about common memories. In the considerations of William James, Henri Bergson and Edmund Husserl we have already learned about some approaches which explain how the individual consciousness becomes aware of its past and, from this, gains orientation for future action. Following these ideas, we now consider the concatenation of the terms event, experience, memory, which make up four levels of subjective reference to the past. These levels are connected to each other in the sense that processes of passing on and processing information happen between them. Let us start with the event. By an event we understand nothing more than the unique and thus unrepeatable change of a certain state of the world between two points in time. Events happen frequently, but only a small share of them concern the human organism. When the winds of autumn tear a leaf off a tree somewhere without anybody noticing, and it falls down, we might say that ‘nothing has happened’. Nobody knows about this leaf, nobody knows about its fate, and nobody cares. Other events happen, they concern the body but go unnoticed. Radioactive radiation usually evades perception but may still cause serious damage. A third group of events is noticed, by the consciousness registering a change. However, even if it notices a change, this is not at all to say that it grasps all of the consequences. We do not always know from the outset that what we perceive as an event is only part of what is actually happening. The loud bang in the neighbourhood was caused by something making this noise. This may have been a wooden board, an old motorcycle misfiring, or a shot. What is primarily significant for our clarification of the concept of memory

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is the aspect of an event that is perceived by consciousness – and this perception includes the sensory perception of, for example, a sound and the ‘impression ‘ that immediately arises when we become ‘aware’ of this sound:8 ‘Aha, the neighbour is shooting again.’ We may therefore state: during any event, at best only a sub-aspect is actually perceived, and only a sub-aspect of this subaspect is consciously reflected on. What exactly I perceive and make myself aware of depends on how-well practiced my sensory organs and my brain, as the organ in charge of attributing meaning, are. A car driver who is not very familiar with engines will not hear that the engine is slowly becoming louder or runs unevenly. The trained ear of the car mechanic, on the other hand, will perhaps make him/her sit up. He/she perceives more, in different ways, and his/her consciousness is capable of drawing conclusions from this. Those aspects of an event that are sensually perceived may be called an experience.9 As more things are sensually registered than consciously reflected, the experience includes a great number of impressions – even those which are not accessible to consciousness. The word ‘impression’ already gives an important hint. Obviously, an experience is ‘pressed in’, it leaves a mark. Accordingly, one trick when practicing vocal scores is indeed to again and again repeat a passage which is difficult for the members of the choir but to direct their attention to the next bar. The choirmaster pretends to be working on a rhythmic problem, however – by way of inconspicuous remarks made in passing – he is improving the choir’s sound elsewhere. In doing so, the choir members experience singing and the practicing of both bars in the same way. They are focusing and practicing on one passage while learning the other one in passing. There is no need for them to know that, according to the choirmaster’s plan, they have actually been working on the sound and not on the rhythm. This period of practicing consists of the attempt to incorporate a sound experience without the reflection of the singers’ consciousness, as this would be a hindrance in such work. To the experience contains those elements of an event that I have made myself aware of, and those I have experienced without having thought about them. The experience leaves a mark in my organism – it may be as a meaningful association or as a synaptic connection. 8 Some definitions of the concept of the event take into consideration right from the beginning that an event is always already the result of a “selection made from a horizon of equable events” (Engell, 2001b, p. 148). 9 Andreas Vieth points out to the fact that the experienced subject becomes an “aspect of subjective life” (Vieth, 2001, p. 152). This requires the contribution of the reflecting consciousness. Furthermore, he states that an event may become enriched by way of remembering. This way the concepts of experience and remembering become less distinguishable, which is why we suggest calling a remembered event a memory or a subject of memory.

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Things become even narrower when the experience is transformed into experience. We use the term experience only for that aspect of the experience which is consciously reflected on and given meaning.10 Experience can be put into words, it can be embedded into explicable, declarative knowledge. Alfred Schütz, to whose thoughts on memory, remembering and forgetting we will return later, defined the term experience, following Husserl, as “evident self-grasping and self-perception of an individual date, that is even an unreal object” (Schütz, 1967, p. 134, fn 65). Regardless of whether this experience refers to an external object or an inner process, such as a thought, it is a matter of awareness linked to meaning. We may experience a dream by trying to retell it. Then, each new experience is embedded into the context of experiences. However, as experiences made as components of experiences leave traces, with each new experience the stock of experience branches out even further – knowledge becomes more differentiated. By recourse to the schema theory, which has been briefly sketched above, Schütz develops this motif further to become a theory of the stock of social knowledge – we will come back to this in Chapter 5. At first it suffices to understand experience as an aspect of an experience to which a meaning has been attributed – and that means: it is connected to existing experience and can be articulated. By the concepts of experience and the context of experiences we can already comprehend how the consciousness reaches back to the past and what distinguishes this past. Basically, remembering happens always whenever we form an experience. We perceive a change and refer the perception to what we have already experienced. The goal of this process is the attribution of meaning or giving an answer to the question ‘What is this?’ However, equating remembering with experiencing would result in a loss of accuracy. In fact, we may go one step further: when remembering something, I consciously address my experiential context. Remembering is intentional action, reaching back to the traces of past experiences in my consciousness. I turn towards my inner self, I re-member. I rack my brains because now I am supposed to write down the Ten Commandments in an exam. I know perfectly that I memorized the exact wording and that I once knew it. But now two Commandments absolutely refuse to come to my mind – I try remembering them. This recollection can only always happen in the present; however, it refers to something which happened to me in the past. An event which may be imagined as a situation during my preparations for the examination became an experience for me. Although I was distracted by the noise coming from the construction site on 10

By this definition we move away from everyday language as well as from the lexical meaning of the concept of experience.

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the neighbouring premises, I know that I memorized the Ten Commandments. This memorisation was accompanied by the attempt to connect a personal experience to each Commandment. This experience was not necessarily my own – I may have adopted it from stories told by others, from a novel or a film. Basically, these are favourable preconditions for allowing me to remember the lines at a later time. But unfortunately, I was distracted or unfocused, and now I find it difficult to recall two Commandments. Thus, I try to remember consciously: ‘What was that again?’ Experience, as we have found, precedes remembering. However, the act of remembering itself creates experiences, as these are events being consciously reflected upon in parts. The final step in the chain of events, the experience, experience and remembering may be understood as being self-creating, in a kind of derivation. This explains why statements of witnesses become ever more coherent and detailed the greater the chronological distance to the relevant event or the witness’s experience. Each recollection constructs a new experience which, in turn, becomes the model for further remembering.11 3.3.2 Conscious Remembering We understand remembering as purposeful – not automatically – recourse to those traces of past events we have called experience. Incorporated knowledge, which has been dealt with above as an aspect of memory, is excluded. Remembering is always connected to consciousness and thus meaning. It provides orientation for coping with situations in which we want orientation. For our everyday behaviour we are highly dependent on the traces of past events. But only when communicating with ourselves or others do we refer to experiences, and only when we consciously turn to these experiences do we remember. In the following, we would like to discuss the problem of conscious remembering. Two forms can be distinguished: of importance for coping with everyday life is that kind of remembering which is suitable for connecting future action to experiences. We may call this orientating remembering. However, we also remember in moments which are freed from the pressure to act in everyday life – for example when visiting a memory which is connected to emotions. This second variant is equivalent to nostalgic remembering. Orienting remembering happens when an action is supposed to be planned by recourse to existing experience. Alfred Schütz, in his considerations on the design of actions, states that we cannot imagine any future action without reaching back to the experiential context developed in the past (see Schütz, 1967; Berek, 2009, pp. 125-131). It is important in this context that we do not 11

On the interaction of memory and experience see Toni Tholen (2001).

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plan our action – in its process form – but the action that has already been completed. When deciding to take a letter to the post office, I always think in terms of the goal of the action. With Schütz we may say that any plan of action is a pre-memory. I remember how to find my way to the post office, how to find my way there, I remember where to post my letter and so on. However, I am able to imagine all this only because from my experience I know that there is a post office, that it is in a particular street and that I can post my letter. We may thus say that everything we imagine about the future is somehow grounded in past experience;12 even the wildest vision of the future must be rooted in knowledge which has been developing until the present. Here too, however, it does not matter whether one has experienced what one projects into the future oneself. It is enough to associate it with a similar and only indirectly absorbed experience in order to think of something new. Orientating remembering is needed for everyday life, for planning our future actions. When making a resolution, we tell ourselves little stories about possible futures. It does not really come as a surprise that what we have invented at that moment, by reaching back to our stock of knowledge, frequently does not happen. After all, we may only speculate about what is going to happen when we act into the world. We call the other version nostalgic remembering – originally the term ‘nostalgic’ meant homesickness, the melancholia or depression of soldiers being stationed far away from their homes for a long time. Later it was associated with retrogressiveness in the wake of the rapid progress of the modern world. In any case, however, it consists of remembering older states, and this remembering is not due to the necessity of planning und everyday life pressure to act. For nostalgic remembering we take our time. As with orientating remembering, we reach back to a state of mind which is in line with the continuously updated set of layered experiences of the past. Through the act of remembering this state, or the experience schema, is changed once again, depending on the emotional situation under which the impression of this ‘flashback’ happens.13 Such an activity includes both indulging in memories and daydreaming 12 13

Schütz (1959) discusses this problem by the example of the story of ancient seer Tiresias when pursuing the question of what would be the phenomenological preconditions for a look at the future. According to Alexandra Hausstein, the concept of nostalgia can be explained in more detail: nostalgia refers “neither to a clearly defined past nor does it intend a complete flight from the present. Rather, it changes the present, by including objects, sounds, images, smells and tastes it attributes to the past. The accordingly evoked reminiscences construe a diffuse atmosphere of an ideal world in the past as a recreation room from where the fragmented personality receives a feeling of a balanced I, continuity and

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as well as sadness or remembrance. It not only serves as a ‘conversation with oneself’ but, as the state of mind and the stock of knowledge are also changing, it contributes to the stabilisation of the self-image or identity. The term identity will, in the following, be discussed in more detail. 3.3.3 Identity as Self-Narration Remembering and experience are aspects of the consciousness which are mutually related and, in the course of comparing perceived experiences, constantly create new experiences. It is natural to discuss the idea we have of ourselves from this point of view. Thus, personal identity is a highly memoryrelevant phenomenon. Identity means firstly that something is equal to itself – that is: identical. This assumption has caused great problems for philosophy and resulted in a great number of proposed solutions which we cannot deal with here. But we may suppose that there is wide agreement that in the course of our selfobservation we frequently observe similarities. We do not only view ourselves through the eyes of others and thus as ‘objects’; the fact that we have an image of ourselves comes from a comparison of our current self-awareness with the structures of our self-awareness that resulted from such comparisons. In sum, those moments being perceived as similar result in a context of expectations and attributions that a consciousness develops due to its self-observation. By the I, representing each current self-awareness, and the Me, which identifies the objectivising view at oneself through the eyes of others, identity theory according to H. Mead distinguishes two components. Both I or identity aspects are of a chronological nature, the experience one makes with oneself being layered in the Me. Mead expresses it as follows: The simplest way of handling the problem would be in terms of memory. I talk to myself, and I remember what I said and perhaps the emotional content that went with it. […] I become a ‘me’ in so far as I remember what I said. […] It is because of the ‘I’ that we say that we are never fully aware of what we are, that we surprise ourselves by our own action. It is as we act that we are aware of ourselves. It is in memory that the ‘I’ is constantly present in experience. We can go back directly a few moments in our experience, and then we are dependent upon memory images for the rest. So that the ‘I’ in memory is there as the spokesman of the self of the second, or minute, or day ago. As given, it is a ‘me’, but it is a ‘me’ which was the ‘I’ at the earlier time. If you ask, then, where directly in your own experience the ‘I’ comes in, the answer is that it comes in as a historical figure. It is what you were a second ago that is the ‘I’ of the ‘me’. (Mead, 1972, p. 174) unbroken identity. N. tries to preserve the known order of objects and to secure their context as empirical knowledge” (Hausstein, 2001, pp. 421‑422).

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Another reading of identity refers to uniqueness when compared to others. Against this background, identity describes an object’s quality of being distinctive. This way a problem is addressed which is relevant to memory theory: The subject’s reflective question about its identity requires its own continuity to have become dubious (A is no longer sure about still being A or who A used to be in the past or if A is at all). In its pure form, this happens only after extreme cases of traumatisation or guilt, such as after having lost one’s memory. In a wider sense, however, this may be transferred to any kind of self-experience in combination with changes of one’s own personality, and then it is a ubiquitary phenomenon in so far as in critical phases of their lives, such as puberty, all humans are constantly changing without noticing. (Niethammer, 2000, pp. 51-52)

Only recently and against the background of concepts such as hybrid identity, patchwork identity or identity work (see Keupp, 1997) does identity become a concept, functioning as an aspect of the individual’s self-presentation, sometimes serving as justification for an individual’s certain attitude towards a problem that immunizes him/herself against any further criticism through a sweeping recourse to his/her having become.14 We take this view, which sheds a critical light on the constructive nature of the concept of identity and base our memory-specific perspective on it. From a memory-theory point of view, personal identity always develops exclusively from individual remembering. In other words: there is no aspect of my identity which I am not aware of.15 Following Mead’s considerations, by identity we mean a historicising ‘narration about ourselves’ which develops from the current, situationally determined view of the self against the background of each present access to the subjective context of experience. As with the word ‘I’ there also exists a term for the result of such an access, we may say that identity is a schema depicting itself and renewing itself with every thought in which I refer to the ‘I’. Such a self-image changes constantly and is, at the same time, path-dependent. From this I get the impression that it is rather stable, although sometimes I attempt to present this identity as a result of my personal development, of my becoming an adult or of adolescence. Nevertheless, here identity means a diachronically developed self-image which is narratively created – or, in other words: identity is considered the “most comprehensive

14 15

This is Lutz Niethammer’s (2000, p.  55) conclusion when it comes to the concept of identity – he speaks of an ‘identity jargon’ trumped up by the media. Whereas identity can be told and has always something to do with memory, concepts such as personality or character also grasp the non-declarative aspects of an individual included into social relations.

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frame of a human’s identity-relevant narration about him/herself, aiming at a synthesis of the heterogeneous”16 (Straub 2001, p. 270). This becomes clearest in the case of the autobiography, when the author, in the course of a personal testimonial, presents an overall interpretation of his/ her identity and tries to provide his/her life up to now with a meaning which could be derived from a consistent linking of actually unconnected events and experiences. When writing a curriculum vitae, as is expected from job applicants, we have to deal with such a variant of the identity-specific creation of coherence, when each stage of professional life is presented as a meaningful and organized sequence. Identity construction is writing a history of the self which is not that much about reconstructing the ‘I’s’ ‘true’ past but about the definitely strategic creation of a promising past, that is a past ruling out certain questions right from the beginning. By way of its memory work, however, by making efforts to catch what shyly escapes, that what is able to hover through imagination only if its freedom is undisturbed, often the remembering I moves ever farther away from what it vainly tries to catch. It drags itself away from itself and slips away from itself by seeking itself – thus often only triggering a more intense tinkering of the memory, in the course of which it will only drive itself (as that what is remembered) even farther away from itself (as that what remembers). (Joachimsthaler, 2009, p. 37)

Thus, we may state: identity is a self-description derived from each currently constructed reference to the past which, however, may momentarily have an action-guiding effect in a certain situation. Against the background of the memory-theoretical considerations made so far, it appears as a self-schema or self-objectification, against the background of which selections were made. As it is produced by memory, we encounter the motif of the memory-mediated constitution or even shaping of memory. 3.3.4 Persistent Memory Our considerations so far have demonstrated that the memory co-determines almost every kind of action. In the overwhelming majority of cases this memory-specific orientation happens without being noticed and without any explicit reflection participating. As aspects of a settled-in, habitual knowledge, practices and routines structure our behaviour in various different realms of 16

In other contexts – such as in philosophy and by various schools of psychology – also other meanings are attributed to the identity concept, or the concept is rejected right from the beginning (on this see Quante, 2001; Straub, 2001)

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everyday life. Generally speaking, the selection of perception and behavioural disposition carried out by the memory relieves the organism from the imposition of having to reorient in any given situation. Sometimes this selectivity causes problems, when we have to deal with persistent memories. Persistent memories are cognitions we become aware of unexpectedly and unintentionally. They may be triggers both of pain and of great distress. In the following we will distinguish between unproblematic and problematic flashbacks, then turning to the fundamental problem of how undesired memories can be avoided or how the thus-connected experiences can be forgotten. Besides the two forms of intentional remembering there are cases of sudden, surprising remembering. Whereas we consciously remember past events, our body memory constantly confronts us with the structure which is continuously impressed on it in the course of sensory perception. However, since in many cases we do not notice this or let it happen without consideration, these cognitive feedbacks are somewhat like footprints on fresh snow. We could pursue each of these traces and might find out quite a few things. We might be frightened by some of these footprints because we cannot imagine or do not like the look of its originator – how big must a dog be to leave such traces? Sometimes we recognize our own footprints, however only if we are looking for something that has ‘slipped’ from our mind we will try to follow them. As in our everyday lives, we are hardly interested in many traces we encounter, many memory traces our brain confronts us with are barely significant for us. However, we should not conclude from this that it is unimportant to consider the process of this confrontation. We should think about these phenomena because, firstly, it may provide information about the memory function of the brain and, secondly, this way we may draw on helpful concepts – even if they are only useful as metaphors – for transferring the memory concept from the psychological to the social. The phenomenon of dreaming has occupied reflective thinking since prehistoric times. This does not really come as a surprise, as the dream is a riddle to which anybody has access at any time. The dreaming human wakes up while still having in mind some elements of his/her dream. Often these fantastic pieces include elements of past contents of perception which have been adopted in the course of experiences. Even if the adult cannot immediately refer these dream fragments to his/her own experiences, it is obvious that they have something to do with one’s own past. René Descartes explains this particularity of the often confused dream by the fact that memory images of dreams are: less connected to those of the waking state. Even before Freud’s famous dream theory the question was asked if man’s reconstruction attempts,

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when being awake, recreate the story he/she has been dreaming or if already thinking about the dream closes memory gaps, thus creating a completely new narrative (see Stöckmann, 2001, pp. 598-599). Freud’s psychoanalytical dream theory is based on the assumption that dreams have a compensatory function (Freud, 2000). For example, they serve for processing destabilising experiences which, as memories, have been impressed on our consciousness and continue to have an unconsciously effect. Such processing is necessary as the consciousness censors burdening experiences of perception and supresses processing by way of remembering. By way of ‘dreamwork’ these sensory impressions are integrated into the existing material of the memory, in which way the dangerous aspect of the impression is defused. Central to Freud is the motif of wish fulfilment which, in the form of the dream, regulates unpleasant tensions. It is possible that disturbances of the I-integration are so massive that memory contents ‘come up’ again and again, in the form of flashbacks. In such cases of being persistently confronted with the contents of past perception the embedding becomes a failure, just like the wish being fulfilled, which results in neurotic compulsive repetition (see Boothe, 2001, pp. 599-602). Here we cannot discuss in detail the ways of psychoanalytical therapy, particularly those developed by dream theory, but we should note that today’s neurosciences have made such a progress when it comes to understanding the dream. It is assumed that in dreams there is a permanent rearrangement of memory data into long-term memory. It is therefore a good sign when students, while preparing for their examinations, tell you that they have started dreaming of the contents they have been memorising. Dreams, it is stated, ‘store’ memories in the form of orientation-providing information, while at the same time eliminating unnecessary data which is thus forgotten (see Stöckmann, 2001, p. 599). Sometimes we are overwhelmed by a memory which imposes itself on ourselves due to the situation we are in. One example of this, which is frequently referred to in the literature on the memory, is a short passage of Marcel Proust’s novel In Search of Lost Time. The I-narrator tells about enjoying a piece of cake which – unintendedly – makes him recall quite a cascade of childhood memories. He dips his madeleine – as this small cake is called – into his tea, takes a bite … [a]nd suddenly the memory appears before me. The taste was that of the little morsel of madeleine that on Sunday mornings at Combray (because on those mornings I did not go out before the time for mass), when I went to say good morning to her in her bedroom, my Aunt Léonie used to give me, dipping it first in her own cup of real or of lime-blossom tea. The sight of the little madeleine had recalled nothing to my mind before I tasted it; perhaps because I had so

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often seen such things in the interval, without tasting them, on pastry cooks’ trays, that their image had left those Combray days to take its place among others more recent; perhaps because of those memories, so long abandoned and put out of mind, nothing had survived, everything was scattered; the forms of things […] were either obliterated or had been so long dormant as to have lost the power of expansion that would have allowed them to resume their place in my consciousness. But, when from a long-distant past nothing subsists, after the people are dead, after the things are broken and scattered, still, alone, more fragile, but with more vitality, more unsubstantial, more persistent, more faithful, the smell and taste of things remain poised a long time, like souls, remembering, waiting, hoping on the ruins of all the rest, bearing without faltering, on the tiny and almost impalpable drop of their essence, the vast structure of memory (Proust, 2013, p. 53)

The memory motifs in this passage are manifold, but we would like to only point out a contrast: obviously Proust distinguishes between a memory we may call up and an involuntary memory which, in case of an appropriate opportunity – such as when enjoying a madeleine – may come over us. The power of the mémoire involontaire is due to the fact that its content has been forgotten. Because it has not been processed by the consciousness it looks fresh and alive, as if the original impression had just happened (see Gross, 2000). By way of Proust, it is possible to illustrate the connection between oblivion and memory. It is by no means just targeted remembering which updates forgotten events. Rather, it is impressions of the bodily kind which occasionally makes us aware of something we have not used for a long time for our intended actions. After a couple of years, I enter a school building again. The smell of the just cleaned linoleum does not only make me recollect that in the past my school smelled like this; suddenly I am confronted with the emotions of those days – the exam anxiety, my fear of the nastiness of the older students, the anxiety when walking alone across the halls when I was late for a lesson and so on. Whereas the protagonist in Marcel Proust experiences a consequential but comparably harmless flashback, there are other involuntary memories which can be very burdening. We will deal with the wide field of trauma research only in passing, then briefly discuss the memory phenomenon of déjà vu. The term flashback comes from the language of film and describes a flashlike, that is spontaneous and surprising cutback of a film’s narration (see Bartz, 2001, pp. 175-176). The term first entered clinical research with the analysis of LSD experiences, in the context of which there was the assumption that flashbacks rather refer to dreams than to real events of the past (see Welzer, 2008, p.  35). Usually, however, flashbacks recreate traumatic experiences which, as a persistent memory in connection with so called trigger stimuli – that is, current experiences triggering memories – carry the affected person back to

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a past situation of utmost dread. Flashbacks are thus connected to the posttraumatic stress syndrome (see Welzer, 2008, p. 61).17 The fact that in such cases the body memory plays a trick on the affected person demonstrates that flashback experiences are not only due to actual experiences but also to anxieties developed as a consequence of problematic experiences. American psychologist Daniel L. Schacter talks about an analysis in the course of which a Vietnam veteran, in the form of flashback, again and again experienced his killing of a Vietnamese villager who, however, rose again and again (see Schacter, 1996, p. 207). If bad experiences in particular combine with emotions, it may be that an involuntary memory happens which cannot be controlled by the consciousness and which, in extreme cases, may considerably reduce the emotional well-being of the individual. The resulting desire to forget does not only inspire science-fiction literature but also, increasingly, the neurosciences. Before shortly discussing the (im)possibility of intentional oblivion, we will have a look at the memory-specific phenomenon of the déjà vu as another example of an unintended selection of bodily memory. The latter happens when we get the impression of currently re-experiencing a situation from the past. Psychologically, the déjà vu can be explained by the fact that a situation may be characterized by a perceptional fluidity which can only be processed by way of drawing on past experience, which may result in a strong feeling of familiarity (see Erdfelder, 2001, pp.  113-114). Here, perceptional fluidity is not meant in the material sense but as the fluent processing of information – like being capable of being ‘fluent’ in a language. In terms of memory-theory déjà vu is remarkable because the comparison of similarities in the course of remembering produces particularly strong results. This is connected to the precondition that the past situation used for the comparison has been almost completely forgotten or that the relevant structure of consciousness is almost completely blocked, supressed or hidden in other ways. Two variants can be imagined: in one case an extraordinary situation is experienced in a way as to create the impression that all this has happened before. The comparison with the past accentuates the improbability of experiencing the same again. In the other case the similarity not only of the topic but also of the framework conditions of a situation to a past situation are so strong that the subject starts doubting his/her own sanity or believes themselves to be in a time-loop.18 The 17 18

On trauma and the post-traumatic stress disorder see Richard J. McNally (2003) and Alan Young (1997) as well as Cathy Caruth (1995) or Angela Kühner (2008). Not crucial for us here is the cultural studies analysis and assessment of the déja vu. Also, there the déja vu is understood as a repetition which, since the extension of technological reproducibility, sheds a completely new light on social remembering and forgetting: “Early ideas about déjà vu were contemporary with the invention of media technologies

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déjà vu experience is the result of a particular interaction of situational perception and the individual’s consciousness structure or memory. In any case it is an extraordinary experience which, under everyday conditions, cannot be purposefully triggered – a mémoire involontaire which comes as a surprise because of its similarity to a situation of the past. Things are different with moments of the memory which are again and again updated in certain situations. The mémoire involontaire is central; this time it complies with a rule that can be reconstructed. Uncovering this rule and breaking it or circumventing its effect is the subject of trauma research. There, depending on the diagnosed trauma, research can go down many different paths. Psychoanalysis is about recollecting a suppressed trauma which has led to a neurosis, in this way making the patient feel better. In case of the treatment of post-traumatic stress disorder the trauma and thus the cause of the emotional distress is known. Here, the focus is on fighting those memoryspecific moments that refer back to a traumatic experience. In other words: this is an attempt to help forget something which cannot be forgotten. We will only briefly discuss this wide field of research here, as our interest is not in the techniques and means of behavioural therapy, pharmacology and neurology. For our purposes this form of forgetting will become relevant later, with regard the socio-cultural significance of such techniques. Supressing or overwriting persistent memories is an age-old desire of mankind. It assumes that making oneself or others forget can be triggered by way of deliberate action. In Homer, some of Ulysses’ scouts do not return to the ships after landing on an island. Being worried, the seafarer starts looking for them, and he finds his men have become the guests of the inhabitants of the island. The Lotus-eaters have delighted the sailors with the lotus fruit – an ancient drug making people forget – as a consequence of which the men have forgotten about the destiny of their journey and resist being taken back on board.19 Cicero talks about poet, singer and memory artist Simonides of Keos who had offered the general Themistocles to teach him the art of memory. Themistocles, who himself had a great memory, declined with thanks: rather, he said, he was interested in the art of oblivion, as too many things were always on his mind (see Weinrich, 2004, pp. 11-12).

19

such as photography, telegraphy, and phonography. Granting access to and control over repetition in an unprecedented way, these and later technologies instigate the debates around déjà vu, learn to harness a déjà vu effect, and in the end transform the experience of déjà vu.” (Krapp, 2004, p. X). Homer has his hero tell the story of the lotus eaters in Book 9 (see Weinrich 2004, p. 13‑14).

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It is doubtful that there could ever be an art of purposeful oblivion and that one may decide to no longer think about something.20 However, as demonstrated by the example of the lotus fruit, there are means of drowning e. g. grief in alcohol. The therapy of post-traumatic stress disorders is connected to the hope of no longer being forced to recollect certain involuntary memories, this is a crucial intention of the thus connected research. This is not primarily an attempt at selectively deleting certain memories with the help of pharmacology or behavioural therapy, but about the treatment of neuronal connections. For example, medication can contribute to reducing incorporated emotions connected to certain experiences. This way the patients do not forget about their bad experiences but, as in emotionally charged situations they do no longer have flashbacks or may remember problematic situations without fear; the preconditions for coping with the effects of the trauma are created. There are controversial debates as to whether people who are going to face situations which might result in trauma should be provided with appropriate medication beforehand – making them lack deeper emotionality. This helps with keeping calm and with coping more efficiently with bad experiences – then, however, there is the ethical question as to whether a pharmacologically induced ‘thick skin’, in the case of which the memory-relevant area of emotional perceptibility is reduced, should be made available for soldiers in combat.21 With regard to intentional oblivion, we must state that there are techniques which may promote forgetting in an individual. Oblivion as a result of memory-specific selectivity is not understood as the destruction of ‘intellectual property’ but is rather a kind of sinking, resulting from the disuse of one certain aspect of the neural structure. Everyday impressions are ‘overwritten’ and not recalled; nevertheless, whole memory complexes, which have long been forgotten, may be activated again at one stroke if an appropriate trigger stimulus is perceived. Things become difficult if these stimuli cannot be controlled, in particular because of emotionally burdening experiences, and result in persistent remembering (flashback). In fact, neuroscientific and psychological research are on their way towards mitigating the suffering connected to post-traumatic stress disorders – however, from the point of view of the individual consciousness, the selective forgetting of certain experiences remains

20 21

In an essay, Umberto Eco (1988) dealt with the impossibility of such an attempt and comes to the paradox conclusion: An ars oblivionalis? Forget it! Christoph Lau, Peter Wehling and Oliver Dimbath (2011) provide insight into this debate.

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an undertaking which is impossible. In the realm of social relationships, however, this problem looks completely different.22 3.4

Summary and Transition: What is Social with Individual Memory?

In the previous section on consciousness of the past, we first dealt intensively with the relationship between event, the experience, remembering and experience as well as the problem of forgetting at the level of the individual. Sometimes we had to separate these terms from their meaning in everyday language and to specify them for memory-theoretical purposes. This way we may conclude the preliminary work which must be done when dealing with a sociology of memory, remembering and forgetting. In contrast to psychological and neurophysiological research perspectives, a sociological point of view must assume that the memory-specific aspects of referring to the past cannot exclusively be understood as stubborn cognitive or neural processes. On the contrary, neuroscientific insights support the following thesis: the individual memory works with traces which are neuronally inscribed into it (engrams) as well as memory traces (exograms) external to consciousness and located within its social environment (see Donald, 1991). As stated by socialpsychologist Harald Welzer, these may be “written, oral, symbolic, material, musical, habitual, in short: any kind of content which has been developed either by itself as a means for human orientation (such as a map) or may be used as such (such as the stars for navigating)” (Welzer, 2010, p. 3). At the same time, neuroscientific studies demonstrate that environmental influences the individual is subject to have an effect right down to the structures of brain and memory. In this context, a study on London taxi drivers has become somewhat famous. British neurologists were able to demonstrate that with people who had successfully completed a four years training as taxi drivers, the grey substance in the hippocampus area, which is relevant for memory functions, had significantly grown compared to those who dropped out of the training (see Woollett & Maguire, 2011). As the reason for this cell growth the researchers identified the essential training element of having to learn the complex network of London’s streets by heart, which comprises about 25,000 street names and 20,000 sights. The conclusion of the study is “that specific, enduring, 22

By the example of the sciences as a social institution, Oliver Dimbath (2014) analyzes the ways, functions and possibilities of social forgetting and in the course of this also touches on the intentional phenomena of the interaction- or communication-mediated intention to forget and causing forgetfulness.

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structural brain changes in adult humans can be induced by biologically relevant behaviors engaging higher cognitive functions such as spatial memory, with significance for the ‘nature versus nurture’ debate” (Woollett & Maguire, 2011, p. 2109). From a sociological point of view, this result may be interpreted as the professional self-understanding of London taxi drivers – namely, having such a detailed knowledge of London’s network of streets that no navigation with the help of electronic devices is needed – as well as the accompanying social closure of this professional field has far reaching consequences for the brain structures and spatial memory of the members of this trade. The social order of the profession is inscribed into the neural order of the memory. There is much to suggest that we should consider the brain a deeply “social organ” (see Cozolino, 2006) which is both open towards and dependent on environmental influences. Sociology discovered early on that the individual memory is socially structured at its core– although against the background of other problems and different theoretical and methodical starting points. In the context of American pragmatism, the French Durkheim school and German phenomenology, a number of contributions to the sociology of memory were developed at the beginning of the 20th century which are still ground-breaking today. However, their focus is not or – as must be added concerning pragmatist and phenomenologically oriented theories – not exclusively on the individual memory. Rather, theories of social memory are interested in the question of which social dynamics are conditional for individual remembering and in which ways higher-level memories (such as those of families, generations, organisations, nations or societies) function and change. Particularly in the wake of the works by Maurice Halbwachs it has been recognized that there are social formations and mechanisms which exhibit the characteristics of memory but cannot be reduced to the mere sum of individual memories. In the following chapters we will present and discuss the theoretical arguments which have been taken up, further developed or criticized from different directions over the course of time. However, when looking at the history of sociology it seems surprising at first that despite a number of classical preliminary works the concept of the (social) memory was only very hesitantly adopted as an explicit theoretical element and independent research topic. The reasons, at least on the surface, for23 “neglecting the memory” (see Heinlein & Dimbath, 2010; Sebald et al., 2013) of 23

Here the term ‘surface’ has been chosen because crucial concepts of sociology, such as institution, structure, social system or practice, refer as clearly to the past as the classical authors of sociology “pursue the question about the presence of society [always] (also)

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sociological theorising are difficult to reconstruct. On the one hand it may be assumed that in the immediate post-war period sociology was influenced by the silence of the recent past and that questions of remembering and memory were simply ignored. On the other hand, the murder of Maurice Halbwachs at the concentration camp of Buchenwald seems to have resulted in a loss of relevance of social or collective memories as a topic of research. Halbwachs’s writing La mémoire collective was published posthumously in 1950, but it is obvious that Halbwachs had not been able to complete his work on collective memory, which we will present in more detail later. Furthermore, in France in the post-war period there was no immediate reception of Halbwachs’s reflections. Hermann Krapoth and Denis Laborde assume that this is due to reasons intrinsic to science: Could this be due to the fact that his works, as they could not be reduced to the social sciences, did not seem to be useful in the post-war period? Were the French universities, which had hardly any space for Durkheim’s heirs, lacking students who might have been interested in Halbwachs’s work? Perhaps, was there no interpreter to communicate Halbwachs?24 (Krapoth & Laborde, 2005a, p. 10)

These questions suggest that Halbwachs was the victim of a forgetting science25 which started remembering only about 30 years later – but even more intensively for that. Due to society’s attention to the topic of memory since the 1980s,26 memory research by the social sciences and cultural studies experienced a considerable upswing (see Dimbath & Heinlein, 2014); Lustiger Thaler, 2013; Olick & Robbins, 1998). This is particularly reflected by an enormous increase of

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by past developments” (Sebald et al., 2013, p. 11). A sociology of memory must look for the implicit references to the past which are hidden in theories and theoretical concepts. Stephan Egger (2003b) argues in a similar way. The fact that even the sciences do forget is negotiated by sociology under the term scientific oblivionism. This term points out the – at first sight counter-intuitive – fact that immanent dynamics of forgetting are inscribed into the sciences themselves. The insufficient connectivity of certain theories, due to no schools developing, is one manifestation of this phenomenon. For more detail on this see Oliver Dimbath (2011c; 2014) and Harald Weinrich (2004, pp. 212‑218). Jan Assmann gives three reasons for this boom in attention: an immense “cultural revolution” due to the rapid development of technological possibilities to digitally store information; an awareness of the fact that our cultural tradition “lives on as the subject of memory and of commentary”; as well as the awareness that the valuable treasure of memories of the dying contemporary witnesses of World War II is under threat (Assmann 2011, p. vii).

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empirical studies and research projects approaching the phenomenon of social memory from very different angles. Given this variety, some observers come to the conclusion that social-scientific memory research is disorganized, gets lost in many individual questions and does not have any significant body of theoretical perspectives worth mentioning (see Olick & Robbins, 1998, p. 106). Even if, at first sight, this diagnosis seems to be plausible, it runs the risk of foregrounding differences and obscuring commonalities. In the coming chapters we will elaborate on basic positions and dominant paradigms with which thinking on social memories is guided and towards which it is oriented. First, however, we are going to continue the discussion of time we started in Chapter 1, with an excursion into social time.

Chapter 4

Excursion: On Social Time Before discussing the concept of social memory in detail in the following chapters, we would like to continue with our discussion of time, which started in Chapter  1. We have already worked out that the consciousness experiences time as continuity and, with the help of memories and expectations, distinguishes between the past and the future. The consciousness itself, as well as the memory, operate exclusively in the present – the past cannot be brought back to the present ‘as it was’ but is constantly recreated along certain selectivities – such as relevances. This chapter now focuses on the questions of how societies deal with time, how they organise time, how they relate different chronological perspectives to each other and provide them with horizons of the past and the future. With this digression we lead into the following social and sociotheoretical perspectives on memory and clarify the sociological foundations on which theories of social memory are based. What exactly the meaning of ‘social time’ is can be found in an essay with the same title by sociologists Pitirim A. Sorokin and Robert K. Merton from 1937 (see Sorokin & Merton, 1937). They assume that apart from a physicalastronomical time, based on counting and measuring, and a time of the perceptual consciousness there is another kind of time which cannot be reduced to the physical and the psychological. This time, which they call ‘social time’, is oriented towards social events which come and go and allow for us to have common points of reference: Thus, social time expresses the change or movement of social phenomena in terms of other social phenomena taken as points of reference. In the course of our daily activities we often make use of this means of indicating points of time. ‘Shortly after the World War’, ‘I’ll meet you after the concert’, ‘when President Hoover came into office’, are all related to social, rather than astronomical frames of reference, for the purpose of indicating specific points of time- ‘time when.’ Moreover, such references express far more than the nominally equivalent astronomical or calendrical referrents (‘ca. I9I8-I9’, ‘II P.M.’, ‘March, I929’), for they usually establish an added significant relation between the event and the temporal frame of reference. (Sorokin & Merton, 1937, p. 618)

Although each event refers to a calendar date, they do not merge with it. When somebody tells us that he/she broke up with his/her partner on August 2nd this expresses something other than being informed that this is the birthday of the person who left or that originally the pair had intended to go on © Brill Fink, 2022 | doi:10.30965/9783846767399_005

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holidays together on this day. Connecting the chronologically marked social event – the break-up – with another social event – the birthday or the holiday trip – changes the meaning we attribute to this information which is otherwise connected to a sober calendar date. This ‘added value’ or surplus of social time compared to physical or calendar time is reflected where certain points in time or periods of time are covered by socially and culturally specific symbols. This holds for holidays such as the ‘silent Christmas season’ as well as for points in time and periods in time of a more mundane nature which are repeated at short intervals: the Sunday, which is dedicated to recreation with the family, ‘football league Saturday’, or the Monday which for most people indicates a work-induced acceleration of life which will only slow down again on Friday evening.1 In these cases, however, it is not so much a reference to a certain point in time as the socially normed duration of social events that are made conceivable (see Sorokin & Merton, 1937, p. 619). These examples cover only a small selection which is also directly rooted in our own culture – ethnography provides countless examples demonstrating and illustrating the variety and wealth of culture- and group-specific constructions of time. What time means, when it accelerates or slows down, and which rhythm it sets for us is due to societal and social conventions and processes of attributing meaning. In this context it is a fact that not even societies or social groups can turn the clock back; like individual consciousness, they are confronted with the inexorable passage of time. A look at how society deals with time demonstrates that this irreversibility can, in a way, be controlled in the context of social practices. In the present it is possible to reconsider what has been said and to retract it – even though this seems paradoxical in the view of the irrevocable running out of time (‘what’s been done is done’). Yet still, certain situations allow for negotiation processes and thus for the revision of decisions. In this sense, Niklas Luhmann distinguishes “a punctual present in which the future, inexorably and unstoppably, becomes the past, and a specious present which separates future and past from each other, in which one may stay and, if necessary, negotiate what is to come”2 (Luhmann, 1980, p. 41-42). Whereas the punctual present, which is measured by the clock, runs out automatically with every second, without our help and without us taking notice of it, the 1 The French classical author of sociology, Émile Durkheim, argues that calendar dates are socially reshaped: “A calendar expresses the rhythm of the collective activities, while at the same time its function is to assure their regularity” (Durkheim, 1964, p. 10‑11). 2 Obviously, here Luhmann takes up considerations on the continuity of the present by Edmund Husserl.

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specious present is the result of active creation and interpretation by social actors. This holds for negotiation processes happening in everyday life as well as for societal fields of action such as politics, economics, law or religion, which each of them provides itself with its own presents and develops its own horizons of past and future. The kind of time politics deals with, aiming at long-term and collectively binding decisions, is fundamentally different from the present of a fast-paced economy, oriented towards stock prices and ‘just-intime’ deliveries. The same is true for verdicts and decision-making in the fields of law or religion. All action fields may draw on a great number of different institutionalized kinds of ‘specious present’ (such as parliamentary debates, meetings, court cases or conclaves). At the same time, however, they are confronted with the problem that only in the specious present it is possible to negotiate or postpone decision-making for a certain period of time. The argument of specious present, which we already know from Chapter 1, can be transferred to social groups and collectives: families have their own ways of dealing with time, influencing what the present means in each case or how long the present lasts. Embedding a family in a family history (such as with the help of a family tree) and the resulting extension of the present would be just as much an example of this as the duration of culturally mediated family feasts and rituals. Social milieus provide themselves with presents of different length, which are, in turn, reflected by different horizons of the past and the future. Accordingly, sociologist Gerhard Schulze, in his study on event society (see Schulze, 2005) distinguishes the harmony milieu, based on tradition, comfort and tranquillity, from the entertainment milieu which is interested in fast-moving action. Whereas the former refers often to the past, integrates it into the milieu-specific present and makes it last into the future, for the latter it is the rapid sequence of individual events – social acceleration – that constitutes the specifically modern increase in pleasure (see Rosa, 2013). As emphasized by Sorokin and Merton, all these kinds of social time have nothing to do with quantitative measuring and structuring but come very close to the qualitative experience of continuity emphasized by Bergson: it is about the intensity of the socially-communicated experience of time which allows for physically identical periods to be of various different durations (see Sorokin & Merton, 1937, pp. 622-623). This emphasis on the differences between forms of time and present, however, cannot hide the fact that all these different kinds of present must be practically related and coordinated. As shown by sociological synchronisation research, with the social implementation of the present this happens surprisingly smoothly. This is where the sociological reflections on time by French

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sociologist Maurice Halbwachs – a disciple of Bergson and Durkheim – prove to be instructive.3 Halbwachs identifies “Bergsonian subjectivism” (Halbwachs, 1980, p.  93) as the central obstacle to an understanding of social time since it does not take into account the integration of people with social contexts. Halbwachs’s criticism aims at Bergson’s thesis of pure continuity, where he identifies two problematic issues: one the one hand, he says, Bergson removes from personal thought everything that “reminds us of space and external objects” (Halbwachs, 1980, pp. 93-94), and on the other he assumes a coherent consciousness. This, Halbwachs states, has the consequence that individuals are incapable of exchanging experiences within the social community, in other words: of synchronising with each other. According to Bergson, Halbwachs says, each consciousness experiences time in its own, incomparable way and, as external reference points to which the individuals could mutually relate are not represented in consciousness as collectively shared orientation aids; for humans there is no commonly-shared present, but only a vast amount of disconnected simultaneities. Halbwachs illustrates this fundamental problem, which may be called the synchronisation problem, by the example of the differing ways in which an old man and a child experience time: The old person who still remembers childhood now finds his days at once slower and shorter. Time seems to flow more slowly because moments as he lives them feel longer; then again, it seems to flow more rapidly because moments as normally reckoned, or as measured by watch follow in such rapid succession as to pass him by. The space of his day cannot accommodate everything that a child easily fits in, because his inner duration has slowed. Hence a child and an older person who shared no other means to measure time than their feeling of duration and its divisions could never agree on temporal demarcations. The length of the interval chosen as a common unit would seem too small for the child, too large for the adult. (Halbwachs, 1980, pp. 91-92)

If humans only relied on their inner experience of time, any mutual understanding would not only be extremely difficult but downright impossible. The example demonstrates that there are fundamental differences between the sense of time for the old man and for the child, which could not be solved even with the help of immense communicative efforts. However, we must not necessarily think about different generations but can transfer the example to other fields, such as vocations: the stock exchange broker, who is interested in 3 Apart from Bergson, in the context of the stream of thought thesis Halbwachs also criticized William James (see Halbwachs, 1980, p. 125). However, he did so much more implicitly than when criticizing his teacher, so that here there is no need to reconstruct this.

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fast moving trade, will show a sense of inner time that is different from that of the social scientist who is interested in the long-term trends of modernity. Thus, for Halbwachs, the uniqueness of each coherent consciousness and its idiosyncratic experience of time makes it difficult to understand how two individual consciousnesses could ever come in contact, how two series of equally continuous states would manage to intersect – which would be necessary if I am to be aware of the simultaneity of two changes, one occurring in myself and the other in the consciousness of someone else. (Halbwachs, 1980, p. 94)

Accordingly, Halbwachs looks for indications outside the consciousness which might be capable of becoming shared patterns for orientation. To this end, he turns to time, which he conceives of as social or collective time in distinction to individual duration. This refers to two things: on the one hand, humans have their own ideas of time, which are transferred to institutionalized patterns of order; on the other hand these patterns of order as social frames of reference4 increasingly hide the natural processes (such as the movement of the stars) that they are based on: “astronomical dates and divisions of time have been so overlaid by social demarcations as to gradually disappear nature having increasingly left to society the job of organizing duration” (Halbwachs, 1980, p. 89). Indeed, the yearly course of the sun and physical time provide crucial points of orientation for social processes, but they are reshaped by social conventions and translated into their own dynamics and regimes of time. In this sense, time understood in this way is not only socially constructed (and can be made visible as being contingent) but, as a social fact (Émile Durkheim), also exerts a direct constraint for humans. In this sense, sociologist Norbert Elias (1897-1990) understands calendars and clocks as timedetermining devices, i.e. as tools created by man that allow for the relating of disparate experiences to each other. [P]in-pointing events within a continuous flow of events, at fixing milestones indicating relative beginnings and endings within the flow, at marking off one stretch from another or at comparing them regarding their length by means of what we call their ‘duration’, and other related tasks. (Elias, 1993, p. 71)

In this way, time-determining devices provide the symbolic representation of the “temporal structure of the sequential flow” (Elias, 1993, p.  76). When communicating with others about what has happened when, we reach back to 4 For Halbwachs, the concept of the reference frame is a crucial category (see Dimbath, 2013). In the following chapter we are going to explain it in more detail.

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time-indicative symbols: the movement of the stars, yearly cycles, calendars, clocks and so on. For the sake of simplicity, in everyday language we confuse these symbols with ‘the’ time, although we actually mean a ‘date’: Could you please tell me the time?5 Whereas the theoreticians of time introduced in Chapter 1 moved the individual consciousness and the inner experience of time to the foreground, the construction of social time raises the question of how individual streams of consciousness, each with their own time, could relate to each other in social practice. Thus, the sociology of memory is provided with a perspective which is able to demonstrate the social determination of chronological frames of reference and their influence on the individual memory, as well as an understanding of the fact that social memories draw on social time. The socially symbolic and standardized aspect of time, which Halbwachs moves to the foreground, becomes an aspect of a social memory which, for the subjective consciousness, is something external and allows for orienting its recollection towards a socially relevant order. We are going to come back to this point in the following chapter which will deal with the pioneers of the sociology of memory and the idea of a social memory.

5 In this context, Elias speaks of a “peculiar fetish-character of the concept of time” (Elias, 1993, p. 73).

Chapter 5

Pioneers of the Sociology of Memory The origins of the sociology of memory are basically found within the three lines of research into a philosophy of time and consciousness, which started in the United States of America, France and Germany in the 19th century. Henri Bergson’s, William James’ and Edmund Husserl’s dealings with questions surrounding the perception of time as well as the constitution of experience by drawing on past events with memory had, on the one hand, resulted in reflections on the problem of memory which went well beyond psychological and neuro-scientific issues and had inspired sociologists at a time when the discipline was hardly even established at universities. Some of the perspectives of sociology of memory, about to be presented, refer explicitly to the traditions of the philosophy of life as well as of psychological-pragmatist and phenomenological approaches – this is particularly the case for the early memory concepts of American Pragmatism as formulated by Jane Addams, Charles H. Cooley and George Herbert Mead, as well as for Alfred Schütz’s social-phenomenological musings. Another influence, however, goes back to the genuinely sociologicalpositivist school of thought of French sociologist, Auguste Comte, who was already, at a very early stage, oriented towards ethnological research and, thus, came to an independent understanding of the development of a shared group consciousness based on the past: the concept of collective memory according to Émile Durkheim and, following on from this, the theory of collective memory developed by the latter’s disciple, Maurice Halbwachs. According to the chronological sequence of these three approaches, we are going to start with the contributions by the so-called Durkheim School, to then proceed to the pragmatist works. Finally, we are going to discuss the considerations of Alfred Schütz’s that are relevant for the sociology of memory. 5.1

Collective Memory

When looking at the history of memory research by the social sciences and cultural studies, it becomes clear that the decisive impetus came from the late reception of the works by sociologist Maurice Halbwachs (1877-1945) in the 1980s. However, Halbwachs – who was a disciple of Émile Durkheim and may be called his legitimate successor – was not rediscovered by sociology, as one might assume. Instead, his position as a crucial pioneer of the social science

© Brill Fink, 2022 | doi:10.30965/9783846767399_006

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and cultural studies debate on memory is due to the works of Egyptologist and cultural scientist, Jan Assmann (Assmann & Czaplicka, 1995; Assmann, 2005). Within his own discipline – sociology – Halbwachs’ ideas were only perceived on a broader level via the diversions of cultural studies. It will be the task of the following deliberations to outline the assumptions and concepts of the French Durkheim school with regards to memory and to discuss their significance for a sociology of memory. 5.1.1 Solidarity and Collective Consciousness There is no doubt that French sociologist Émile Durkheim (1858-1917) counts among the classic representatives of his discipline. His work revolves around two fundamental questions of sociology: What keeps society together, and how is social order possible? In his studies, The Division of Labour in Society (originally published in 1893) and The Elementary Forms of Religious Life (1912), Durkheim works out the traditional and modern ways of social integration and solidarity and relates them to each respective predominant collective consciousness (in the French original: conscience collective). This term, which is essential for the Durkheim school and refers to the moral unity and order of a society, immediately leads us to a first scent on the trail memory. In the collective consciousness, says Durkheim, we find manners of acting, thinking and feeling external to the individual, which are invested with a coercive power by virtue of which they exercise control over him. Consequently, since they consist of representations and actions, they cannot be confused with organic phenomena, nor with psychical phenomena, which have no existence save in and through the individual consciousness. (Durkheim, 1982, p. 52)

According to Durkheim, the integration of the members of a society happens by way of participation and integration into common structures of meaning and horizons of thought which – as, in knowledge-sociological terms, they exist in an objectivized and reified form (see Berger & Luckmann, 1967) – work on the individual as an outside constraint. In traditional societies, which are characterized by a low degree of the division of labour, integration happens automatically, due to the similarity of their members, and results in a kind of solidarity which Durkheim calls mechanical solidarity: society holds together by itself because its members think and feel in similar ways and share similar convictions. Modern societies with a highly differentiated division of labour, on the other hand, face the problem – if they do not get lost in the cult of the individual, as Durkheim calls it (see Kron & Reddig, 2003, p. 183-184) – of how to integrate their members across class- and stratum-specific differences

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of acting, thinking and feeling. Since in this case, the unity of society is analogous to the functioning of the human body, it can only be guaranteed by the different parts or ‘organs’ cooperating with each other, Durkheim contrasts the mechanical solidarity of pre-modern societies to the organic solidarity of modern societies. In terms of the sociology of memory, things become interesting with the realization that the ways of thinking, feeling, and acting, which are suspended in the collective consciousness, do not only confront the individual as objectified structures of meaning and embedded in functional contexts, but also precede in temporal terms. Durkheim puts it like this: We speak a language that we did not make; we use instruments that we did not invent; we invoke rights that we did not found; a treasury of knowledge is transmitted to each generation that it did not gather itself, etc. It is to society that we owe these varied benefits of civilization […]. (Durkheim, 1964, p. 212)

As we can read from this quotation, the structures and contents of collective consciousness are ‘bequeathed’, i.e. socially transmitted, and consequently they have a history. Durkheim believes conscious transmission itself to be a genuine task of education (see Durkheim, 1973b). In his lectures on school education we find appropriate pragmatic considerations, such as communicating to the school beginner that, when joining his/her class, he/she enters “a continuous whole and a coherent moral environment, enveloping and sustaining and reinforcing his sense of solidarity” (Durkheim, 1973b, p.  247). To make the child sensitive to the individual’s embeddedness in transmitted social contexts, it would be useful that each class has memories of its predecessor generations: exercise books of honour, collecting the best essays written by former students, would be a means of connecting the present to the past. Just the same, one could record all events by which class life has been characterized in the past few years, the good deeds, the extraordinary celebrations and so on. In a word: each class should have its own history, teaching it that it has a past, and making it know this past. For the same reason it would be necessary that each teacher knows about what has been happening in his/her class in the past few years and that he/she knows about its history, its students and the most important events of its existence at school. Under such conditions it would not be that at the end of each school year the child gets the impression that a bond is breaking, and at the beginning of each new school year that a new bond is being created which again will only survive for a certain period of time. (Durkheim, 1973a, p. 282, author’s own translation)

Here Durkheim, who was already very much aware of the fast pace of school life in his own time, speaks about the identity-creating location of the individual,

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as a member of a group, in the flow of time and about a feeling of historical continuity. From this perspective, the past is not perceived as ballast, but is interpreted in a positive sense, as the foundation on which the present can reasonably (and for Durkheim this means: morally) unfold. However, according to Durkheim, the institution of the school is only capable of creating a “bond” between past and present if its social task of education is completed by the addition of an obligation to remember. In this way the individual could, at an early stage, already be led to the insight that not only in class but also in society he/she is embedded in moral contexts which have existed before his/her birth and will continue to exist after his/her death. If we pursue this idea, then collective consciousness can be connected to memory as, on the one hand, it “remembers norms, rules, convictions and emotions or makes them available for a group” (Sebald et al., 2013, p. 13) while, on the other hand, providing the patterns serving for a selective consciousness of the past. Which norms and rules are valid for a specific situation (such as: a religious service, a birthday celebration or a court hearing) is situationally updated and ‘remembered’ by way of connecting social contexts to contents of the collective consciousness. Due to their education and socialisation, the members of society know which expectations they have to meet in the everyday life of society.1 Collective consciousness has a storing and selecting function which Durkheim himself did not explain in detail. In contrast to these implicit references to memory, however, Durkheim explicitly speaks of memory in two passages of his work: in an essay published at the end of the 19th century, which is not only interesting for the history of sociology, and in his study on religion of 1912 which is relevant for the sociology of memory. In his writing Individual and Collective Representations of 1898 Durkheim is concerned with emphasising the “relative independence” (Durkheim, 2010, p. 37) of sociology, which at that time by no means established, from psychology, by speaking out against the claim that sociology was “nothing more than a corollary of individual psychology” (Durkheim, 2010, p. 37). A brief discussion of this essay is worthwhile for two reasons: First, it provides insight into the attempts at delineation and constitution of the then-nascent sociology; second, it documents Durkheim’s profound knowledge of the problem of memory. His later use of the concept of memory, which was oriented towards topical issues, can thus not be understood as purely associative or metaphorical in nature. In the essay under discussion here, he firstly makes use of the concept of memory for distinguishing sociology from already-established 1 Later, Talcott Parsons will refer to these considerations when pursuing the question of how the structures of action systems could be maintained.

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psychology. Just as psychology cannot derive its subject – individual ideas – from an organic model of memory, sociology cannot make conclusions about the individual’s psyche based on social representations. Rather, both individual ideas, of which psychology is responsible, and social ideas, which fall under the scope of sociology, are independent realities. Psychology and sociology have in common that their subjects cannot be reduced to their respective substrates – the brain on the one hand, the individual psyche on the other. At the same time this commonality marks the separation of sociology from psychology, as the former can indeed not work with individual-psychological theories and methods to describe and explain its subject. Thus, sociology must be an independent science which, in terms of its methods, its theories and its areas of research, is strictly separated from psychology, allowing for the explanation of the social by the social. Against the background of contemporary memory research, Durkheim meticulously proves that the model of an organic memory, as presented by psychology, is wrong. In this context he particularly criticises the assumption that individual ideas will disappear as soon as the appropriate nerve tracts are no longer stimulated by outer stimuli. This would mean that without external stimuli there is no inner-psychic memory and that each new external stimulus results in a new memory, as the consciousness has nothing to refer to in order to create repeatable references to the past. For two reasons Durkheim turns against such a concept of memory: on the one hand, he says, consciousness makes external stimuli subject to “a sui generis elaboration” (Durkheim, 2010, p.  38), which serves to establish similarities between ideas. On the other hand, it is provided with autonomous “associations of ideas” (Durkheim, 2010, p. 53) which, he says, are independent of the organic substrate of memory. According to Durkheim, memory cannot be a “purely physical fact” (Durkheim, 2010, p.  49) which, according to a simple, organically-based stimulus-response model, disappears and is newly created. Rather, it represents a psychic apparatus that allows the consciousness to connect past and present in a meaningful way and to assess new experiences for similarities to old experiences. It is precisely because memory provides for a particular interaction between past and present, which “can, in certain conditions, so increase the intensity of the earlier ones, that they come over again to consciousness” (Durkheim, 2010, p. 50), that it indicates an independent realm of individual ideas. In this way Durkheim anticipates crucial arguments of the sociological debate on memory on the effect of schemata, the redundancy check of experiences and on the selectivity of memory. However, in these passages he has no interest in a sociological concept of memory, nor has he any interest in dealing more thoroughly with psychological ideas. Rather, he wants to show

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that sociology faces a quite similar problem to psychology: for Durkheim, the “collective representations produced by the action and reaction between individual minds, that form the society” (Durkheim, 2010, pp. 60-61) do not immediately result from individual ideas but go beyond them. With this argument, Durkheim directly refers to the concept of collective consciousness and makes clear that sociology must be provided with both theoretical and methodological independence to be able to describe and explain society as a reality ‘sui generis’. When referring to memory, Durkheim, in his early days, provides sociology with an epistemological starting point which is structurally in line to that of psychology and is capable of legitimising the scientific status of sociology. However, at that time the concept of memory does not constitute an instrument for sociological analysis. This changes with Durkheim’s 1912 work, The Elementary Forms of Religious Life, in which he not only describes the functions of regularly repeating religious rituals in pre-modern societies but also gives concrete hints at how the concept of memory can be turned around sociologically and be understood as social memory. His considerations, which connect the concept of memory to solidarity, identity and collective consciousness, are based on observations of totemism among the Australian Aborigines. The religious ritual of the Aborigines, says Durkheim, is, at best, superficially about praying to a god. The real purpose of the ritual, he states, is to collectively recall the mythical past of the group, to once again make the individual aware of the values and convictions of the collective, which go back to their ancestors, and to strengthen the mechanical solidarity of the group. This is why Durkheim calls the periodically repeated rites, “commemorative ceremonies” (Durkheim, 1964, p. 372) or a “sort of implicit commemoration” (Durkheim, 1964, p. 373). In contrast to ‘ordinary’ everyday life, when the collective consciousness has implicit memory functions, Durkheim’s study of religion deals with concrete practices which refer to the institutionalized handling of extra-ordinary situations (such as crises of social sense-making). Durkheim illustrates the complex functions of collective memory in a number of remembrance rites in which the past is visualized as a dramatized presentation – as in the case of the Warramunga2 rites of the Black Snake. For this ritual, group members take on fixed roles and 2 The Warramunga are the indigenous people who lived in the northern parts of the continent. In his elaborations Durkheim refers to descriptions of the northern tribes of Australia the two anthropologists and ethnologists Sir Walter Baldwin Spencer and Francis James Gillen gave at the beginning of the 20th century (Spencer & Gillen, 1912). For a critical, gender issuesoriented debate on the social-scientific and cultural studies reception and interpretation of

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put into action the mythical history of the ancestor Thalaualla, from the moment he emerged from the ground up to his definite return thither. They follow him through all his voyages. The myth says that in each of the localities where he sojourned, he celebrated totemic ceremonies; they now repeat them in the same order in which they are supposed to have taken place originally. The movement which is acted the most frequently consists in twisting the entire body about rhythmically and violently; this is because the ancestor did the same thing to make the germs of life which were in him come out. The actors have their bodies covered with down, which is detached and flies away during these movements ; this is a way of representing the flight of these mystic germs and their dispersion into space. (Durkheim, 1964, p. 372)

The religious ritual follows a clearly defined sequence of different situations, movements and props which have been passed on over the generations. The performance itself mostly takes place without words: in a sense, the bodies of the group members function as media of collective memory, their rhythmic movements symbolising the act of creation and being arrayed accordingly. It is precisely because religious rituals are highly formalized and show performative features that, “they are able to transmit and articulate memory nonverbally” (Misztal, 2003a, p.  126). The collective memory of the group’s past cannot be reduced to cognitive memory but, in the form of habitualizations and incorporated memory, it gets deeply under the skin of the group members.3 Practiced movements and gestures tell their own stories. The religious ritual claims both levels of memory, the bodily-habitual and the cognitive, and in this way it endows itself with meaningfulness and commitment. For the individuals this means that they are included ‘neck and crop’ into the practice of collective remembrance and are connected to the group’s past. From his analyses of the remembrance rites of the Warramunga Durkheim comes to the conclusion that the rite performed by the group is not intended – as we, as supposedly modern observers, might believe – to change the natural environment (one example of this would be the famous rain dance which is supposed to bring rain, to escape a drought) but is supposed to strengthen the solidarity of the group members and the group’s identity. The rite is “necessary for the well working of our moral life” (Durkheim, 1964, p. 382). The ritual is supposed to remind every member of the group, at regular intervals, of the history of their ancestors and of the values, beliefs and ways of thinking of the rituals of the Warramunga – among them also Durkheim’s analyses – see Robin Clair (2013). 3 Thus, in Durkheim we find approaches to a theory of the body memory which, initiated by Henri Bergson, were taken up by Pierre Bourdieu and were further developed by Paul Connerton in particular. We will return to this in Chapter 6.

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the collective. In this way the similarity of the group members at the level of consciousness is ensured, which is necessary for maintaining mechanical solidarity. This has a moral nature because the individuals are called upon again to orient their actions and their orientations toward the interests of the collective and not to follow individualistic egoisms. For Durkheim, the latter have no moral value, as they do not contribute to the integration of group or society. In his study on religion Durkheim elaborates important insights into the functioning and the functionality of social memories. As we have seen, issues of the integration of societies, the identity of groups and the institutionalisation of remembrance are in the foreground in this context. As a collectively practiced remembrance, the religious ritual satisfies the social need for historical continuity (see Misztal, 2003a). Not only individuals but also groups and societies strive to meaningfully embed their respective present into the flow of time. The religious rites described by Durkheim are capable of achieving precisely this: Religion provides an all-embracing structure of beliefs, impresses on individuals a sense of the sacredness of something outside of them, and institutes a common destiny and identity not only with contemporaries but also with past and future generations. Sacred symbols and celebrations of past events help the recall of great events of the past that hold the community together, and, in turn, these ties to the past are cultivated by means of periodic commemoration rites. (Misztal, 2003a, p. 125)

It is important to see that Durkheim initially only refers to the traditional society of the Australian Aborigines and only connects the religious ritual with memory for this type of society. The question is if religion can also fulfil this function in modern societies, i.e.: in secularized societies characterized by the division of labour. Due to their increasing social and functional differentiation, Durkheim attests to a loss of mechanical solidarity in modern societies, which would normally happen automatically. According to Durkheim, the progressive division of labour has the effect that the similarity of the individuals at the level of consciousness declines rapidly and that, against the background of technological development, the mutual interdependencies of the various professions get obscured or do not come to view at all. Neither can individuals themselves determine their positions in society, nor can they recognize their professional contributions to the community. In modern society there is an integration gap between individual and society which prevents the development of a mechanical solidarity as it is found in traditional societies. The individual is not provided with sufficient possibilities of sense-making, he/she suffers from norms and rules which are too weak, and a resulting

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disorientation.4 Society, on the other hand, which Durkheim considers to be represented by the modern state, suffers from the individuals – the citizens of the state – not identifying with it. As a solution for the resulting lack of solidarity, Durkheim suggests that trades should be added to the modern society which are modelled on the ancient guilds and are something like a second family for individuals.5 In this way, he says, a mechanical solidarity could develop among these trades, based on the similarities of the beliefs and ways of thinking of their members;6 towards the external – i.e. between the different trades – the insight into the mutual dependency between the trades as well as the insight that each trade makes an important contribution to the existence of society would result in organic solidarity. As religion no longer provides a universal social bond, Durkheim starts looking for a secular morality which might be capable of connecting the points of view of different groups and of supporting the fragile structure of organic solidarity. Durkheim identifies this morality with law, as only modern law, as a purposefully organized institution, is capable of mediating between a universally valid morality of the state and the particular interests of different groups. As demonstrated by sociologist Barbara Misztal, the connection between law and memory plays an important role for several aspects of Durkheim’s sociology of law. On the one hand, law has a ‘storing function’ which is of significance for the present: “The past endures in the present in legislation and groups’ ethics, and therefore it is the essential element shaping the functioning of many institutions and of the national culture.” (Misztal, 2003a, p. 132). As essential values and convictions of society are rooted and located in law, it makes a considerable contribution to the cultural self-understanding of nations and their institutions. Thus, the founding texts of states which include legal codifications – for example, Misztal says, the Declaration of Independence of the United States of America of 1776 or the Magna Charta of 1215 which is crucial for British constitutional law – as well as the question

4 Accordingly, Durkheim (2002) in his study on suicide uses the term “anomic suicide” which is due to a society performing only a weak order. 5 Accordingly, in the preface to the 2nd edition of his 1893 study on the social division of labor Durkheim calls the trade the “heir of the family” (Durkheim, 2013, p. 17). 6 According to Durkheim, trades provide their members with the possibility of “associate with one another and not feel isolated in the midst of their adversaries, so as to enjoy the pleasure of communicating with one another, to feel at one with several others which in the end means to lead the same moral life together.” (Durkheim, 2013, p. 18).

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of in which ways, on which occasions and for which purposes these texts are remembered, are of interest for a sociology of memory.7 The research into the connection between law and remembrance experienced an enormous upswing after the end of the Cold War with the establishment of so-called truth commissions which were supposed to help states with their transition from dictatorship to democracy.8 From the 1990s onward, a variety of studies can be found that revolve around the question of how law, by interacting with historiography, influences or constructs collective memory (see Misztal, 2001; Sarat & Kearns, 1999); which function law, as an institution of memory, serves in the democratisation processes of states;9 how does law remember violence (see Minow, 2002); or how the global spread of universal human rights is connected to the development of an all-encompassing, cosmopolitan human memory (see Levy, 2010; Levy & Sznaider, 2010). It must be emphasized that in the context of Émile Durkheim’s sociology of law the latter has a storing function and, as a legal practice, shows elements of a ritual. Law becomes a ritual if legal processes are observed and morally judged by a mass media public. By law, in the context of a legal process organized by roles, applying its inscribed values and norms to a case, the collective is once again aware of these values and norms as a subject of a public debate. Thus, analogously to the religious ritual, at regular intervals law satisfies the need for moral reassurance which is also publicly demonstrated (see Misztal, 2003a, p. 132). In this sense, crimes prosecuted by the legal system – as far, Durkheim emphasizes, as they occur to a ‘normal’ degree – have the positive function of reminding society of its fundamental convictions, values and norms, linking it to them once again. When those insights from Durkheim’s study on religion are combined with those memory functions as described in the context of collective consciousness and law, a perspective emerges from which it is possible to analyse everyday 7 This selectivity finds expression also when it is about legitimizing new states with legal traditions and about providing them with a collective identity. In this context, the choice of texts being considered suitable is of a highly political nature. One example is the search for “Europe’s memory” (see König et al., 2007) which is accompanied by inclusion and exclusion debates on the question of which religious, legal and political pasts are compatible to the idea of ‘Europe’ (see also Pestel et al., 2017; Leggewie, 2011). 8 Among the well-known truth commissions there count the Truth and Reconciliation Commission, established in South Africa for coping with the bad past of apartheid (see e. g. May, 2009) and the Rettig-Commission in Chile of 1991 (see e. g. Wehr, 2009). A comparative overview of such institutions in Sierra Leone, East Timor, Panama, Peru, Serbia and Montenegro, Ghana, Chile, Liberia, Paraguay and Morocco are found in Anika Oettler (2008). 9 The relevant debate can be comprehended under the keyword transitional justice. On this see Mark Osiel (1997) or also Naomi Roht-Arriaza and Javier Mariezcurrena (2006).

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matters (‘ordinary’ life) and non-everyday matters (such as violations of law, collective identity crises) under aspects of a sociology of memory. The focus is on the passing on and institutionalisation of memories for the purpose of identity creation and integration, both in traditional and in modern societies. Nevertheless, the topic of memory in Émile Durkheim’s work is significant only where he is interested in emphasizing the value of the past for the present and the necessity of connecting the collective to traditional convictions and ways of thinking. Durkheim does not systematically analyse social memories as independent and autonomous realities. This task is assumed, only a few years later, by his disciple Maurice Halbwachs who takes up the figure of collective memory and elaborates it within the context of modern, pluralist societies. 5.1.2 Social Frames of Reference Virtually no social or cultural science work on social memory can do without a – at least cursory – reference to the theses of the French sociologist and philosopher Maurice Halbwachs (1877-1945) on collective memory. After his rediscovery in the late 1980s Halbwachs became the focal point of research by social sciences and cultural studies into memory, which was on the rise in those days. In this context, his theory proved to be highly compatible with a wide variety of research interests dealing with the memories of groups and collectives.10 Furthermore, in this way a previously hidden tradition of sociology became available which could help with legitimising the newly defined field of socialscientific memory research. It is often overlooked that Halbwachs did not only deal with collective memory but also with issues of statistics, of demography, of the social classes, of law and – being a disciple of Henri Bergson – of philosophy.11 Only after 1905, after having been active as a philosopher and a grammar schoolteacher, does he turn to sociology and Émile Durkheim, who subsequently became his most important teacher.12 10

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In the context of sociology, the works by Israeli sociologist Eviatar Zerubavel (e. g. 2003), who, starting out from Halbwachs, discusses the socio-psychological representation of the past and the social and cultural functions of temporal and topographical images of things past, must also be referred to. Regarding this, see the contribution to be found in Stephan Egger (2003a) as well as Jeanne Alexandre (1985). Further information about Halbwachs’s life is to be found in Hermann Krapoth and Denis Laborde (2005b) as well as in Dietmar J. Wetzel (2009). Durkheim’s influence is not only reflected by the contents of Halbwachs’s writings but also by the way in which they are presented. As his sister, Jeanne Alexandre, states in an appraisal of his work, Halbwachs was sustainably infected by Durkheim’s fighting spirit: “Side by side with Émile Durkheim, his first and main teacher – who was known as a champion of sociology and as a polemic – Maurice Halbwachs had the impression that it

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It is therefore no surprise that the ideas of Durkheim’s sociology are distinctively found in the three works that Halbwachs wrote on collective memory: the book On Collective Memory, originally published in French in 1925, the 1941 study on the La topographie légendaire des évangiles en Terre sainte as well as the uncompleted compilation of fragments, Collective Memory, which was published posthumously in 1950. The basic assumption developed in these writings, which we are going to follow in the following, is that any kind of remembrance is socially conditioned. Humans are only able to remember if they are capable of referring to social contexts – or, in other words: without collective points of reference, no remembering is possible.13 To make this thesis plausible, in his first book on memory Halbwachs firstly turns towards the images accompanying any kind of remembering. As he demonstrates, with the example of the dream, these images do not exist by themselves within an isolated consciousness but must – if they are not supposed to stay meaningless for the individual – be interpreted against the background of social references. Indeed, the brain supplies the dreaming consciousness with images of past events; actual memory, however, happens only if these impressions are embedded into social frames of reference when being awake. As Halbwachs concedes, dreamed images may very well “have the appearance of memories” (Halbwachs, 1992, p. 41), however, being “detached shreds of the scenes we have really experienced” (Halbwachs, 1992, p. 41), they are in a disconnected, fragmentary state. Only the social provides coherence and, thus, a meaning for these images. For the dream itself this means that it cannot be memory, as it happens within a consciousness which, when being asleep, is completely closed off from what is happening socially: it is “based only upon itself, whereas our recollections depend on those of all our fellows, and on the great frameworks of the memory of society” (Halbwachs, 1992, p. 42).

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was the time to fight. Thus, this strange passion and confidence of victory pulsing through his style and giving an idea of the human behind his writings” (Alexandre, 1985, p. 11). Against this background it is no wonder that Halbwachs was widely rejected by the psychology of his time – from which he, like Durkheim, vehemently closed himself off. For example, French psychologist and contemporary, Charles Blondel, points to traumatic experiences which are suddenly remembered in the form of flashbacks. In such cases, Blondel states, memories are caused exclusively psychically and not, as Halbwachs claims, by way of collective ideas and images. The assumption that the individual always depends on social frames preceding remembering, says Blondel, is inappropriate here because at first the individual remembers and only then embeds his/her memories into social frames of reference (see Mucchielli, 2003). No matter if this flashback theory is correct or not, it is important to see that Halbwachs neither denies the individual’s psyche nor considers it obsolete. After all, the opposite is true: as collective memories are stored by the individual memory, it has quite a prominent status.

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With this sociology of memory interpretation of the dream Halbwachs turns against the psychological thesis “of the subsistence of memories in an unconscious state” (Halbwachs, 1992, p. 39) and reveals two crucial points of his theory of memory: on the one hand, when remembering the individual always reaches back to social points of reference and knowledge structures. At best they can attribute meaning to their dream in retrospect, by placing that which has been dreamed into the context of consciousness when awake and of the society surrounding it. As Halbwachs puts it, in reference to Durkheim, memories only happen “under the pressure of society” (Halbwachs, 1992, p. 51). On the other hand, the act of remembering becomes visible as an achievement of processing and sense-making which must inevitably be located in the present, as the necessary social reference points and roots for associations are only to be found there. The actual past evades our grasp – as already stated in Chapter 1, memory does not allow for time travel: past events are not repeated and lived through again ‘as they were’. All we can do is interpret the traces of the past in the here and now and develop ideas of the past from this interpretation. For the consciousness this means that it cannot store memory images but must create and produce them, again and again. The present provides the occasions and framework conditions for this. However, it would be wrong to assume that memories create arbitrary versions of the past. Halbwachs emphasizes that the remembering reconstruction of the past is always subject to rules and restrictions which, among others, have to do with the past itself: memory “is in very large measure a reconstruction of the past achieved with data borrowed from the present, a reconstruction prepared, furthermore, by reconstructions of earlier periods wherein past images had already been altered” (Halbwachs, 1992, p. 69) According to Halbwachs, the creativity and openness which are part of any memory, due to its being tied to the present, are not completely switched off by previous reconstructions of the past but are directed into certain channels. A once sketched image of the past opens up the possibilities of future recollection while at the same time closing them – or, in other words: the selectivity of memory is due to current references to problems, knowledge orders and relevances as well as to the selectivity of previous memories.14 14

This point touches a fundamental problem of systems theory which assumes that any communication is per se contingent. At the same time, however, it must take into account that, once performed, communications lose their contingency in retrospect and take on the nature of a necessity affecting future communications. Elena Esposito, to whom we will refer later, writes on this: “Any past, which might as well have been different and might have been treated differently, is presented as having been inevitable by the memory. Only because history has run in a certain way, the result is precisely this present or

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Halbwachs illustrates this idea with the social figure of identity which, as a memory phenomenon, is dependent on current framework conditions whilst also being based on repetitions – we would say: established patterns of selection: We preserve memories of each epoch in our lives, and these are continually reproduced; through them, as by a continual relationship, a sense of our identity is perpetuated. But precisely because these memories are repetitions, because they are successively engaged in very different systems of notions, at different periods of our lives, they have lost the form and the appearance they once had. They are not intact vertebra of fossil animals which would in themselves permit reconstruction of the entities of which they were once a part. One should rather compare them to those stones one finds fitted in certain Roman houses, which have been used as materials in very ancient buildings: their antiquity cannot be established by their form or their appearance but only by the fact that they still show the effaced vestiges of old characters. (Halbwachs, 2006, p. 47)

Those memories that are inseparably connected to our identity are not images stored by the consciousness, but must be newly created in the course of each biographical narration and memory of what makes us individuals. Halbwachs is very much aware of the fact that the present is subject to constant change – in the course of our lives our relevancies change, just like the groups we are members of, and the social framework conditions we are subject to. Each of these changes is consequential for the remembered image of the past which, accordingly, will never be the same. However, as we unfold our identity in retrospect, along a golden thread of memory, and again and again repeat certain memories, usually we get the impression that it is the world which is changing – and not our identity. What makes/has made our identity and what we actually refer to when wanting to plausibilize our identity (the old “building material”) can be reconstructed any time – however, then it is indeed this: an interpretative reconstruction out of an always new present which the next time will be, if not completely, but somewhat different.15 A sociology of memory which is oriented towards the presence of

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this system. It is from the point of view of exactly this present that we ask ourselves about past and memory. The system exists as a result of those selections as having been made in the past and having been of a contingent nature in the moment of their realization; however, once they belong to the past, those same selections become inevitable.” (Esposito, 2002, p. 13). This insight is enormously consequential for empirical social research concerning – not only but also biographical – interviews. The interview, as such, is an artificially created situation in which the interviewed person is made to reconstruct the past under framework conditions which are unknown to him/her.

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everything social – Halbwachs’s theory being an example par excellence – is able to examine social aspects of coherence, by reconstructing the inherently logical selectivity chains of social memories, and by relating them to changing present conditions. This principle, which can be used to make moments of social change visible, can be played out for any kind of social memory – for example, the family memory which refers traditional selection patterns to current occasions of remembrance and thus supplies the family with history and identity, or the memory of the organisation which is permeated by conditional programmes and routines. The central concept of Halbwachs’s sociology of memory, which so far has only been dealt with in passing, is the concept of the reference frame. Before starting the topical discussion, it is important to see that in his work Halbwachs does not only apply this concept to a variety of very different meanings, but also negotiates it at different levels of abstraction. We must assume that on the one hand this is due to a break in the discussion around the topic of memory – Halbwachs’s first book on collective memory and his study on the places of remembrance of Christianity are separated by a period of 16 years – and on the other hand, due to the fact that Halbwachs was oriented to the colourful everyday meaning of the framework concept. For memory research by the sociological sciences and cultural studies, however, this proves to be rather an opportunity than a flaw – it allows for a connection to the framework concept from many different angles and thus provides it with a broad theoretical and empirical basis. On the whole, in Halbwachs there appear four dimensions of meaning within the framework concept: social relations, language, space, and time.16 The first dimension of meaning refers to social relations, concerning any individual belonging to a group. On the one hand, individuals are born into already existing groups and are socialized in their context. On the other hand, in the course of his/her life the individual joins quite a number of groups, only to leave them again (such as classes at school, vocational associations, sports clubs, groups of friends, and so on). In his work Halbwachs exemplarily unfolds the frameworks of family, religion and social status, in the context of which he is only partly interested in the inherent logics of these collectives and their memories; his elaborations focus on those aspects of the social order which can generally be experienced in the context of groups. By way of several examples, Halbwachs demonstrates that every group is provided with specific patterns of order which are valid for the group, as well as with typical patterns 16

On the following see also Oliver Dimbath (2013) who systematically compares Halbwachs’s concept of the frame to that of US American sociologist Erving Goffman.

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of order which also apply to other groups, and that these patterns structure relations within the group. In this context he has in mind both the group, which can be immediately experienced by the individual, and the knowledge structure which is typically connected to this group. The reference frame of the family consists of the persons we know and of our relationship to them – the family structures – and it comes from the typical meanings the various family relationships have for the members of the family. Halbwachs concludes that the “the framework of family memory is made of notions-notions of persons and of facts-that are singular and historic in this sense but that otherwise have all the characteristics of thoughts common to a whole group and even to several groups” (Halbwachs, 1992, p. 83). As the individual is a member of several groups and occupies different positions in each one (such as father of a family, professor or choirmaster), the unique construction of memory is provided with several social frames of reference.17 It is crucial in this context that the ever-possible ambiguity of remembering dissolves as soon as one specific reference frame is addressed. In view of the family memory Halbwachs writes: It is all the more important to distinguish these purely and specifically family notions, which form the framework of domestic memory, from all others. This is because in many societies the family is not just a group of relations but can apparently be defined according to the position it occupies, the professions its members engage in, its social level, etc. Even if the domestic group sometimes coincides with a local group and the life and thought of the family are invaded by economic, religious, and other preoccupations, there nevertheless exists a difference in nature between kinship on the one hand and religion, profession, wealth, etc., on the other. This is why the family has its own peculiar memory, just as do other kinds of communities. Foremost in this memory are relations of kinship. If events that seem at first glance to be related to ideas of another order occur within the family, that is because in a certain respect they also can be considered as family events. (Halbwachs, 1992, p. 63)

It is part of our common experience that family events intersect with professional events – the father writing a book on sociology in the evenings is something which leaves its marks on the family and characterises family life for quite some time. Whereas the father might remember this event as a period of work that was stressful but rewarded by a book publication, mother and child might rather remember the hardships for family life during this time. One and 17

Georg Simmel’s (2009) image of a crossroads of social circles may serve to illustrate this idea. As to how far it also inspired Halbwachs’s considerations cannot be reconstructed here (however, see Jedlowski, 1990). In Halbwachs we do indeed find some scattered hints of Simmel who, like Halbwachs later, was a chairholder at the University of Strasburg (see Namer, 2007).

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the same event may be reconstructed under different framework conditions. The resulting memories – as this not really fictitious but slightly exaggerated example is supposed to illustrate – may be seen under completely contradicting auspices. In one case, reference is made to the framework of the family, in the other to the framework of the profession, and each framework results in different consequences for the way in which an event is remembered. If we abstract from this example, in view of social relations the relationship of individual and collective memory can thus be formulated as a matter of point of view: But individual memory is nevertheless a part or an aspect of group memory, since each impression and each fact, even if it apparently concerns a particular person exclusively, leaves a lasting memory only to the extent that one has thought it over to the extent that it is connected with the thoughts that come to us from the social milieu. (Halbwachs, 1992, p. 53)

Belonging to a group inevitably includes positioning oneself amongst other group members, which depending on the context may be based on family relations, formal hierarchies or status. The crucial point of Halbwachs’s argument is that each position comes along with opportunities to participate in the group’s collective memory: the position of the individual within the group is crucial for the segments of the life of the group into which he/she has insight and for which perspectives on the past are suggested to him/her. If his/her position within the group changes – due to rising in the hierarchy of an organisation or of growing into the role of father or mother – the relationship of the individual to the memory of the respective group also changes. If he/she leaves the group, forgetfulness sets in, as he/she no longer belongs to the reference frame of the group. The second dimension of the meaning of social reference frames is located at a higher level of abstraction – here it is about the culture-specific way of articulating of language. To emphasize the significance of language for memory, Halbwachs turns to the clinical picture of aphasia, a neurologically induced speech disorder. A person suffering from aphasia – for example, Halbwachs includes traumatized war veterans – is capable of reconstructing object images, but he/she is not capable of making meaningful use of symbolic orders such as words, sentences, formal ideas or attitudes. This incapacity is not a result of memory-relevant areas of the brain having been injured or deleted. The aphasic person does not lack memories; he/she lacks the capability of referring cognitive events to a framework, of attributing meaning to them and of articulating them (see Halbwachs, 1992, p. 45). This assumption makes Halbwachs conclude that “[n]o memory is possible outside frameworks

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used by people living in society to determine and retrieve their recollections” (Halbwachs, 1992, p. 43). The inescapable necessity of social references for individual memory becomes clearly visible from the reference frame of language: if this frame cannot be addressed, simply no memory is possible. According to Halbwachs, as a result of this insight we must give up on the idea that the past is in itself preserved within individual memories as if from these memories there had been gathered as many distinct proofs as there are individuals. People living in society use words that they find intelligible: this is the precondition for collective thought. But each word (that is understood) is accompanied by recollections. There are no recollections to which words cannot be made to correspond. We speak of our recollections before calling them to mind. It is language, and the whole system of social conventions attached to it, that allows us at every moment to reconstruct our past. (Halbwachs, 1992, p. 173)

According to Halbwachs, language is the crucial point of reference for our social life: the social world we are moving through is constituted of language. Thus, it does not come as a surprise that language and memory are closely interwoven and that, as Halbwachs writes, “speech is an instrument of comprehension” (Halbwachs, 1992, p. 44) On one hand, language is the medium in which all recollection happens. As the individual consciousness is unable to store the past and make it appear again and again from itself, it depends on language to create meaning and generate meanings which are also understood by others. Thus, individual remembering is necessarily also always a social act. On the other hand, by way of language we are permanently related to other humans (Halbwachs, 1992, p. 44). Only by commonly referring to a culturally grown and collectively shared system of symbols are we capable of establishing social relationships and of stabilising them over time. Language proves to be a means for integrating the individual into social contexts and underpins all of our social relationships which could not be conceived of without these frames of reference.18 18

The connection between language and memory covers a wide field which is not only researched by sociology. Here we may refer to two crucial disciplines: cultural studies theories of cultural memory, which are essentially based on Halbwachs, understand language as a kind of writing and basically come to the same conclusions, by emphasizing its integrative and stabilizing nature. Furthermore, the connection between language and memory is intensively researched by (experimental) psychology, although there less of the social aspects are in the foreground than, for example, the development of the individual’s understanding of language and the linguistic constitution of memories (see Anderson, 1976; as well as the Journal of Memory and Language, published since 1962).

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Halbwachs spells out the last two dimensions of meaning of social reference frames of memory using the criteria of space and time which are fundamental for many cultures. We have already mentioned Halbwachs’s understanding of time in our digression on social time in Chapter 4, however, the problem of synchronising different individual ways of perceiving time was then in the foreground – therefore we will not deal with this aspect in detail again. Furthermore, if we understand time as a social reference frame of memory, it becomes obvious that socially formatted ideas of time help us to localise memories. With the example of the memories of a journey Halbwachs illustrates which of the completely different chronological contexts help to reconstruct the past: [R]ecalling a certain trip we have taken, we find ourselves with a whole framework of temporal facts somehow related to it, even when we cannot remember its exact date. For instance, it took place before or after the war, when a child, youth, or adult, in the company of a certain friend who was himself a certain age, during a specific season of the year, while engaged in a certain piece of work, or when some famous event was in the news. A series of reflections of this kind very often enable one to substantiate and complete such remembrance. (Halbwachs, 1980, p. 98)

Halbwachs does not equate time with the measurement of time: he is not interested in hours, minutes and seconds or the calendar date on which an event happened. Rather, for him, all relevant conditions are those which are perceived by way of a collectively available time reference and which are of significance precisely because of this. This may be a person’s age, assessed against the background of social conventions (“an adult man and in my prime”), a socially relevant turning point (“it was before or after the War”) or an event which was so extraordinary that it was included in the stock of knowledge in a social group. Usually, memory is oriented toward several chronological reference frames which provide the reconstructed image of the past with a wealth of details and contribute to its chronological localisation. In this context, the social groups in which the individual is embedded provide the concepts of time that influence individual remembering. In case of the above-mentioned example, war may be a chronologically relevant event for certain groups, for others it may not; when a man is considered “an adult” and “in his prime” may vary as much as the events being relevant for this group. It is crucial that certain points in and periods of time are marked as part of a collective stock of knowledge which may again and again be addressed when remembering. The more groups an individual is a member of, the more numerous the chronological

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contexts it is exposed to. This has consequences for the possibilities of remembering, for we often replace our remembrances within a space and time whose demarcations we share with others, or that we also situate them within dates that have meaning only in relation to a group to which we belong. (Halbwachs, 1980, p. 54)

How far back the memory of a group reaches, how typical group-relevant events are distributed over time, and how group-related time must be assessed, is determined by way of each specific reference frame of the memory. It may be that the past of one group is only recent, whereas the past of another group includes long periods of time. In this context, one just has to think of the different lengths of the pasts of families which can be extended to a certain degree, by way of genealogical research. The situation is similar with national states which invent traditions and founding myths to provide themselves with legitimacy with a memory narrative which reaches far back into the past (see Hobsbawm & Ranger, 1983). For Halbwachs, just like time, space is also not an abstract physical entity but is something that has always existed in a socialized form. This socialisation happens by each group populating a certain space which ‘inscribes’ itself into it – it “constitutes […] a social body with subdivisions and a structure reproducing the physical configuration of the city enclosing it. […] Habits related to a specific physical setting resist the forces tending to change them” (Halbwachs, 1980, p.  133). Social life does not only include references to other people, to language and time; it is also based on collectively created spatial order providing the collective with stability and longevity. By using the phrase of ‘locking itself into’ the framework, Halbwachs points to the fact that in everyday life the reference frame of space is usually not questioned.19 When the creation of a spatial order has been completed, it is firstly perceived as a kind of natural limitation. As Halbwachs demonstrates with a number of examples, societies are provided with a variety of such spatial patterns of order. Collectives distinguish profane from sacred places, structure social life according to active and passive zones; they build cities, roads and buildings, and they regulate property. However, in this context the reference frame of space must not be equated with actual space – it is not the city, the street or the sacred place, but it includes all collectively created and shared “spatial images” (Halbwachs, 19

The same probably holds for time and language, whereas we believe our social relations to other people to be much more flexible. However, in this case exceptions also prove to be the rule: our furniture seems to be more easily rearranged than a street, the family seems to be more primordial than the people we spend our leisure time with.

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1980, p. 130) that refer to a specific space and influence our memories. What this means exactly, is demonstrated by Halbwachs with the example of living space: Our home – furniture and its arrangement, room decor – recalls family and friends whom we see frequently within this framework. If we live alone, that region of space permanently surrounding us reflects not merely what distinguishes us from everyone else. Our tastes and desires evidenced in the choice and arrangement of these objects are explained in large measure by the bonds attaching us to various groups. All we can say is that things are part of society. (Halbwachs, 1980, pp. 128-129)

The spatial order of the living quarters provides memory with a framework which is connected to memories of family and friends. As Halbwachs shows us, this holds for both obvious artefacts of memory which have consciously been placed in the house or flat (such as family pictures on the wall) and for objects of everyday life and architectural peculiarities – for example, the chair grandfather used to sit on during his visits reminds us of him, just like the threshold of the patio door he used to stumble over. Thus, material objects are included via attributions of meaning gained by the group and inscribed into memory – in this case the circle of family and friends. At the same time, the spatial images predominant among social groups influence the ways in which we furnish and design our living space. As, according to Halbwachs, an individual’s taste, education and interests depend on social contexts, collective ideas of space will inevitably be included into the individual design of the living space. Against the background of the discussions so far it is easy to see that collective ideas of space are subject to constant change – just compare the way in which bedrooms were furnished in the age of rococo to the current catalogue of a furniture shop, or the appearance of cities from a different age. Also, rooms may change and disappear. When the house where we spent our childhood has been demolished, the memories of this spatial frame will fade. The meanings attributed to this house among the family will be forgotten, as they can no longer rest on any spatial substrate. The same may be said about the attempt to upgrade urban quarters by the use of structural measures – in short: gentrification – and, in this way, to change their socio-economic structure: through redevelopment and construction, rising rents lead to the original inhabitants being pushed out and the spatial reference frame, with which the quarter’s socio-cultural particularities and collective identity could be remembered, is ‘gutted’. With his framework concept Halbwachs succeeds in integrating the crucial references of any social existence – other individuals, language, time and

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space – and making them fruitful for the sociology of memory. As already indicated, the framework concept unfolded by Halbwachs does not aim at a static concept of structure. Frameworks are flexible and provide ‘meshes’ which may be narrow or wide – according to whether one is approaching the present or moving away from it (see Halbwachs, 2006, p. 181). They constitute the totality of ideas that the remembering consciousness can perceive in an instant or access through thought. Thus, the framework referring to a social group is ‘in the mind’ of the subject. And any fixation is ruled out – frameworks are constantly re-worked and adjusted: “Every time we include one of our impressions into the framework of our current ideas, the framework changes the impression, however vice versa the impression modifies the framework” (Halbwachs, 2006, p. 189). With each recollective reflection on what is being currently experienced it is possible to address different frames of reference – like maps in the mind. Frames are the precondition and reference point of any memory: “We are capable of remembering only under the condition that we identify the place of the events we are interested in within the reference frame of collective memory” (Halbwachs, 2006, p. 368). It is always about the question how memory is possible at all. Halbwachs tells hardly anything about which framework moves into the foreground in specific situations, thus evoking the memories referring to it. He seems to assume that the consciousness implicitly determines a hierarchy of situative impressions created by socialisation or a “framework of thought of each group” (Halbwachs, 1980, p. 44). In contrast to Durkheim, Halbwachs does not assume any ‘moral’ society which must be integrated with the help of social memories. Rather, according to his theory of collective memory, a variety of social groups overlap and mutually influence each other. In this context religion, just like law, is just one of several social frames of reference for the memory. For the Durkheim School, the focus on the identity of social groups and their location in time, the reconstructivity and sociality of memory, and the assumption that society or the social stands above the individual are characteristic. 5.2

Pragmatic Remembering

The second sociological tradition of the sociology of memory we would like to discuss in this chapter is American Pragmatism. According to sociologist Hans Joas, this school of thought, which developed in the 19th century, is characterized by “taking human behaviour as a starting point and, accordingly, understanding all performances of the consciousness by their contribution

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to creatively solve action problems” (Joas, 2002, p.  744). In contrast to the Durkheim school, Pragmatism has no concept of society putting the individual ‘under pressure’. Rather, Pragmatic sociologists emphasize the spontaneity, creativity and inherent logic of human behaviour which, however, is not arbitrary and without rules. If this idea is applied to issues of memory and remembering, it becomes obvious that conscious remembering is always based on a problem which must be actively solved. This can be demonstrated with the example of the three authors introduced in the following section, who are the pioneers of a pragmatic sociology of memory: Jane Addams talks about the ‘activation’ of a specifically female memory in the context of a sinister myth; Charles Horton Cooley deals with issues of social remembrance or posthumous reputation; and George Herbert Mead analyses the ‘nature of the past’. 5.2.1 Myths and Female Memory An early analysis and clearly sociological treatment of social memory issues in the context of pragmatism was, as early as in 1916, presented by US-American activist Jane Addams (1860-1935; 2002). In her book The Long Road of Woman’s Memory she develops crucial aspects of a theory of social memories, although her work was barely noticed among the circles of sociology experts. It is worthwhile having a closer look at Addams’s considerations on a theory of memory. As her method of argument is closely linked to her own biography as well as to her connections to the founders of American Pragmatism, we will first present a short biographical portrait of this pioneer of the sociology of memory. Jane Addams became famous for her socio-political commitment to disadvantaged groups in Chicago. Inspired by the Toynbee Hall in London, together with other activists she opened up the Hull House settlement home, an early mixture of welfare centre, neighbourhood help and women’s refuge.20 As the founders of Hull House approached their project with a scientific interest and even developed their own method of collecting social-scientific data, they drew the attention of the University of Chicago – for a while, it was even considered to make the institution a part of the university which, with its Chicago School, was the home of the most influential sociological institute of the United States of America until the mid-20th century. It may be that this connection failed because the difference in status between the – male – sociology professors and the – female – activists who did not have academic degrees was too great (see Ross, 1998). Nevertheless, Addams was a member of the American Sociological 20

Furthermore, she cared about young people without prospects and initiated the establishment of kindergartens and playgrounds. In this way, Jane Addams did not only become an icon of social work but was also awarded the Nobel Prize of Peace of 1931.

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Association and, apart from some books, published a number of articles in leading journals. That she appeared to be a women’s rights activist was barely accepted. However, when she went to the public with pacifist theses, after a trip to Europe in 1915, she was met with criticism and scorn. Dejected and ill, she left the public stage, underwent a kidney operation and wrote a small book in which she reflected, within the context of memory-theory, on her experiences with disadvantaged women at Hull House as well as with mothers who had lost their sons in World War I. In this way the work The Long Road of Woman’s Memory was created. The book, which we would like to present briefly below, is divided into six chapters, each of which addresses a particular aspect of social memory or socially communicated remembering. Four chapters deal with work at Hull House, one reflects on impressions from the trip to Europe, and one gives insights into Addams’s childhood via an account of a journey to Egypt. Because of the very different memory motifs that Addams elaborates in the course of the book, we necessarily follow this division into chapters in our presentation. The book starts with the description of a mysterious rumour. Within the neighbourhood the word had spread that a child of the devil had been left at Hull House and could be seen there. One of the many versions of the story tells the fate of a young woman from an Italian immigrant background who had been married to an atheist. When, during a fit of rage, this man had torn an image of a saint from the wall and had cried out that he might as well have the devil in his house, the devil had decided to incarnate himself in the child that the couple was expecting. Immediately after its birth the child jumped on the table and heaped reproaches on its father, who had grabbed it and taken it to Hull House. The inhabitants of the House had recognized the devil in the child and had tried to have it baptized to save its soul; however, the child shrank back from the holy water and escaped. As a consequence, the management of the House had a lot of trouble rejecting curious visitors and insisting again and again that the story was not true and that there was no devil’s child. As a first step, Addams looked for the reasons for these stubborn rumours in the neighbourhood. The starting point for her investigation is the particular social structure of the audience of Hull House, which consisted mostly of lower-class elderly women with immigrant backgrounds, who looked back at lives characterized by violence and deprivation – poverty, illness and starvation. The connection of this background to the dramatic dynamics of the narrative makes Addams think that the story of the devil’s child might perhaps be connected to the collective memory of the audience of Hull House and, furthermore, to a typical range of experiences of women from this particular background.

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Against this background, in the first chapter of her book Addams develops a memory motif consisting of the idea that the invention of the devil’s child myth bundles a number of similar biographical experiences. The myth offers women who do not know each other the possibility of getting swiftly to the point and sharing reflections on their grim past. At the same time, the story externalises quite a number of social problems and injustices, thus normalising each individual problem of how to cope with it: the women meet at Hull House to see the devil’s child. While waiting to be let in or standing around after having been refused to enter, they enter into exchanges about their own fate, inspired by the incredible story. The trigger, ‘the devil’s child’, determines the structure of the conversation. According to Addams, suppressed women make use of the communicative genre of the fairy tale to generalise their own fate – such as that the innocent woman having to take responsibility for children at a far too young age while at the same time suffering from an unfaithful, drunk and violent husband. Against this background, it does not come as a surprise that the story spreads like wildfire and is heard by many women who are inspired to relate similar experiences of disadvantage and violence. However, the effect of the myth is of an affirmative kind – as soon as one’s own fate is related to the fate expressed by the myth, a normalisation happens with the women: given the fact that they obviously share the fate of others, they find it easier to accept the circumstances. A first memory-specific interpretation of the ‘devil’s child’ is that a social memory develops in the sense of a selective knowledge structure, providing the thoughts and discussions of a social group with a certain direction.21 In the second chapter Addams offers another memory-specific interpretation of the story of the devil’s child. She explains the motivation for bringing up such a myth by the precarious social situations of the elderly women at Hull House. Women at the beginning of the 20th century were generally suppressed, insofar as they were tied to their homes and did not even have an opportunity to make ‘history’. Inventing stories can be understood as a strategy to survive in an abstract or codified way. If we understand remembering as the power of the weak,22 women possess the power of myths. The production of 21

22

It is remarkable that connecting femininity to narration and memory has been preserved for over 100 years of gender research. Accordingly, similar motifs of being socially disadvantaged and of the alleviating function of common remembrance are also found in current contributions to transformation research –without, however, referring to Pragmatism or Addams’s work (see Haag, 2013) Aleida Assmann (2006) took up this motif and found that women care about memories while at the same time being historically forgotten, whereas men tend rather to forget, but are historically remembered.

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stories does not only store individual (heroic) deeds but provides a collectively shared knowledge by way of which one’s own moral position and individual self-definition can be oriented and assessed. Furthermore, the subjective memory of direct or indirect experiences allows one to bring those values and conventions reflected by a current situation into question. In the third and fourth chapters of her book Addams talks about how the female memory – in this case in the context of motherhood – enables resistant behaviour. In one case, the memory of her mother’s care prevents a grandmother from disowning an illegitimate grandchild living with her after she had learned that the child was not her biological grandchild at all. In the other case, mothers whose sons have fallen in the War start to question the patriotic semantics of sacrifice, by not interpreting the deaths of their own sons as having devoted their lives to the nation and by not connecting them to nationalist narratives of remembrance. As a mass phenomenon, drawing on fundamental, shared experiences by the use of memory may become a critical potential, initiating social change. The selectivity of the ‘mother memory’ is victorious over both morality-based sanctioning mechanisms and over nationalist values. That memory may change and adjust according to living conditions is demonstrated by Addams in the fourth chapter. Starting out from her experiences with elderly, impoverished migrant women who, with their memories, preserve stories of violence, hardship and dependence, she wonders about a group of young female industrial workers passing by Hull House during a strike. These young women share the experience of financial independence. This is where Addams identifies an indication of the changeability of (female) memory which now has no reason for passing on narratives of dependence and being tied to the home. From this Addams concludes that memory may not be understood as being static, but as a dynamic process. After these five chapters where people from her environment have their say, in the final section Addams goes back to her own experiences to reveal another aspect of collective memory. During a trip to Egypt, when visiting the pyramids, she had encountered depictions of dying and suddenly felt as though she was confronted with long forgotten impressions from her childhood. The connection to her own childhood experiences established, in the form or remembrance stimuli, by these ancient depictions makes her assume that the social memory preserves basic motifs of human experience which are stable over a long time.23 After having seen these mural paintings, Addams considers 23

This final chapter is prone to misunderstandings and led critics to accuse Addams of a naive way of dealing with cultures she called ‘primitive’ (see Seigfried, 2002).

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her assumption confirmed that myths or stories serve as carrier media of a social memory. Their selectivity controls remembering which sometimes even confronts the individual with ghosts of the past. With this reading, pragmatism researcher Charlene H. Seigfried identifies a new kind of humanism in Addams, emerging from the insight that no myth which has consoled earlier generations will ever completely lose its significance (see Seigfried, 2002, p. XXIX). On the whole, Addams’s considerations on memory do not provide any clear conceptual work or definitions; this cannot be expected against the background of American Pragmatism which refuses any kind of reification and de-contextualisation. She approaches the topic of memory and remembering by way of the issues of social inequality and extrapolates issues of both supra-individual and culturally communicated remembering. Doing so, she is one of the first sociologically interested researchers to encounter motifs of the selectivity and path-dependency of social memories. For the individual, the function of supra-individual memories is that they enable him/her to retrospectively make ‘true’ some aspects of his/her own life, by including them into his/her self-concept of identity, making them a basis for future action. The way in which her study on the memory of women is structured provides an indication that the term is meant to be understood in a multi-layered way. Four levels are discussed: firstly, the social memory determines individual memory with respect of the construction of a personal biography. Secondly, it guarantees group memories, enabling contexts within which humans can actively communicate common experiences. Thirdly, the collective memories of larger populations are inserted into myths and narratives as well as buildings, memorials, places and even political ideologies. And, fourthly, the social memory can be understood as a kind of instinctive memory which helps by frequently addressing the most general experiences of mankind which have been stable over long periods of time (see Lengermann & Niebrugge, 2009, p. 270). Addams’ thinking developed a concept of knowledge in the context of American Pragmatism. Thus, her approach rises above the suspicion that memory perhaps could be an essentialist or static concept. According to the theories of William James, knowledge develops if events can no longer be ignored, when existing certainties must be reviewed and adapted to the current situation (see Seigfried, 2002, p. XVII). Furthermore, according to John Dewey, something becomes knowledge only if, it can be adapted to the goals and desires of life – the selectivity of these desires and goals corresponds to that of memory. Accordingly, Addams emphasizes the creative appropriation of the past with which the basis for future action is created. Memory is a mechanism for the production of identity and orientation. This means that

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the problem of selective remembering – as in case of a certain traumatising event – is not covered by her theory of memory and remembering. It is not about narrating and passing on the singular, but about preserving the typical with myth. 5.2.2 Social Remembering One of the few Chicago sociologists of the early 20th century who occasionally drew on the works of Jane Addams was Charles Horton Cooley (1864-1929). However, he mostly refers to her considerations on democracy, ethics and social change, and not to memory-specific questions. Nevertheless, Cooley also dealt with issues of remembering and oblivion, as he was interested in the social construction of reputation and recognition in academic life. In his work Social Change of 1918 he developed a theoretical figure on immortality when looking for reasons as to why the memories of some deserving people are preserved by posterity and others – who are perhaps just as meritorious – are forgotten (see Cooley, 1918). Already here we find the pragmatist-presentist motif which later will be unfolded by George Herbert Mead’s theory of memory: drawing on the past by recollection is only possible from the present. If we accept this assumption and understand posthumous glory not just as a historically ‘grown’ phenomenon but as the effect of frequently renewed and situationally adjusted remembering, ‘immortality’ cannot be connected to the quantity and greatness of deeds. Only from the point of view of the present it is again decided and reassessed which achievement of the past is currently still relevant. It is not the thankfulness of society which motivates remembrance at all. Rather, the memory of heroes is a process of typification that categorises past achievements considered relevant by society in order to then use individual representatives as examples and symbols for certain categories of merit. In this context, the presentism of American Pragmatism goes beyond even mere orientation to the present. As is obvious in the phrase the ‘ungrateful society’, it rejects any relevance of past achievements to the fact of being remembered. If remembering is understood as being functional for current situations, history is hardly significant for understanding commemoration.24 In other words: we do not live with a view to the past but are always in the here and now, while still preserving certain symbols, coming from the past, which are meant to provide us with orientation.

24

Elsewhere Cooley states that intelligence is based on memories – however it makes use of them by way of “free and constructive use […] as distinguished from a mechanical use” (Cooley, 1918, p. 352).

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In US-American research on issues of social or collective memory this motif is found until recent times. Without explicitly referring to Cooley’s considerations – instead, reaching back to Halbwachs – sociologist Barry Schwartz demonstrates in which ways the common memory (commemoration) of heroes or important collective events depends on the current problems and needs of social groups among others.25 For Schwartz, ‘among others’ is crucial, as he does not deny that there are historical events from the past which influence the present. However, he does not accept that such a point of view is absolutely correct. His empirical approach consists of the iconographic analysis of places of commemoration – such as the White House. The many pictures, sculptures as well as the architecture serve to stimulate memories reminding one of the social origins of the American nation. Providing them with space makes them influence the present – however, this is only for as long as those currently living allow it. If a picture is taken off a wall or a statue removed, the relevant memory stimulus declines: “When unity was in question, America’s political representatives fell back on the common denominator of founding heroes and celebrated their memory. Once unity was attained, these representatives began to commemorate their past and present bureaucratic leaders” (Schwartz, 1982, pp. 395-396). 5.2.3 The Nature of the Past The last thinker we would like to discuss in the context of American Pragmatism is George Herbert Mead (1863-1931). His comments on the ‘nature of the past’ – which is the title of one of his essays published in 1929 – move the relationship of past and present within the individual consciousness to the foreground. In this way he comes close to the time-theoretical considerations of William James, Henri Bergson and Edmund Husserl (see Chapter 1), However, by way of the individual experience of time Mead works out the problem of remembering and memory far more clearly and systematically. As already stated by Jane

25

What is remarkable is the hint that Maurice Halbwachs (1941) in his late work La topographie légendaire des évangiles en Terre sainte introduces precisely this motif: in his historical reconstruction of reports by pilgrims he demonstrates how much the significance of the places of pilgrimage has changed over time. That remembering and historiography have always got to do with the present can easily be demonstrated with the passage in Halbwachs as quoted by Schwartz: “If, as we believe, collective memory is essentially a reconstruction of the past, if it adapts the image of ancient facts to the beliefs and spiritual needs of the present, then a knowledge of the origin of these facts must be secondary, if not altogether useless, for the reality of the past is no longer in the pas” (Halbwachs, 1941, p. 7; qtd. In Schwartz, 1982, p. 376).

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Addams and Charles Horton Cooley, the Pragmatist focus on creative human action and the related performance of the consciousness is clearly obvious. The starting point for Mead’s considerations is an observation which at first sight looks trivial but following closer look proves to be very presuppositional: “The present”, Mead writes, “is not past and the future. The distinction which we make between them is evidently fundamental” (Mead, 1929, p.  235). But where does this distinction, which is quite essential, indeed fundamental for our everyday existence, come from? To answer this question, Mead reaches back to the concept of continuity which he links to the present: “It is true that in this present there is something going on. There is passage within the duration, but that is a present passage” (Mead, 1929, p. 235). Continuity knows just one mode: that of the present. However, Mead soon makes it clear that he does not speak of any punctual present which passes, from one second to the other, unnoticed. Rather, he looks at those ideas and images we make of the past and which provide the horizon against which we anticipate our future. It is these ideas which provide for transitions in the context of continuity, which moderate and control them. Thus, while dissociating himself from Bergson, Mead writes: The picture which Bergson gives of it seems to me to belie both its character in experience and its functional character – the picture of an enormous incessantly accreting accumulation of ‘images’ against which our nervous systems defend us by their selective mechanisms. The present does not carry any such burden with it. It passes into another present with the effects of the past in its textures, not with the burden of its events upon its back. (Mead, 1929, p. 238)

For Mead, the present is not an accumulation of past events which must withstand the pressure; nor can past and present be understood as separated areas between which there are no meaningful connections. Rather, Mead aims at a definition of the relationship between past and present which takes into account both the flowing of time and the time-perceiving consciousness. In this sense, the past informs the present; in other words: it affects it – according to the ideas we make from it. However, according to the method by which Mead works out the concept of memory, ideas of the past can only exist in the present and can only unfold their meaning there: “The past arises with memory. We attach to the backward limit of the present the memory images of what has just taken place. In the same fashion we have images of the words which we are going to speak. We build out at both limits. But the images are in the present” (Mead, 1929, p. 235). And he goes on: “The past as it appears is in terms of representations of various sorts, typically in memory images, which are themselves present.” (Mead, 1929,

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p. 235). It is only through memory that past events can be experienced in the present. Here Mead speaks of memory images which are rooted in the present and, through their respective existence, represent the past. As there is a fundamental difference between past and present, the past can be opened up only by such representations. Thus, the past is per se a construct of the present. For a sociological way of considering memory this position, called presentism, is crucial. As the past appears only in the mode of remembering, it is the present which provides the preconditions for the possibility of a past which is remembered and updated in this sense: without a present with its memory images there would be no past whose construction always happens from “the standpoint of the new problem of today” (Mead, 1929, p. 241). Unlike with Bergson, the past is not self-maintaining but gains its meaning from the present or, as Mead has it, “is aligned with the present” (Mead, 1929, p. 238). However, this is not to say that a present could unfold independently of its preceding past. Rather, one present conditions the next: “That which is novel can emerge, but conditions of the emergence are there. It is this conditioning which is the qualitative character of the past as distinguished from mere passage.” (Mead, 1929, p. 236). Presents do not arbitrarily merge into each other. As the past exists exclusively in the present, as a memory image, the possibilities of forming the past depend on preceding events. In a similar way to his friend and teacher, William James, Mead does not comprehend the transitions within continuity as secluded moments of events but as a flow which is kept running by the past and influences the present. Of course, we may try to convince ourselves that past events did not happen or did not happen in a particular, possibly unpleasant, way. However, to put it more drastically: we will not escape the trace or impression that the past event has left in our consciousness. George Herbert Mead’s considerations on the nature of the past provide a sociological understanding of memory and remembering with a number of connection points. With the figure of the memory image, it becomes obvious that memory cannot be any faithful reconstruction of the past but is an action utterly based on the present. The memory can be no store from which past things could be taken and ‘re-presented’. Memory always happens from the point of view of a changing present and its respective problems – and in this way, to a certain degree, what is remembered changes: once the acute lovesickness is over, the broken relationship appears in quite a different light. Nevertheless, we will never be able to completely delete the memory of the failed relationship as, in a specific way, it has changed us – and inevitably these changes become part of our ideas of the past. We will encounter this presentism, which is so crucial for Mead’s pragmatism, again as a crucial core of the memory-sociological theories discussed in the further course of this book.

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It is typical of the Pragmatist view that it assumes a constructiveness of remembering which can only take place in the present and happens with an interaction between individual and supra-individual entities. In this context, Pragmatism limits itself to linguistic symbols made up of socially shared knowledge. In each current situation, this knowledge provides certain possibilities of orientation for the utility-focused consciousness. These systems of symbols – whether they are concepts, myths or narratives – must be distinguished according to their knowledge-related sustainability. Accordingly, there are fundamental motifs which have survived throughout the history of mankind, and there are more short-lived motifs referring to specific social conditions. In case of many similarities, the memory theories place their emphasis on different aspects of the sustainability, function and ‘materiality’ of social memory stimuli. 5.3

Social Phenomenology

The last theoretician we would like to present in this chapter is Alfred Schütz. Elsewhere we have already mentioned the suggestions provided by social phenomenology for a theory of social memory, of remembering and forgetting, and we would like to expand on these considerations in this section. To what extent may social phenomenology be understood as a pioneer of the sociology of memory, and what is its genuinely sociological contribution to understanding social memory, remembering and forgetting? Our elaborations so far have mostly focused on considerations on the problem of time and the differences between perception, experience and remembering. Let us briefly recapitulate: as phenomenology shows, subjective perception cannot be understood as a tool for the recording and processing of information about the environment which exists from the very beginning and is equal for every human and, thus, objective. Our perception apparatus develops further over the course of continuous experience. ‘Further’ in this context does not mean improvement or refinement but a continuous process of change and adjustment. Each new perception process depends on the circumstances under which it happens, and can only always refer to the currently existing state of the perception apparatus which – immediately after completion – it changes again. In short: our capability of perception is not static but dynamic. The memory function of our perception system, as we have seen in our discussion of phenomenology so far, provides the incoming stimuli with relevance against the background of what has previously been experienced – a process which basically happens pre-predicatively and only in exceptional cases, i.e. in

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the case of conscious remembering, results in the development of a meaningful experience. The main task of memory is selection, happening more or less ‘automatically’ by reaching back to memorized experiences. As experiences are often connected to others or to objects made by them – in short: to a social environment – we may speak of the memory being socially constituted. The last finding in this context was the formulation of a theory of the interaction of perceived information of the environment and of inner associations to different degrees: the relevance theory. This theory helps to understand the selectivity of memory, and since relevance does not ‘fall into our laps’ it is a result of comparing information about the environment and the current state of the perception apparatus; the attribution of relevance is path-dependent. All our previous considerations have been ‘sociological’ insofar as it must be assumed that memory, if it is about analysing human actions and behaviour, is fundamentally subject to a social formation. This formation is rooted in individual experience. However, this again does not only consist of memorising immediate experiences but also of indirectly acquired, highly complex systems of behaviour which have been practiced in the course of social learning and socialisation, by interaction with others. When meeting the son of a good friend and finding that he is ‘truly his father’s son’, apart from the physiognomic similarity he has, it is the complex ways and patterns of behaviour mind which one recognizes. My perception of the boy connects to the selections I have developed from my perceptions of his old man. The theoreticians of social phenomenology, with their attempts to understand the development and preservation of social knowledge, did not stop at these social-theoretical questions – which are nevertheless based on the individual and are, thus, ego-logical. It is obvious to conclude from such a protosociological foundation that the development of past-related knowledge happens in the context of social relations and social structures. We will follow the reflections of Alfred Schütz and Thomas Luckmann on the problem of the social stock of knowledge. For this purpose, we must go further afield, by, firstly, referring to indications in Schütz’s early work, where he does not yet speak of a stock of knowledge. From Schütz’s schema-theoretical considerations it is possible to infer the development of a subjective context of experiences. This concept provides the ego-logic blueprint for the socio-logical concept of, firstly, the subjective and, secondly, the social stock of knowledge. With the stock of knowledge, Schütz and Luckmann offer a very comprehensive interpretation of the development of social meaning, which is why at the end of our considerations we will have to decide if perhaps their concept already covers everything which could be said about social memory, remembering and forgetting.

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5.3.1 Subjective Memory Context As stated by Schütz, understanding the meaning of an action, just as with its probable motivation, one cannot refer to any social space but must take into account the fact that any knowledge has ‘grown’ and any experience is embedded in the horizon of the continuity of the experiencer. Schütz formulates this problem as follows: The experiencing I experiences the events of his/her continuity not as delimited and thus isolated units, although he/she is capable of making them subject to the reflecting view. Rather, each now-experience has a before and after, because necessarily each point of continuity has a past and future. At first this is meant in the same sense in which we speak of the ‘horizons’ of the experience, of the retentions of past events it refers back to and of the protentions of future events it anticipates. (Schütz, 1967, p. 100)

Due to retentional memory and due to prior-memory aimed at future action, the experiences coming from experienced events are interconnected. This interconnection results from the consciousness being capable of looking back (by way of ‘monothetic attention’, as Schütz has it) to many sequential events and relevant connected experiences. Thus, what developed stepwise can in retrospect be understood as one coherent action. To put it in more general terms, our entire experience of the world develops by performing actions which have happened over the course of our continuity and which our consciousness has placed into differently combined contexts of meaning. In this way we are able to separate the interwoven experiences of buying food, cooking and serving in the context of a dinner party from an informal circle of friends. For us, the sequences of events belong to a context of meaning which can be distinguished. With one look consciousness is able to draw on these different contexts of meaning and in this way combine them. Schütz calls this retrospective summarising of all previous outer and inner experiences as a context of experience. It is the “epitome of all contexts of meaning in each now and so” or the “meaning context of a higher order” which keeps growing with every new experience: What has once been experienced […] is predetermined for my consciousness as a readily constituted objectivity whose constitution […] is not even viewed at, as a product about the production of which nobody asks: this way, layer by layer, by the experienced experiences sedimenting to constituted, objective objectivities, there happens the building of experience. (Schütz, 1967, p. 76)

What is remarkable about this consideration is that the consciousness achieves a permanent synthesis which makes manifold experiences appear to belong

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to a meaningful context. What is happening exactly in this context, Schütz explains by returning to the theory of cognitive schemata26 which says that each element of these syntheses sinks down as a subsequently automatic element of experience. In this way, layer by layer, it produces a base forming the foundation for our experience of new events. On the other hand, meaning-communicated symbols are formed via schemata, called types by Schütz. Each experience of an encounter with a tree confronts the ‘tree’ schema with new perceptual contents which are compared to already existent knowledge. Then a decision is made if the perception just recorded a ‘tree’ as something generally known or if the ‘tree’ schema must be extended by another aspect. When we see a bonsai for the first time, many aspects are in line with the cognitive schema of ‘tree’, however the size is different, which is why this schema of experience must be extended by the feature ‘very old tree, artificially kept small’. The extended knowledge does not change the type – ‘tree’ – for Schütz types are symbols of unchanged combinations of features on whose meaning/significance there seems to be agreement. Types only suggest an interpretation consensus, as two people never have exactly the same experiences with one and the same object, as thus the experience schemata of a subject – as ‘my knowledge of trees’ – may be supposed to be different from somebody else’s (‘your knowledge of trees’). However, the assumption connected to type as symbol, that ego will understand what alter is saying, is frequently sufficient for successful everyday communication. It must be added that for making use of the socially classified system of symbols there is no necessity to have experienced everything in person. It may very well be that my knowledge of types has been indirectly appropriated. I know that I should stay away from a roaming lion – even if I have only seen pictures of lions. Although initially Schütz speaks exclusively of experience contexts when describing the preconditions for the subject’s orientation in the world, later he uses the term subjective stock of knowledge. The stock of knowledge provides the individual with orientation in the ‘lifeworld’ – a term Schütz adopts 26

Already, in Chapter 2, we discussed Schütz’s references to this theory. In his first considerations on the question of how knowledge develops he focuses on the concept of (subjective) meaning, starting out from Weber. Already, at an early stage, he recognizes that neither the acting person him/herself nor any observer are fully aware of the motivations to act, as often not even the acting individual knows about his/her complete knowledge (on this see also Bohnsack et al., 2007). A meaningful structure of the (social) world can at first only be oriented towards what can be intersubjectively – that is at the level of symbolic interaction – communicated. Thus, meaning is first of all created for reasons which can be communicatively shared. Only in the course of extending his understanding of knowledge Schütz does also start taking implicit kinds of knowledge into account – still understood as experience-communicated dispositions to act.

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from Edmund Husserl, referring to the entirety of the natural and social world within which and towards which all individuals act.27 The similarity of the subjective experience context and the stock of knowledge becomes obvious from the following statement by Schütz: Each step of my explication and understanding of the world is based at any given time on a stock of previous experience, my own immediate experiences as well as such experiences as are transmitted to me from my fellow-men and above all from my parents, teachers, and so on. All of these communicated and immediate experiences are included in a certain unity having the form of my stock of knowledge, which serves me as the reference schema for the actual step of my explication of the world. All of my experiences in the life-world are brought into relation to this schema, so that the objects and events in the life-world confront me from the outset in their typical character – in general as mountains and stones, trees and animals, more specifically as a ridge, as oaks, birds, fish, and so on. (Schütz & Luckmann, 1973, p. 7)

In concrete terms, the stock of knowledge consists of two aspects. On one hand, it refers to the stock of experiences to be recalled at any moment – and, furthermore, we may add that the entire ‘sedimented’ knowledge belongs to this: that is, knowledge which has become automatic and a matter of course due to being regularly applied, as well as everything being relevant for the organism in the context of pre-conscious ‘perception’ in the form of body knowledge. On the other hand, it describes a cognitive schema of subjectively experiencing all this knowledge. ‘My’ stock of knowledge is closely connected to ‘my’ identity – to a certain degree I am capable of imagining what I know. However, it is clear that the range of this second aspect covers a much more limited stock of knowledge of a person. In memory-theoretical terms, the concept of the subjective stock of knowledge provides a number of insightful hints and connection points to our considerations thus far: this concept makes it obvious that knowledge never exists at the outset but is a result of experiences. Each new experience changes perception and thus the capacity for experience. In this context Schütz uses the image of ‘layering’ one experience upon the other. This is a metaphor which is meant to express that one cannot easily penetrate the lower layers – i.e. the past. The uppermost layer is always the immediate past. One weakness of this image is that it gives the impression that the depositing of one layer of experience on top of the other might result in a store. In this way the change 27

Alfred Schütz and Thomas Luckmann describe the lifeworld as follows: “The life-world is […] a reality which we modify through our acts and which, on the other hand, modifies our actions” (Schütz & Luckmann, 1973, p. 6)

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of the preconditions for perception which results from each new experience is hardly taken into consideration. No experience is connectable to what is already existing to the same degree, which is why this kind of growth would perhaps better be imagined as a tree not growing in every direction but, layer by layer, upwards. Then, however, the present could only be understood as a ‘cut’ through the uppermost layer where it is decided where and in which direction something may grow as a result of ‘experiences’. Thus, it is obvious that nothing comes from nothing – structure is pathdependent. However, as not all paths starting out in the past – or, to use the same metaphor, branches and twigs – grow in the same way, there must be a programme for selectively distinguishing this growth. And like a plant turning towards the light, the structure of the stock of knowledge grows along certain inner reactions to outer events. When assuming situationally conditioned growth, it is obvious that some parts grow higher and some lesser and that for some twigs there is no further growth at all. Consciousness – and this is where we must leave the metaphor – is not even capable of grasping all those parts of its stock of knowledge which are currently growing. Its reflective grasp is very limited and only in rare exceptions capable of comprehending the growth from one point in time to another. For example, the musician takes a lot of care to develop his dexterity with the help of an etude, and in the course of progressing with his/her aspirations and successfully completed exercises he/she forgets about the effort of his/her first attempts. Only the reminiscent access to experiences such as the moment when his/her fingers had become raw from playing provides a very limited access to the history of his/her efforts. This does not happen by moving back towards the trunk along a twig. Rather, it is the conscious connection of one twig – ‘practicing the instrument’ – with quite a different one – ‘the experience of pain’. Let us summarise: the stock of knowledge is the entirety of a currently available repertoire of ways of behaving which has been built out of everything an individual has been experiencing in his/her life so far. This is about memory and oblivion. If we add the adjective ‘subjective’ and, in this way, integrate the consciousness of the individual, we have to deal with the schema of the stock of knowledge – it is that part of knowledge from which an individual may attribute his/her actions with meaning. In this context, it is only about things which are accessible for his/her reflective thought and are labelled as experiences and can thus be remembered. Already the initial considerations Schütz makes on the problem of types and typification provide the first hints at the possibility of applying the figure of the stock of knowledge, not only to the level of the individual but also in view of several individuals within one communicative context. When several

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people start an exchange about their experiences, they make use of a culturallyinfluenced arsenal of linguistic symbols and, thus, types. The development of language as a social institution resulting from its permanent use may, in the same way, be imagined as the development of the individual stock of knowledge and with the help of the metaphor of the tree presented above. Then the tip of each little twig represents the current meaning of a word – the term ‘root word’ itself makes it obvious how close it comes to our metaphor when the linguist asks in which ways certain terms are connected to their origins. As everything being communicatively endowed with meaning can only come from the symbols of language, we might tend to understanding language as social knowledge. Schütz’s earlier considerations in his study on the Phenomenology of the Social World support this conclusion. However, in the course of his later works this idea is decisively extended. The concept of the lifeworld covers more than just that which can be expressed by way of language. If we understand the stock of knowledge as something which includes the entire current repertoire of possible behaviour, everything must be included which may not necessarily be imagined but may practically be done; for example, as a result of habits or physical dispositions. The social stock of knowledge extends the individual’s stock of knowledge and corresponds with the lifeworld28 which includes both that which has not been experienced – as possibilities – and all negations of everything which may be imagined and, thus, any fiction. At best, this comprehensive stock of knowledge could be limited by the help of communication barriers – in the past, these might have been borders between cultures or nations. In a globalized world this level of selectivity is increasingly disappearing. 5.3.2 Social Stock of Knowledge Analogous to the individual stock of knowledge, the social stock of knowledge can be interpreted in memory-theoretical terms. Like the stock of knowledge of the individual, with the help of the tree metaphor it may be understood as fractal growth. Furthermore, it shows two aspects: it represents the entirety of knowledge whose growth in time is subject to certain regularities. This structure may be imagined in terms of path-dependency and of relevancecommunicated selectivity. As a ‘tree’ it is only a product of its memory and 28

It is due to the action-theoretical approach of Schütz’s phenomenology that here the whole can no longer be the sum of its parts. Rather, the social stock of knowledge is constituted by all dispositions of behavior which are available for a society. This means that this arsenal is slightly reduced by just one individual dying. The world knows only as much as all individuals living on it are, in principle, capable of knowing.

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should not be equated with the latter. At the same time, it may be discussed and (scientifically) analysed as social knowledge, in the course of which only tiny sub-parts can be viewed. Individuals or groups may attempt to remember the origins of their knowledge by reaching back to concrete experiences and types, and again the result of this remembering can be classified and forms its own ‘twig’ of the social stock of knowledge. Just like the individual stock of knowledge, the social one also does not grow consistently at all. As a result of manifold adjustment processes, explicit and implicit knowledge develops first of all where the lifeworld – according to Husserl’s terminology – provides problematic possibilities. But even, in view of such adjustment attempts, if social groups oblige themselves to document or try to organise a common memory in the form of classifications, in the course of events most things will be forgotten. Layer by layer, one collective experience is followed by the next one; even collectives organise themselves in the present. Then, looking at the past is only possible if one starts digging like an archaeologist. If artefacts are found in the ground, there is a reason for communication. In the present we try to figure out what must have been in the past by way of referring to experiences. Now, if we ask if the concept of the social stock of knowledge covers everything which can be expressed by the concept of memory, the answer is clearly ‘no’. (Social) memory does not describe any kind of ‘grown’ stock of knowledge and not any kind of store, but the entire repertoire of currently available types of behaviour. The concept of social memory refers to the organisational principles of such a repertoire, which we have described with the logic of path-dependency, relevance and selectivity. Furthermore, memory cannot be equated with knowledge. The assumption that oblivion processes clear our knowledge is inadequate. At best, our knowledge of forgetting processes makes us organise remembering – the way in which oblivion is judged is only marginally relevant. But the cultivation of memory indicates something else: it shows that, in the long run, the selectivity of path-dependent progress can, in very small parts, be intentionally controlled. Then, however, what continues to grow is less of a certain branch of the individual or collective experience of events but rather a new, small branch of the meaning or experience of reflecting on this event. 5.4

Summary: Three Pillars of the Sociology of Memory

In this chapter we have been dealing with three classical sociological perspectives which may be considered to have been ‘pioneering’ for the sociology of memory. From different points of view, the French Durkheim school,

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US-American Pragmatism and German social phenomenology dealt with the field of social memory, remembering and oblivion. Whereas Émile Durkheim and Maurice Halbwachs support a ‘strong’ concept of society and demonstrate how individual memory is influenced by society and dependent on social reference frames such as space, time, language and social groups, the other two perspectives instead move individual action and individual consciousness to the foreground. In this context, American Pragmatism has proven to be an approach which is less interested in concise and stringent conceptual and theoretical work, but rather in practical and true-to-life reflections on both problem-related and creative reminiscence by individuals who are embedded in symbolic environments and are provided with a variety of social references. Social phenomenology, on the other hand, approaches the issue of social memory by way of the concept of the stock of knowledge and is an extrapolation of basic ego-logically imagined assumptions. These ‘traditions’ are found again in current sociological memory research, which we will discuss in the following two chapters. In doing so, we distinguish social-theoretical approaches from perspectives which can instead be understood as considerations – in terms of a diagnosis of our time – on the ‘modernity’ of social memory. We would like to start by discussing crucial social-theoretical approaches referring – implicitly or explicitly – to the topic of memory.

Chapter 6

Social Theories of Memory With the previous chapter having focused on older sociological theories which could be considered to have been pioneering for a sociological theory of memory, in the following section we are going to focus on more recent social theories. In doing so, our choice is limited to theoretical perspectives attempting to grasp the problem of referring to the past. Sometimes this is done by using terms such as memory, remembering or forgetting; it is rather the rule that conceptual equivalents are identified or, in case of the respective concepts, memory functions are simply assumed. In this way, on the one hand we bring together and examine the few current cases which make use of the terminology of memory while, on the other hand, pointing out the fact that sociological theory has obviously nearly forgotten the topic of memory for quite some time. For all theories it is true that – implicitly or explicitly – they have a memory-theoretical potential. That is to say that a memory-terminological and memory-theoretical completion of the architecture of their theories may lead to new questions and answers. All currently discussed theories of the multi-paradigmatic subject of sociology cannot be discussed here, bearing in mind that hardly any theory of social order can do without a more or less explicit reference to the past. Furthermore, some of the social-scientific theories making use of the concept of memory are not taken into consideration because they do not provide any substantial contribution to clarifying the way in which social orders refer to the past. An example of this is work from the field of utilitarian management research, where the costs of organizational oblivion are calculated. The main indicator of such a kind of oblivion is the loss of knowledge due to staff fluctuation – in whichever way it may be operationalized (see David & Brachet, 2011). Our choice of theories refers to the three main lines of sociological theory formation. In the field of structural theories, firstly we are going to discuss structural functionalism according to Talcott Parsons, which will then shed light on the incomplete sociology of memory in the theory of social systems according to Niklas Luhmann.

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Structural and Differentiation Theories

In this section we are going to deal with sociological theories on structure and differentiation, enquiring into the concepts of memory integrated there. Terms such as structure and differentiation indicate temporality, and the concept of structure implies that a pattern is continuous, that is to say: long-term. In the case of patterns of social organisation or orientation it becomes obvious that here we have got to deal with an equivalent of memory. Any social structure includes aspects of the past affecting the present and which prove to be so worthy of being preserved – because of being functional – that they will be kept in the future. A sociological theory of structures must be capable of explaining the ways in which structures are reproduced as well as about the reasons for which this is done. The situation is similar with the term differentiation: being a chronological process, differentiation always happens on the basis of something which has been before and cannot be imagined without reference to the past. However, differentiation does not only presuppose memory but is itself a basic condition for social memories. In the following we are going to have a closer look at two theoretical sociological perspectives which may be filed under structural and differentiation theories: structural functionalism, according to Talcott Parsons, and the theory of autopoietic social systems as developed by Niklas Luhmann. Within the context of a debate focusing on memory, Émile Durkheim must be considered a predecessor of Parsons’s structural functionalism, whereas systems theory takes up both phenomenological and cybernetic considerations. Both theories are extremely complex and presuppositional as social theories, so that we will limit ourselves to those aspects relevant for discussing memory-theoretical motifs. 6.1.1 Pattern Maintenance as Function The theoretical perspective of structural functionalism, which, between the 1940s and 1960s, was predominant within sociology in the Western world, is closely associated with the name of Talcott Parsons (1902-1979). Parsons’s interest focuses on action systems and the question, raised by Thomas Hobbes, of how social order is possible. Although the concept of social memory does not play a particular role in Parsons’s writings, they provide a number of hints at the nature of memory in social structures. In his study, The Structure of Social Action, published in 1937, Parsons works out an action-theoretical solution for the problem of social order. In doing so, in two respects he distinguishes himself from the prevailing action theories of his time: on the one hand, it is not sufficient for a sociological analysis of

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actions to distinguish only between the means available to the agent and the goals or purpose to the action. The ways in which goals are pursued and the means for achieving them depends on given situational aspects which cannot be influenced by acting persons, such as the available infrastructure, the presence of others, or the season, as well as the values and norms towards which the actors are oriented according to each situation. When Parsons speaks of an action system in this sense he attempts to analytically grasp an action frame of reference. This concept is not meant to provide a realistic depiction of social reality but only serves for naming those elements which are necessary for the sociological analysis of an action. Apart from actors and their goals, he considers the situation as well as the norms and values playing a role in the situational choice of means and for setting the goal. On the other hand, Parsons – in contrast to, Max Weber, for instance – does not refer to different patterns of rationalisation of acting which are obtained from the ego-logical point of view of an acting individual. Rather, for him the focus is rather on the question of what constitutes “the unity of action system” (Parsons, 1937, p.  43) and in which ways the act of acting itself, which always includes several interrelated persons, becomes possible at all. To find an answer to this question, Parsons uses a theoretical- historical approach and brings together the seemingly varied approaches of Max Weber, Émile Durkheim, Vilfredo Pareto and Alfred Marshall. His thesis is that, despite their epistemological and ideological differences, the works of these authors converge on a voluntaristic theory of action.1 According to this theory, acting is not predominantly determined by rational motives but results from the effect of norms and values from which individuals derive orientation for their actions. Crucial in this context is the aspect of voluntariness: “The structure of acting […] does neither develop automatically nor because of the workings of superior authorities. Instead we must assume, as concerns actors, that they deliberately approve with the structure which is itself created by way of internalising norms and values in the course of socialisation” (Bonß et  al., 2013, p.  76). Parsons opposes both utilitarian theories, which assume that social order is a side-effect of the utility-maximising actions of individuals, and against positions which believe social order to be possible only if superior entities such as

1 In sociology, this basic assumption of Parsons’s action theory is accordingly called the convergence thesis. In the strictest sense, however, the concept of the convergence thesis would have to be completed or even replaced by the concept of an emergence thesis, as Parsons does not at all assume that these four authors intentionally aim at a shared voluntaristic action theory (see Parsons, 1937, Part II & III).

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the state enforce it.2 At the same time, this is where Émile Durkheim’s influence becomes clearly obvious, as he also identifies socialisation as a crucial mechanism for tying the individual to the beliefs and ways of thinking of the collective. By voluntarily (that is: in the voluntaristic sense) referring to existing norms and values, individuals ultimately act in the interest of the community and contribute to maintaining the system. This idea is relevant for the sociology of memory because, according to the structural-functionalist model of acting, actors may draw on symbolic orders which are designed in perpetuity and are important for both the situational formulation of action goals and the relevant choice of suitable means to achieve envisaged goals (selection). However, the concept of the action frame of reference, which Parsons sketches in the final part of The Structure of Social Action, does not provide any answer to the question in which ways this function of structural consolidation and selection in the context of action systems is carried out. Parsons solves this problem at a later stage, in The Social System of 1951, by presenting the four-function scheme3 as a system function exclusively fulfilling the task of maintaining system-relevant structures. Just like the action frame of reference, the so-called AGIL scheme serves a purely analytical purpose: the sociologist is supposed to be provided with a tool with which it is possible to analyse and compare systems of any kind (action systems, cultural systems, political system, social systems etc.).4 In this context it is important to see that Parsons does not assume – as Luhmann did later (see Luhmann, 1995b, p. 12) – that systems are real. Rather, Parsons’s system concept is a sociological abstraction which is supposed to make the complexity of social reality observable among a limited choice of basic assumptions. Accordingly, the AGIL scheme should be understood as a tool of sociological observation, as a methodological concept and not as an attempt of conceptually adapting social reality.5 Each letter of the scheme represents a function which must be fulfilled 2 Fundamental for the latter position are Thomas Hobbes’s philosophical and politicalphilosophical considerations as published in Leviathan or the Matter, Form and Power of a Commonwealth Ecclesiastical and Civil in 1651. Concerning utilitarianism, Jeremy Bentham’s An Introduction to the Principles of Morals and Legislation of 1789 and John Stuart Mills’s Utilitarianism of 1863 are crucial classical texts. 3 The scheme is concisely presented in Parsons (1971, p. 20). 4 Talcott Parsons’s theory is, thus, frequently called a “theory for all cases” (Korte, 1992). However, this is also true for other theories and their self-descriptions – such as Niklas Luhmann’s systems theory which will be discussed later – so that this is no feature exclusively characterizing structural functionalism. 5 Accordingly, Wolfgang Ludwig Schneider calls the AGIL scheme an “analytical search scheme” (Schneider, 2002, p. 148).

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to maintain a system in the long run.6 The A-function refers to the adaptation of the system to changing conditions of the environment. In the context of the action system it is the behavioural system which takes over this function, by providing those biologically grounded ways of behaviour necessary for the successful execution of action. The G-function (goal attainment) is in charge of formulating and defining action goals. In the context of action systems, this is done by the personality system, by both supplying motivations for action and, also assessing if the course of action and goal attainment are satisfying against the background of the needs the action is based on. The  I-function (integration) makes sure that the elements a system consists of are meaningfully related to each other and that new elements are smoothly integrated. As action systems are characterized by interaction, the social system provides actors with different roles which are taken up to coordinate actions and the expectations of actions. Finally, the task of the L-function (latency or latent pattern maintenance), which we want to examine in more detail at this point, is to take care of the maintenance of basic structures. With action systems, the cultural system is in charge of providing the values, norms and symbolized codes necessary for action. Only if individuals derive their action-orientations from a shared canon of values and stick to appropriate “conventions of the use of symbols” (Schneider, 2002, p. 114), can actions be mutually realized. The concept of a value-maintaining cultural system is reminiscent of Durkheim’s idea of collective consciousness which we have interpreted above as social memory. As a matter of fact, there are some common grounds: Parsons as well as Durkheim focusing on the individual’s attachment to the values and norms of the collective and the problem of maintaining the social community; furthermore, both emphasize the role of socialisation and education for rooting values in the individual. Also, Parsons shares with the Durkheim school the understanding that things in the past can be understood and analysed only in view of their functions in the present. At this point, however, differences in the theoretical approach become apparent: whereas for Émile Durkheim and particularly Maurice Halbwachs the function of recalling the past means mostly maintaining the identity of groups and collectives over time, in Parsons this motivation is found, in a generalized way, as the function of the structural maintenance of systems. Which structures he refers to exactly is not determined beforehand and depends on the context of the system analysed. In other words: any social system faces the problem of maintaining its structures 6 Also, it is important to see that a systems function need not be appropriate to any specific field of the phenomenon under analysis. Rather, the concept of function directs our view at specific aspects taking over certain tasks.

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over time and of gaining guiding principles from the past according to which one may proceed in future situations. The L-function may be understood as a function of systems which provides system-relevant structural aspects and selection patterns with stability. However, this function can be further systematized and differentiated by way of relating individual system functions to each other with the help of the AGIL system. Accordingly, the cultural system is connected to the personality system by the action system (G-function), the social system (I-function) and the behavioural system (A-function). The function of the cultural system for the personality system is to provide “internalized need-dispositions” (Schneider, 2002, p. 150) with legitimacy for social life. To ensure that the almost immeasurable motivations and goals of action are derived from a shared canon of values, the cultural system is inscribed into the personality systems of actors by the use of socialisation processes. Thus, the actor can comprehend the actions of others even if they are based on values which are not in line with his/her own value references. For the action system this means that the resulting conflicts can, in principle, be solved; the further existence of the system is not endangered by different value references. Concerning the social system, the cultural system supports the definition and choice of socially-preferred ways of behaviour which are considered ‘normal’, by bestowing legitimacy on the social roles assumed by actors for their actions. The consequence for the individual actor is that he/she may not only assume that they act legitimately in the context of his/her respective social role but also that this legitimacy is indeed recognized and answered by appropriate role behaviour by his/her counterpart. The cultural system immediately affects the integration function of the action system and, by way of the social system, it contributes to maintaining general system structures. Finally, the cultural system shapes the behavioural system, by influencing and shaping the body memories of actors. By body memory, in the context of Parsons’s structural functionalism we mean the “entirety of learned cultural techniques such as linguistic competence, logical thinking, emotional attachment capabilities, the capability of taking over roles, as well as basic technical skills” (Miebach, 2010, p. 221). All these cultural techniques, inscribed into the body, are a basic prerequisites for action. Ways of behaviour are the result of biological structures; however, they cannot be reduced to them. Rather, they are a result of the interplay of biological possibilities and cultural formation processes to which the actor is subjected throughout his life. Which ways of behaviour are functional for action systems and, in concrete situations, contribute to achieving the action’s goal depends, in the end, on which culture-specific values are reflected by them. For us it is important that, with the memory-sociological processes of habitualising and

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learning, the cultural system is fundamental for the adjustment performance of the action system. Thus, the function of the cultural system affects several fundamental aspects of the system of action. Only in this way it is able to make sure that the general structure of the action system is “stabilized against deviance” (Schneider, 2002, p. 150) and made permanent. There is much to be said for understanding the cultural system as a social memory of the system of action, which is relevant for all its sub-functions under the aspect of storing and selecting things of the past. Behind this there is the insight that “from a structural-functionalist point of view things past, which are available by way of cultural patterns and systems of symbols, […] [are] integral elements of social actions” (Sebald et al., 2013, p. 14). However, to have things in the past available in perpetuity the cultural system itself must become immune against the passing of time. Were the values stored by the cultural system subject to constant change, neither action systems nor societies and actors could refer to any continuous and coherent foundation of their existence. The cultural system must thus take care that the values it comprises “are, in a way, of a timeless nature, allowing a culture to survive the action systems, societies and persons it rests on” (Schmitt, 2009, p. 97).7 The social memory of ‘culture’ guarantees continuity for the systems which, under the aspect of structural maintenance, draw on it, while at the same time equipping itself with an independence from time. The latter requires that its contents are passed on. This model can be used, for example, to explain why certain values that are considered essential show such a high degree of stability over human history. For our discussion of sociological theories of social memory, Parsons’s structural functionalism has a kind of hinge function, as on the one hand it takes up motifs from the Durkheim school and develops them further and on the other provides decisive stimulations for Niklas Luhmann’s systems theory. As we have seen, Parsons, in common with Durkheim – whom he already extensively appreciates in his first greater publication (see Parsons, 1937) – focuses on issues of maintaining social entities, the value orientation of human behaviour and the integration of individual and society. Although it offers a number of differentiations when compared to the collective memory of the Durkheim school, the memory concept we have identified with Parsons’s model of the cultural system fits into this theoretical tradition. The theory of autopoietic social systems, however, which we are now going to discuss, is different from Parsons’s structural functionalism primarily by two points: on the one hand, 7 See also the analyses on the connection between historical consciousness and collective memory in Jiří Šubrt and Štěpánka Pfeiferová (2013) who also apply the AGIL scheme.

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for Luhmann there is no canon of values existing right from the outset and with which a society could be integrated. Instead, he deals with the issue of maintenance and thus of memory as a question of the self-creation of social systems. On the other hand, for Luhmann the social memory does not belong to a system field explicitly serving analytical purposes – the L-function – but is, in a way, across all operations within a social system, by continuously accompanying and evaluating them. 6.1.2 System Memories Since the 1980s the theory of autopoietic systems, Niklas Luhmann (1927-1998) being its most important representative, has been dealing explicitly with the concept of memory. Thus, from a sociological point of view, Luhmann is one of the first who, in recent times, included the concept of memory into theory. As we will see later, this happens on the one hand to make plausible why social entities continue over time, and on the other hand to solve the problem of how social systems (and not individuals) distinguish what is known from what is new in a complex world. Since in the following we are going to deal with a memory concept which is deeply rooted into the demanding architecture of sociological systems theory, it seems necessary to briefly recapitulate its basic features. Then we are going to deal more closely with Niklas Luhmann’s considerations on social memory and the relevant systems-theoretical positions. a) Basic features of a systems-theoretical sociology of memory: in contrast to other theoretical perspectives of sociology, systems theory is not about acting individuals or groups but about the structures of their communication relationships. At first sight, this results in a strange looking theoretical decision: systems theory deals exclusively with social systems (communications systems) while distinguishing psychological systems (consciousness) and biological systems (body). Psychological and biological systems are indeed necessary preconditions for social systems (without body and consciousness, an individual is incapable of participating in communication), but they are not part of them and not the object of sociological observation. Neither body nor consciousness can per se be grasped by sociology, but only in the way in which they are communicated. For the sociology of memory this explicit separation of social and psychic systems has far-reaching consequences as, according to this reading, the memories of individuals cannot be part of a social memory. What this actually means can be demonstrated by Elena Esposito’s criticism of Maurice Halbwachs’s concept of collective memory. Systems theory objects that

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an incomplete separation of the psychic and the social which can be observed with his theory [makes] Halbwachs constantly mention the relation between the two fields […]. For if the social is more or less derived from the psychic, this has most of all the strange consequence that the complete autonomy of the field of the individual is not recognized, which is why one is constantly forced to confirm it anew. (Esposito, 2002, p. 15, fn 7)

With Halbwachs’s theory Esposito identifies the parallel existence of individual and collective memory: on the one hand, individual remembering is made dependent on the collective and the social memory frame, on the other hand it is precisely individuals that are said to be the bearers of collective memories. For a theory which aims to separate social from psychic systems this is a problem, as it remains unclear in which ways exactly the individual (psychic) and the collective (social) memory are different from each other and how they cooperate with remembering and forgetting. In systems theory, social and psychic memories are considered independent realities which are indeed connected to the practice of remembering and forgetting, but whose workings are inscrutable for each other: what is happening in the mind of the individual may have consequences for communication within the system, but the dynamics of social communication processes cannot be described or explained by reaching back to the psychic. Esposito’s conclusion, which may be generalized for dealing with memory in terms of systems theory, is as follows: Thus, the attempt to formulate a theory of memory in the context of a theory of a social theory includes that a memory must be dealt with which belongs to communication and its links and which is clearly different from the memories of individuals. Only taking care that both kinds of memory will be distinguished from each other allows for focusing the analysis also on their mutual influencing. (Esposito, 2002, p. 17)

From a systems-theoretical point of view, communication-based social memories stand out from the psychic reality of individual memories and must be considered separately. Still, this does not tell us anything about memory. Social memories play a role in systems theory where it is about the separation and continuation of social systems. First of all, it is important to see that, according to systems theory, the structure of social systems is not given immediately but must be created with the practice of social communication. Social systems are self-creating, through successive communicative events; this is what Niklas Luhmann called autopoiesis (see Luhmann, 1995b). The concept of the event

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makes it clear that communication can only connect to communication in the present. Thus, systems theory thinks of society, in a radical way, as the society of the present.8 The same holds for interaction systems and organisations, which must also take into account that the communicative events of which they are composed inevitably disappear, together with their becoming. What has been said (and that something has been said) may be remembered by the individual consciousness, however in the communication situation what has been said is long gone – and this is precisely why it must be meaningfully connected to communication, to make sure that the system will be continued. For interaction systems which are not of a long-term nature this may not be really problematic – as soon as meaningful communication is no longer possible, the social system of ‘interaction’ comes to its end and the interaction partners will move on. If, however, we imagine higher-level social systems such as politics, economy or education, the problem of persistence in time becomes weightier. Social systems must thus be capable of somehow remembering communications, otherwise the system-specific approach to communication would be interrupted and the system could no longer be identified over time. This include the fact that they must be capable of recognizing which communications have novelty value and which not. Social systems choose one topic from a variety of possible communications, thus reducing the hardly comprehensible complexity of all possible topics and related communications. If, for example, several people communicate about the weather, within the developing social system it is, in passing, ruled out that it is about football, yesterday evening or next week’s tasks. Due to its topic, the weather-centred social system distinguishes itself from other systems of social interaction and in this way untangles a world which, at first, is completely confusing, due to its endless possibilities. However, recognizing and distinguishing the familiar among the variety of current communications requires a memory which, in a way, pre-selects the communication of the system. Only if the arbitrariness of the world is successfully reduced to its essential aspects, can communications be recognized as being similar. These preliminary considerations pave the way for a theory of memory which deals exclusively with connecting communication to communication, with the necessary preconditions and the resulting consequences.9 In this way, 8 The concept of present-day society (Gegenwartsgesellschaft) is particularly in the foreground in the systems- and practice-theoretical studies of Armin Nassehi (2003; 2011). 9 Overviews and discussions of a genuinely systems-theoretical interpretation of the concept of memory are to be found in Oliver Dimbath (2011b), Mirjam-Kerstin Holl (2003), Marco Schmitt (2009) and Rainer Schützeichel (2002).

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the theory of social systems initially stands out clearly from all other sociological theories of memory which have been presented so far – these theories have always individual memory built into their theory, or at least they have not explicitly excluded it. Accordingly, systems-theoretical works on memory do not give any hint at how individual memories work and in which ways they participate in social (systems) memories. Nevertheless, systems theory makes substantial use of insights gained in the context of the psychological, philosophical and sociological debates on individual memory. Furthermore, presentism, which characterises sociological memory research, is deeply inscribed into its theoretical architecture. For a first step, we are now going to turn to Niklas Luhmann’s concept of memory, before starting to discuss contributions which have further developed and systematized Luhmann’s considerations. b) The memories of autopoietic social systems in Niklas Luhmann: His early death prevented Niklas Luhmann from completing his systems-theoretical conception of social memories. From his arguments we may conclude that memory is considerably significant for systems theory, as it is immediately connected to the self-creation and maintenance of social systems. However, in his lifetime he did not succeed with publishing any volume which, in an analogy with other monographs by Luhmann, might have had the title “The Memory of Society”. Instead, in Luhmann’s literary remains we find two essays in which he deals with the issue of social memories in more detail, and one year before his death he published his main work, The Society of Society, where he brings his reflections together in one chapter on memory. In these writings, to which we are going to refer, a memory of functionally differentiated societies is sketched which centres around communication processes, and which is valid for any social system. In this context, Luhmann, on the one hand, orients himself towards Husserl’s philosophy, on the other he takes up neuroscientific concepts of memory which follow the tradition of radical constructivism – and here, in particular, the tradition of the works by Heinz von Foerster.10 In his essay Zeit und Gedächtnis [Time and Memory] Luhmann (1996) develops the idea that the memories of social systems are a device for assessing the system’s ongoing communication for repetitions of known information or for providing new information. In the introduction to this section we have already addressed the reason for this function of memory: inevitably, communicative events disappear again and must thus be observed in real time and classified in terms of their information content. This task, however, can only be fulfilled 10

Here the essay Was ist Gedächtnis, dass es Vorschau und Rückschau ermöglicht? [What is memory and how does it enable outlook and refection?] (Foerster, 1996) must be particularly mentioned.

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in the background, as any explicit communication about the information content of any kind of communication would be endless – the social system would simply be overtaxed and thus block itself. In this sense, the memories of social systems are implicit memories and are inscribed into the system’s communicative operations. By unobservedly and continuously distinguishing all communicative events according to the known/new-pattern, it assesses them for being consistent with the idea of reality construed by the system. In this way it is guaranteed that only connectable communications are processed within the system. Thus, the memory of the social system decides, “on the occasion of conspicuities (which become conspicuous only by its own schemata), if that which has been noticed shall be counted as being in accordance with the situation or if it shall be changed into a new schema which is available for recognizing similar facts” (Luhmann, 1996, p.  313). The term schema, borrowed from cybernetics and psychology, is used by Luhmann to plausibilize the impressions of events into the structure of the system. As with the consciousness of the individual, in social systems there also develop schemata whose task it is, in this case, to prevent an overload of the system’s communication. The result is a highly selective way of remembering, referring to that what is repeatedly needed. Luhmann sees that the continuous repetition of what has been repeated “may result in increasing social or ecological maladjustment. By favouring and repeating certain condensates of meaning, the memory commits itself to a certain character” (Luhmann, 1995a, p. 46). This character is functional in so far as it is guaranteed that “from its environment the system can be observed and treated as being identical, which then again confirms the practiced ways” (Luhmann, 1995a, p. 46). The identity of a social system is closely connected to the schemata developing in the course of communicative practice and to which its memory has access. Taken by themselves, however, schemata are incapable of remembering the past. Instead, they provide an aid to the system’s memory, by creating the impression of something familiar in new situations. Only in this way does the selective memory of something irretrievably past become possible. Elsewhere – in his essay Kultur als historischer Begriff (Culture as a Historical Concept) – Luhmann attributes the function of distinguishing between forgetting and remembering to memory (see Luhmann, 1995a). To reserve capacities of information processing for the ongoing communication, system memory must prevent the development of impressions which might unintendedly change the system’s structure and might interrupt the running communication. Only those operations leave their marks with the social system which adapt to its autopoiesis and contribute to adjusting to changing environmental

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conditions – which, in the true sense of the word, means an adjustment of the system to itself. Memory is structurally compelled to forget constantly, to be provided with capacities for collecting new information, for complete remembering would, in the shortest possible span of time, result in complete self-blockade. However, in exceptional cases this repression performance may be inhibited if, for external or internal reasons, it seems obvious to condense identities and to call them up when needed. Thus, remembering is a reflective performance, is the repression of repression, for only this way the system can be kept running. (Luhmann, 1995a, pp. 45-46).11

The schema- or identity-based distinction between the new and the familiar resonates here, but now Luhmann directs our attention more strongly to the role and functionality of forgetting. According to a reading of systems theory, forgetting is the rule and remembering the exception. It is important in this context that both phenomena cannot be understood as two sides of a coin and thus as opposites. Rather, in terms of systems theory, what creates the unity of memory is the difference between remembering and forgetting. In other words: each remembering is necessarily accompanied by forgetting, as only certain and also only very few aspects of a previous event are reconstructed, others are ignored – that is: forgotten – on the other hand. Elena Esposito, who refers to this aspect of Luhmann’s memory theory, puts this connection as follows: After all, the memory is rather in charge of the loss of contents instead of remembering. The memory is not shaped by the identity of remembering but by the difference remembering/forgetting. Precisely because the memory condensates that what is supposed to be kept stable (and is thus remembered), it allows for forgetting everything else; and it is precisely the capability of forgetting which allows a system to develop the capability of recognizing something new and of taking it into account. Or, to have it in other words: without the capability of forgetting, a hypothetical system lacking the capability of abstraction or generalisation (which happens only if one is capable of neglecting or indeed forgetting details) falls victim to what is happening momentarily. (Esposito, 2002, pp. 27-28)

11

Wolfgang L. Schneider performs a continuation of the bringing culture and social memory together, by sketching a “general mechanism”: “Inconsistencies between ego’s normality expectations and alter’s communicative behavior are registered as deviation (without any obvious reason, individuals are ‘impolite’, talk back unexpectedly or hedge in the course of a discussion), thus creating the need of an explanation which is suitable for secondarily reshaping these deviations into normality expectations” (Schneider, 2011, p. 434).

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In systems theory, forgetting is not the loss of something past but the regular appearance of the prevention of lasting impressions within the system’s world.12 Here we can state that social systems are continuously forced, on the one hand, to reduce (or forget) the manifoldness of possible communications, and on the other to observe realized communications according to the new/ familiar pattern, to take care that communication can still connect to communication. A simple thought experiment makes the consequences of this argument obvious: if everything was new, the social system would be hopelessly overtaxed and would collapse under the hailstorm of information. We just need to imagine that, when talking about the weather, we would at first achieve an understanding about what weather means in this concrete case, about the meaning of the phenomena connected to it, about the meaning of talking about meaning at all and so on. Here, with communication it would neither be possible to build a system nor to create order. On the other hand, if everything was familiar – in other words: if we were able to look into each other’s minds – the system would also collapse, or it would not develop at all, as there would be no reason to communicate. This would be the case if, for example, we were living in a society of telepaths – then there was simply nothing to be said, as we would already know what we were going to say to each other (also about the weather). Luhmann conceptualises the memory of the system as a by-product of the continuous self-creation of social systems: Forming and making use of a memory is not the particular capability of a certain system; rather it is a by-product of the basic autopoietic way of operating reproducing the system; and that is a by-product the system becomes dependent on as soon as it temporalizes its operations, that is it produces them as events which at the moment of their appearance will disappear again. Thus, the by-product of memory must make use of the way in which the system operates, in the case of social systems it must thus be realized as communication and is thus used and reproduced only in the respectively current present. (Luhmann, 1995a, p. 44)

This understanding does not only mean a radical break with everyday language which equates memory with a remembering consciousness or with an archive. Concerning the theories of Émile Durkheim and Maurice Halbwachs, to which the memory research of the social sciences and cultural studies basically refer, there are significant differences. Neither does Systems theory have an interest 12

A more detailed analysis of systems-theoretical motifs of forgetting is presented by Oliver Dimbath (2011b).

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in collectives performing rituals, to once again remind every member of the group to the past, nor, according to its understanding, does the social memory rest on social frames which are capable of creating individual memories or identities. Rather, systems theory has its focus in any social system – no matter if it is an interaction system, an organisation or a functional system of society such as politics, economy, religion, art, sports or education – which is provided with a memory which observes and assesses the system’s running communication independently of the individuals participating in it (or, to have it more precisely: psychological and biological systems). For a systems-theoretical understanding of memory, the concepts of the collective and the individual are neither necessary nor useful.13 Following Luhmann, this comparably abstract way of understanding memory can be illustrated with the example of organisations. Organisations are social systems which are, by way of mutually excluding decisions, autopoietically reproduced. They develop social memories whose task it is to decide which organisational decisions shall be remembered and which shall be forgotten. Remembered is only that which, as a premise for decision-making, is of significance for further decision-making. It is not remembered why, in a specific situation, this or that decision has been made and which, perhaps lengthy, discussions were connected to it. Of significance are the situations resulting from that decision-making, which are documented in order to check their usefulness in case of new problems which must be decided, by those authorities or individuals who made these decisions. Many organisational routines evade the reflective access, as seemingly they happen intuitively or automatically. Only certain decisions, which are often connected to hierarchies, are kept as premises, which is why what is remembered as authoritative control is usually provided with an index of rule. Forgetting, which is the usual case, results in unleashing capacities of the organisation (Luhmann, 2000); this includes that uncertainties connected to each decision-making are forgotten, just like the many decisions by contributors or lower levels. While the written word is highly relevant for bureaucratic organisations, it can not be equated with memory. Instead Luhmann points out that writing is a physical substrate of memory which itself decides about what is remembered and what is forgotten. Files and card indexes, for example, organise remembering and forgetting at the same time (see Cevolini, 2014). Each new reading may motivate both conformity and deviation.

13

We may put it like this: systems theory is not about individuals “who remember to belong” (Assmann, 1995) but about systems which forget for the purpose of staying operational.

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c) Connections to the systems-theoretical sociology of memory: Niklas Luhmann’s memory-theoretical reflections have been included in some works which are of significance for a sociology of memory. Usually these continuations consist of conceptual-theoretical specifications – only the study by Elena Esposito, at which we will have a closer look in Chapter 7, due to its strong modernisation-theoretical reference, may be considered a significant innovation for the systems-theoretical sociology of memory. Among the clarifications of memory-specific concepts in the context of systems theory is the study by Dirk Baecker who formalises the issue of memory by drawing on the laws of form of mathematician George Spencer-Brown, which were also adopted by Luhmann.14 Another substantiation of the memory aspect of the theoretical architecture is presented by Thomas Khurana. In the context of a study inspired by differentiation-theoretical figures, he deals with the connection of meaning and memory15 – a connection we have already encountered several times and on which we are now going to shed more light. Khurana starts out from two assumptions: on the one hand he bases his elaborations on the observation that meaning considerably comes from the past. Meaning develops where one reaches back to things past, to give reasons to action. On the other hand, any meaningful event happens in time and must thus be understood as being fundamentally timely. We have encountered this point above, as an essential motif of systems theory: communicative events disappear immediately after happening, and in a social system they must continuously connect to each other. What is meant by meaningful can now be grasped in more detail, for something is provided with meaning only “if it functions as a differentiated, referring aspect – and it does so as an element of a chronological connection context” (Khurana, 2007, p. 32). As long as one event does not distinguish itself from other events and does not connect to other events, it cannot have any meaning. Meaning exists only in reference to other things, and to have it in Luhmann’s words, “Meaning implies that everything currently indicated connotes and captures reference to other possibilities” (Luhmann, 2012, p.  20). Meaning covers the currently happening event and the current reality as well as the many unrealized, impossible and potential future possibilities to connect which are inherent in any event (see Luhmann, 1995b, p. 59). By the concept of meaning, to ‘make sense’ these different levels are both brought together and distinguished from each other. The meaningful 14 15

Here we are going to be satisfied with this hint and will not further discuss Spencer-Brown’s formal calculations on the issue of observation or the observer, which include a memory function, among others (see Baecker, 2013). As is the title of his study of 2007.

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operation of a social system requires a memory contributing to the operating of the system and having a selective effect. In view of the concept of meaning, by memory Khurana means “the basic form of the chronological synthesis of meaning which is structurally of a social nature” (Khurana, 2007, p. 12). His systems-theoretically inspired concept of memory is not oriented towards storage metaphors but along the lines of a chronologically communicated relationship structure. Memory does not consist of specific operations aimed at the past; but it is rather observed with all kinds of operations connected to meaning (see Khurana, 2007, p.  13). However, Khurana has no intention to unfold any kind of phenomenology or taxonomy of memory or of ways of remembering. He is interested in how, in the course of reaching back to the past, “not only a world is reflected on which is independent of practice, is characterized by the passing of time and is thus in any present related to the past, but rather in how the temporality of meaningful practices and their elements themselves are exposed” (Khurana, 2007, p. 179). After all, the objective of his philosophical elaborations, which are a systematic extension of the systemstheoretical sociology of memory, is to describe the structure of the ways of explicitly referring to the past, to get to know something about how the temporality of meaning is reflected on with remembering. As we have seen in this section, systems-theoretical approaches at giving theory-related reasons to social memories move the problem of temporality into the focus of attention. The crucial reference problem of all kinds of sociological systems theory is how social systems are able to exist over time and how it is possible in each respective present to meaningfully connect to communicative events. With the event nature of communication moving to the foreground, presentism, on which all sociological theories of memory are based, is taken up and radicalized by systems theory: memory is an operation which must always happen in the present and has a selection function for the present of the social system. The systems-theoretical approach to memory is fundamentally different from the other theoretical perspectives presented in this book, as the social memory is radically separated from the psyche-based memory of the individual. One might object that even systems theory cannot do without individuals provided with consciousness and bodies, as otherwise there would be nobody to communicate. There is no doubt that this is correct. However, for the description and explanation of social memories, which are due to the momentum of self-referential systems, no recourse to the individual and its psyche is needed. Against this background, systems theory focuses exclusively on the conditions, dynamics and consequences of social communication processes. Accordingly, by memory one means a specific function within a meaning-generating social system, providing the preconditions

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for follow-up communications and autopoiesis. For the sociology of memory these decisions on theory result in a pluralisation of the available perspectives on social memories. Furthermore, they allow for the referral to scientific disciplines such as cybernetics, general systems theory, the neurosciences, biology or even linguistics, which would be difficult by way of the French Durkheim school and American Pragmatism. This provides the sociology of memory with innovative research questions and fields, and, furthermore, it points out to possibilities of new interdisciplinary cooperation.16 6.2

Knowledge-Sociological Concepts of Memory

Social phenomenology according to Alfred Schütz and, in his wake, above all to Peter L. Berger and Thomas Luckmann, provides a number of connections relevant to the sociology of memory (see Berger & Luckmann, 1967). As we have already seen, the social stock of knowledge may be associated with memory; the theory of relevance structures specifies the memory-specific selection function. The concept of institutionalisation, which Berger and Luckmann put at the heart of the social construction of reality, provides another connection point for the sociology of memory, as it makes the continuity of knowledge structures the subject of discussion and, with the concept of reification, provides an indication of the tension between memory and forgetting. Against the background of Berger’s and Luckmann’s sociology of knowledge, a number of studies deal with the topic of memory or remembering. After having briefly pointed to the memory-sociologically relevant aspects of the social construction of reality, we are now going to discuss three studies: we will start with the considerations of Hubert Knoblauch, which are oriented towards Alfred Schütz, then we will discuss Mathias Berek’s memory-theoretical reflections, and finally turn to the approaches of Gerd Sebald and Jan Weyand which integrate several kinds of constructivism. 6.2.1 The Social Construction of Memory The core element of Peter L. Berger’s and Thomas Luckmann’s analysis of the meaningful-symbolic construction of social reality is their theory of institutionalisation. The crucial point of this theory is that from the process of institutionalisation, a social order emerges which covers more than clearlydefined values and norms. Rather, this order is based on repeating everyday actions which are included into a repertoire of habits (habituation), are 16

This is also pointed out to by Jörg Michael Kastl (2004), among others.

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communicatively symbolized and passed on (objectification), and finally sink down into the cultural stock of common and legitimate ways of behaviour (sedimentation). From a memory-sociological point of view, Berger and Luckmann formulate – without explicitly saying so – a theory of the development of social memories, which can be used to show the cultural processes on which the everyday orientation of individual and collective behaviour and action is based. From this point of view the social institution, which is understood as a cluster of diffuse and concrete expectations of behaviour and has developed from the practical actions of several individuals, is nothing than a conceptual equivalent of a social memory. Several times, however, Berger and Luckmann make explicit use of the term remembering. By taking up Schütz’s idea that the subject develops from its own past being piled up, they state that each individual has exclusive, remembering access to its own past which it does not share with anyone (see Berger & Luckmann, 1967, p. 44). There is a discrepancy between the developed being and self-consciousness, between the knowledge one ‘is’ and the knowledge one has conscious access to. Language provides the possibility of becoming aware of “not only fellowmen who are physically absent at the moment, but fellowmen in the remembered or reconstructed past” (Berger & Luckmann, 1967, p.  54).17 Subsequent to these considerations, in the context of which remembering is associated with consciously reaching back to the past, Berger and Luckmann make use of the term memory, to make the development of mutual expectation structures plausible. To the same degree to which established action patterns or habituations, by being passed on from one generation to the other, become elements of an objective, unquestioned reality, reasons are given for an appropriate action which happens, at best, by way of a historical narrative, a tradition, as no immediate memory of the development of the practice is accessible. Furthermore, since human beings are frequently stupid, institutional meanings tend to become simplified in the process of transmission, so that the given collection of institutional ‘formulae’ can be readily learned and memorized by successive generations. The ‘formula’ character of institutional meanings ensures their memorability. (Berger & Luckmann, 1967, p. 87)

Being part of a symbolic, meaningful world, these formulas structure the recourse to the past in the context of a social group, culture or society. They provide, as Berger and Luckmann state by connecting to Halbwachs, “‘memory’ 17

In the context of which it is remarkable that no distinction is made between remembering and reconstruction.

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that is shared by all the individuals socialized within the collectivity” (Berger & Luckmann, 1967, p. 120). As social conditions may change independently of the ideas of the individuals, the latter experience a discrepancy between what they are used to remembering and what is acceptable or allowed as a pastrelated plausibility structure. Thus, on the one hand, therapeutic procedures are emerging by way of which such adjustment problems can be treated. On the other hand, individuals have a tendency to adjust their own remembering to the new conditions: “Since it is relatively easier to invent things that never happened than to forget those that actually did, the individual may fabricate and insert events wherever they are needed to harmonize the remembered with the reinterpreted past” (Berger & Luckmann, 1967, p.  180). With such considerations on the internalization of reality, the latter’s social or societal construction comes full circle. The social memory, which develops from solving practical problems, requires the individual, whose experiences are not necessarily in line with orientations which may be collectively expected, to perform a retrospective adjustment. In this way it is possible to give reasons as to why societies exist over longer periods of time and do not blunder from one revolution-like adjustment crisis into the other. 6.2.2 Communicative Memory Hubert Knoblauch develops his perspective on the communicative memory from the point of view of a social-constructivist communication theory.18 Starting out from Maurice Halbwachs’s concept of collective memory, he works out a concept of memory which makes it obvious “that remembering objectifies by way of communicative action” on the one hand and points out “the process nature of social remembering” (Knoblauch, 1999, pp. 734-735) on the other. Three theses connect to these two basic assumptions: remembering runs, firstly, along “tracks of more or less [socially] determined ways of communication” (Knoblauch, 1999, pp. 735-736). Secondly, the processes of progressing modernisation – Knoblauch refers to individualisation, de-traditionalization, and de-institutionalising – do, not result in dissolving the collective memory but in changing its shape: communicative memory increasingly moves “from the static institutions of passed on knowledge into the dynamic processes of communication” which again “develop their own traditions, conventions and institutions” (Knoblauch, 1999, pp. 735-736). Finally and thirdly, it is true that the structural change of communication communities, which is said to be the result of the rapid progress of information technologies, implies a change of social or cultural memory. 18

However, the title was used by social psychologist Harald Welzer (2008).

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According to Knoblauch, it is important that it is not the media-technological development per se which produces this change of memory but the communicative practices reacting to the development of the media. What gives this contribution merit is that it has placed the debate on memory and remembering into the context of social change and has made offers for the specification of the sociological concept of memory. Thus, Knoblauch’s work is an early document where Schütz’s memory theory, which the latter did not work out further, is brought together with the Halbwachs tradition as well as with the cultural studies debate on cultural memory. The focus is on concepts of relevance and selectivity which, however, are not yet placed into a functional context which proves selectivity as a result of relevance. It is possible, however, that the selection function determines relevance in the sense that relevance, as the structural equivalence of the definition of the situation is only created by those selection mechanisms which is characteristic for the way that memory works. In view of communicative practices, Knoblauch’s diagnosis avoids any causal connection of technological change and a virtualisation of the communicative memory. It is not memory that is changing, but by dealing with technologies the communicative practice creates new end products which, again, are new selection mechanisms and create – sometimes in a self-reflective way – new relevance structures. 6.2.3 Remembrance Culture Mathias Berek bases his theory of remembrance culture on the idea of the social construction of reality (see Berek, 2009). By reaching back to the previously described institutionalisation aspect in Berger and Luckmann and to the concept of stock of knowledge as unfolded by Alfred Schütz19 he discusses connection points for a social-phenomenologically grounded concept of memory or, to put it another way, he inscribes the hardly explicated terminology of memory into social phenomenology. This happens by Berek reminding us of the fact that Schütz proves that experiences are events characterized by attention and that experiences can only be attributed with meaning if they are grasped beyond their actuality. That a momentary experience can be preserved over time – and beyond the particularities of the individual’s perceptual capability – can be understood with the help of the theoretical figure of objectification. Objectification establishes a symbolic connection between rational processes and those processes and objects that are outside the subject and found in everyday life. Such objectifications become intersubjective and thus 19

On this see, first of all, Alfred Schütz (1967) as well as Alfred Schütz and Thomas Luckmann (1973) and finally Peter L. Berger and Thomas Luckmann (1967).

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communicable by way of typification. This theoretical element means the filing of more recent experiences under known types of experience or schemata. In this way, existing types of experience are subject to constant updating. If the toolset provided by social phenomenology is completed by the concept of sedimentation, the initially supposed cognitive-declaratory bias can be remedied. Sedimentation means the process in the course of which experiences are perfunctorily embedded into the activities of everyday life and thus become implicit. In other words: doing certain things no longer requires any explicit memory – they happen ‘automatically’. If this kind of knowledge has become a habit, it determines actions and behaviour as well as acts of perception which, according to Schütz, are controlled with the help of more or less conscious relevance structures. Relevance structures are grounded in indirectly or directly acquired knowledge. Just as the individual or subjective stock of knowledge necessarily develops from interactions with the social environment, a collective stock of knowledge develops as a system of supra-subjectively shared and, at the same time, incorporated, sedimented practical orientations. As a preparation for his theory of remembrance culture, Berek interprets Halbwachs’s concept of collective memory in the sense of objectivization according to Berger and Luckmann: Collective memory consists of the results of subjective memories which are transformed into an objective structure which again affects the memories of the subjects. Which subjective memory elements are adopted for the collective stock of representations of the past depends on the collective needs and situations of the present in which remembering happens and not on the individuals or the remembered contents themselves. (Berek, 2009, p. 188)

Among such a stock one can count those artefacts by which humans surround themselves and about which they exchange information. The media decide which aspects of collective memory are adopted. This produces the result that elements of remembrance culture are artificially kept alive, beyond the current need. By way of media the collective memory uncouples from its original construction principles – it represents neither societal truth nor authenticity. Berek describes a memory structure which can be and is irritated by the media and for which the concept of culture seems to be the more suitable the more collective remembrance happens by way of media discourses. However, even under these changing circumstances the social-constructivist basic assumptions are still valid: Thus, by remembrance culture we mean the entirety of collective actions and processes maintaining and extending collective memory, its structures of

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meaning and its material artefacts, by using them for representing the past – it gives reason to reality and legitimates the institutional order. (Berek, 2009, p. 192)

6.2.4 The Formation of Memory A third social-phenomenology-inspired contribution to the sociology of memory comes from Gerd Sebald and Jan Weyand who deal with the formation of social memories (see Sebald & Weyand, 2011, p. 174). The starting point for their reflections is the concept of collective memory according to Halbwachs, in the context of which Knoblauch’s work as well as perspectives of neighbouring disciplines and other schools of theory are included. These include the conception of cultural memory according to Jan and Aleida Assmann as well as Harald Welzer’s works on communicative memory, where a social-psychological conception of memory is connected to neuroscientific approaches.20 As collective memory is based on the interaction practice of groups, in view of the basic mechanisms of social cohesion we may assume that it shows a pre-modern tendency in the sense of Durkheim’s mechanical solidarity. Thus, Sebald and Weyand suggest extending the sociological concept of memory by a differentiation-theoretical view. No longer should we speak of a social memory but of several, autonomously operating social memories of individual social functional systems. The focus is no longer on stating the differences between social memories but on the analysis of their formation. According to Georg Simmel’s formal sociology, formation is understood as a “process of the dynamic structuring of social memories in the present” (Sebald & Weyand, 2011, p. 174). This process depends on social conditions which again serve for a quantitative and qualitative variation of social memories. In this context, a quantitative differentiation does not only happen along the lines of the further differentiation of society into functional sub-systems, but it also happens under the aspect of the succession of generations and the associated replacement of generation-specific spaces of experience.21 In contrast to a stable and 20

21

Particularly instructive for a sociological view are the contributions by Jan Assmann (2002b) and Aleida Assmann (2002a) in the ErwägenWissenEthik discussion forum as well as the comments collected there. We have already pointed to Harald Welzer’s (2008) concept of communicative memory. This goes back to Karl Mannheim’s theory of generations (1952) which, as a contribution to a sociological theory of memory, remembering and forgetting, is sometimes highly esteemed (see Assmann, 2002a). Indeed, his idea that in the course of life there happen periods generating many experiences and that generations can be distinguished from each other by their common experience potentials – as ‘generational units’ – is fruitful. Any memory-specific assessment of Mannheim’s sociology of knowledge and particularly

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common understanding of social memory, under conditions of differentiation social memories develop as intermittent structures with logics of their own. Another feature of modern societies that brings with it the appearance of qualitatively new ways of the formation of social memories is mediality. Media as mediators of communication change the function of memory, insofar as, due to their materiality, they perform very specific selections. For example, a written text determines other remembrance opportunities than a photo or a film – media cannot be considered ‘neutral’ communicators of the past:22 “What is medially presented does indeed not speak for itself but also for the medium (and requires a cultural practice of reception and interpretation)” (Sebald & Weyand, 2011, p. 183). As another aspect of the formation of social memories Sebald and Weyand identify authenticity which, against the background of the classification of claims to validity as developed in Habermas, they present as a consensual criterion for the topical appropriateness of the reconstruction of the past. Concerning its validity, remembering is always problematic; by way of authentication, it is possible to suspend the permanent doubt and to enforce a certain interpretation of the past. Then, the communicative genres of narration and discourse represent one last element of formation. If communicative genres are socially solidified solutions to communicative problems, narrative schemata appear as a mode of remembering. This way, the fact that remembering does not happen by reaching back to things deposited but always creates new narrative constructions in the context of narrations is taken into account. The situation is similar for discourses, whose inherent logic and autonomy only allows for certain follow-up communications in each case. All of these ways of formatting social memories suggest the assumption that remembering is indeed memory-guided but, due to the variety of possible variations, must be understood as being contingent. That this is not the case is demonstrated by Sebald and Weyand when they introduce Schütz’s concept of relevance which, according to their reading, represents a dynamic selection pattern. The advantage of the relevance concept is that it can be referred both to individuals and collectives. The selectivity of the relevance structures themselves, however, is not limited to individuals or groups and can by its inherent logic be imagined beyond interaction-based entities of the social.23 Thus, the

22 23

of his ideology concept which goes beyond Martin Endreß’s (2011) oblivion-theoretical overview or beyond Oliver Dimbath’s (2014, pp. 124‑125) considerations is still lacking. Also, Michael Heinlein (2010) and Valentin Rauer (2014) focus on this aspect. We are going to refer to this further below, in the context of practice-theoretical approaches of the sociology of memory. Sebald and Weyand identify the fact that memory concepts are tied to interaction as a considerable weakness which they attempt to overcome by way of integrating structural- or

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distinction according to topical, motivational and imposed relevance, which is basically already found in Schütz, provides a fruitful connection point for the analysis of the formation of social memories. If the social phenomenology-inspired approaches towards the specification of a sociological concept of memory following Halbwachs are compared, three basic motifs can be identified. At first it must be stated that the concepts of both, the individual and the social stock of knowledge, may be understood as equivalents to memory. The social-phenomenological sociology of knowledge is provided with a concept of memory which is not explicitly presented as a social memory. As the concept of the stock of knowledge evokes associations to the – inadequate, as we have already worked out – storage metaphor, it requires a supplement which provides information about the social organisation of this social archive. In this sense, the three positions refer to Schütz’s concept of relevance as a dynamic selection mechanism with which perception, definition of the situation, action and behaviour are provided with orientation by way of a sometimes automatized, routinized, incorporated or, in exceptional cases, intentional resort to past experiences. Thus, neither stock of knowledge nor memory are stores of the past but dynamic structures (of the lifeworld) whose main function is the path-dependent selection of orientations. Finally, apart from connecting stock of knowledge and relevance structure, we find theses on a change of social memories – a question which is no subject of Schütz’s proto-sociology. Nevertheless, the theory of relevance is very helpful when it comes to giving reasons for a progress-induced change of social remembering. As a basis for the theorisation of change, the theory of functional differentiation could be connected. The latter allows for the assumption that, in the course of the development of mostly autonomous social action fields, there also develop kinds of social memories. 6.3

Practice-Theoretical Concepts of Memory

The field of practice theories is no coherent theoretical structure such as systems theory or structural functionalism but includes a variety of approaches systems-theoretical arguments. This way, however, they give rise to the misunderstanding that Halbwachs’s theory of memory is interaction-based. This is neither plausible against the background of his theoretical origins (Bergson and Durkheim) nor in view of the crucial concept of the social reference frame. Frames do not necessarily reproduce by way of interaction but also by way of communication (among those being absent) or, as demonstrated by Halbwachs’s meanwhile classical example of the walk through London, by way of media.

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which, in the sense of a “family of theories” (Hillebrandt, 2009, p. 372), may be labelled as practice theories. This classification is due to a specific understanding of social reality, according to which social orders and structures are created practically, that is by the actual actions of actors (see Schatzki, 2001). Starting out from this premise, practice theories describe the social beyond established dualisms: social realities can indeed not be understood by the distinguishing and contrasting of subject and object, body and mind or consciousness, the human and the non-human or action and structure but require a way of thinking which takes the practical mutuality and permeation of all these elements into account. On the one hand, social practices depend on social orders (they do not occur without preconditions), but on the other hand they create them and make them last. This connection can be illustrated by the religious rituals which have above been discussed in the context of Durkheim’s sociology: a ritual is provided with meaning only if it refers to specific, collectively shared ideas of the structure of the world and man’s position within it. A ritual dance, for example, may be understood as giving expression to these ideas and to the relevant connected social structure. At the same time, the ritual confirms and supports the ideas and structures it is based on, and it keeps them alive. It reminds the collective of its moral convictions, thus working towards integration and supporting the existing order which is updated by the ritual. The simultaneity of the “reproducibility and repetitiveness of actions” (Reckwitz, 2003, p. 289) is crucial for a practice-theoretical understanding of the social. Or, in other words: the possibility of repeating actions and of the repeating action itself. However, repetition in this context must not be understood as mere reproduction. Rather, it is precisely the possibility of reproduction that provides opportunities for creative change – even if new forms of social order must first assert themselves against the resistance of habituated social practices. Against this background, the relationship of practice theory to the sociology of memory becomes obvious: the repetitiveness of actions requires, on the one hand, mechanisms and structures which maintain these possibilities and allocate them for practical updating – which may be appropriate to a variation of the traditional. Accordingly, British sociologist Anthony Giddens (1979, p. 64; 1984), who conceived his theory of structuring as a theory of practice, speaks in this context of memory traces which, as a social-structurally conditioned stock of knowledge, are deposited in the brains of individuals. These memory traces guide the structuralising and modifying behaviour of actors and are a kind of practical consciousness. On the other hand, the selective repetition of actions itself follows specific paths which again are maintained and, in many cases, supported, as shown by the recently-mentioned example of the ritual.

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From the perspective of the sociology of practice, nearly all issues of automatization, routinisation and habituation of action courses, of implicit and ‘practical’ knowledge as well as of object-communicated sociality move to the foreground. The concept of materiality is crucial in this context. Andreas Reckwitz distinguishes two reference points of the materiality of social practices which we would like to discuss below, from memory-sociological points of view: “The materiality of bodies in one necessary side of the materiality of social practices – the other side, emphasized by practice theory, must be sought after in the materiality of objects” (Reckwitz, 2003, p. 290). The connection between body and individual memory has already been dealt with in the third chapter. Here we are going to discuss considerations starting out from the social practice of the body and connect it to issues of social memory, remembering and forgetting. On our second step we are going to focus on actor-network-theoretical approaches which move the materiality of objects to the foreground. 6.3.1 Incorporated and Habitual Memory There are remarkable similarities between the sociology of the body and the sociology of memory: for a long time, both body and memory were characterized by being “absent yet present” (Shilling, 1993) with sociological theories and analyses – both entities were always there, however they were explicitly and systematically included into theory only very late and very hesitantly. Today body and memory experience a boom of attention which inevitably leads to the question of how the body could be understood as a social memory.24 A widely adopted study dealing with this question is the 1989 book How Societies Remember by British social anthropologist Paul Connerton. There, Connerton attempts to show how “practices of a non-inscribed kind” (Connerton, 1989, p.  4), which do not depend on texts and writing, reproduce social orders and how they are passed on within them. These practices of incorporation show two crucial features: on the one hand, it is compelling that the body is present to perform the respective activity, on the other hand the physical qualities, skills and movements necessary for this activity must be the result of socially communicated learning and imprinting processes. Against this background, Connerton distinguishes three ways of incorporation: techniques of the body, proprieties of the body, and ceremonies of the body. As an example of a technique of the body Connerton gives gestures which are culture-specifically learned or habituated and are immediately included 24

This issue is also discussed in the compilation edited by Michael Heinlein, Oliver Dimbath, Larissa Schindler and Peter Wehling (2015).

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into the communication among those present. By way of gestures the body acts out communicative contents which are understood by the members of a culture or group – in extreme cases without being accompanied by words. Furthermore, gestures symbolise belonging, by being read as indicating origin, status or gender. As Connerton demonstrates with the example of the inhabitants of Naples, certain gestures can sometimes be traced back over several centuries and can be observed even at other places where members of the concerned culture have been living for a long time – in this case in New York or the United States. Thus, cultures do not only selectively inscribe themselves into the bodies of individuals or social groups but, via the social memory, are provided with enormous stability and range. The body may be understood as a carrier medium for collective codes which is immediately included into the making and reproduction of social orders.25 Proprieties of the body concern the socially regulated connection between a behaviour which is appropriate with normative ideas and bodily qualities as well as movements. Using the example of table manners, which were already analysed by Norbert Elias (1981), Connerton demonstrates that these are no matter-of-course rules organized around a ‘natural’ or innate idea of common decency but “a set of particular practices built up slowly in a historical process of long duration” (Connerton, 1989, p.  83). The child is told about their bad or missing table manners until, by way of constant repetition and practicing, they master the desired body movements and qualities – such as not resting their elbows on the table, sitting straight, not slurping, curbing their appetite, or handling the silverware properly – to such a degree that no explicit consideration is necessary. Only the rules themselves, which define appropriate behaviour, are consciously remembered. Once this social process of incorporating rules has been completed, the memory of the body is provided with schemata which are independent of the empirical manifoldness of concrete situations. This becomes obvious, for example, by the available eating utensils: “The shapes of eating utensils are from then on no more than variations on accomplished themes, and the method of handling them remains from that time on unchanged in its essential features” (Connerton, 1989, p. 83). The body is capable of acting out, in different situations, the same schemata of perception and movement and to show the ‘correct’ behaviour. This may be transferred to other contexts; we are able to ride a bicycle even if it is somewhat bigger or smaller, if it has a crossbar or not, or if its tyres are thin or thick.

25

The relevant question about the objectivity of gestures is dealt with by Ulrike Tikvah Kissmann (2015).

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Finally, ceremonies of the body play a role where belonging to ancient, usually ‘noble’ or reputable groups is organized by way of cultivating looks, taste or skills. “To own a chateau or manor house,” Connerton writes in this respect, is not primarily to display disposal over money; one must appropriate also the skill of bottling and tasting fine wines, the secrets of fishing, the skills of gardening, the knowledge of the hunt. All these competences are ancient, they can be learned only slowly, they can be enjoyed only by those who take their time, they manifest a concern for things that last. These require that one occupy one’s time not economically but ceremonially. (Connerton, 1989, p. 87)

Money alone, if we may paraphrase this passage, does not make a gentleman or nobleman – rather, belonging to certain, in this case privileged, groups must have become second nature and must be reflected by bodily qualities and skills which are considered worth keeping. In this context, the protracted practice of group-specific skills and preferences, usually starting in early childhood, does not just refer to the need for distinction. It also alludes to a semantic mechanism of closing off socially: they who are not able to demonstrate or learn a certain taste and certain ways of behaviour will, in situations demanding appropriate body control, be perceived as a misfit or even a fraud. In this case the memory of the body reproduces social structures of belonging which are passed on among a – usually highly integrated – group and regulate possibilities of membership. Here two points must be stated: cultural and social orders can inscribe themselves into the body while at the same time being updated and produced by way of bodily practices in the sense of a recursive process. However, Connerton does not systematically distinguish between intended and unintended ways of incorporation and between bodily features and movements of the body. If such a distinction is introduced,26 movements which have not been consciously learned or practiced but have become second nature as a result of constant repetition (habituation) would have to be analytically separated from body movements attributed to intention (practicing). Gestures, for example, become habituated, although there are techniques of the body which are consciously and intentionally practiced – such as gesture-supported communication or other non-verbal systems of understanding. The same holds for bodily features which on the one hand result from the exchange with the social environment and, on the other hand, include attributes which have been attached to the body as a result of intended action. Among the former 26

These distinctions are worked out by Oliver Dimbath, Michael Heinlein and Larissa Schindler (2015).

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we would have to count parts and aspects of physiognomy which are not of genetic origin – that is, features resulting from long years of hard labour or, on the other hand, idleness. Tattoos or other ways of so-called body-modification, on the other hand, may be understood as intended traces of past influences which have a symbolic potential (see Hahn, 2010). A practical theory of memory which refers to the body in such a way cannot be imagined without the works of French sociologist, Pierre Bourdieu (19302002).27 Crucial in Bourdieu’s theory is the concept of habitus which “is no biological predisposition but instead a social impregnation of the body, an incorporation of the social” (Schmitt, 2009, p.  62). This social impregnation happens by way of (collectively shared) experiences the individual has made in certain social fields –fields such as the sciences, politics, economy, arts or religion – which each develop their specific logic and habitus (that of the artist, the scientist, the politician and so on). According to Bourdieu, experiences become manifest “in each organism in form of schemes of perception, thought and action” (Bourdieu, 1990, p. 54). Habitus becomes obvious by these schemata and by activating them in specific situations. Bourdieu elaborates this, using the examples of class habitus and gender habitus, both of which are the results of sometimes lifelong imprinting processes, exhibit a relative resistance against social change and are constitutive for the thinking, feeling and acting of a great number of similarly socialized individuals. Bourdieu summarises this ‘imprinted’ aspect of habitus by the term “structured structure” which, on the other hand, proves to be a “structuring structure” (Bourdieu, 1990, p. 53). This means that the behaviour dispositions, inherent in habitus as a result of social imprinting, influence and guide the social practice of actors – not in the sense of these actors deciding on a certain way of behaving from a wellstructured repertoire but by the past being acted out by the body according to an inherent logic. The selectivity of social orders reflected by habitus influence the social practice again, without this being intended or reflected on. Against this background, habitus may be understood as a performative, bodily memory; it is due to certain incorporated competences and dispositions, but these are not reflectively or linguistically available and cannot be ‘reviewed’ independently of the situation but have performative effect only at the moment of being ‘acted out’. Among others, they become manifest by ways of speaking, moving, of perceiving and appreciating certain objects as well as by emotions, specific interests and aesthetic preferences. (Wehling, 2011, pp. 170-171)

27

It is astonishing that Connerton in his book refers to Bourdieu only by two secondary footnotes and that also the concept of habitus does not play any role worth mentioning.

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The developing social regularities or structures are thus neither, as Bourdieu emphasizes, a “product of obedience to rules” nor do they result from the “organizing action of a conductor” (Bourdieu, 1990, p. 53). Instead, to put it in the words of sociologist Alois Hahn, they are due to an “consciousness of the past in actu” (Hahn, 2010, p. 105) which serves for a bodily and body-communicated reproduction of social order. In the more recent memory-sociological debate Bourdieu’s habitus theory is particularly connected to issues of forgetting and un- or preconscious memory performances. Two strands of this debate shall be shortly sketched here. Along with Bourdieu, Peter Wehling understands habitus as ‘forgotten history’ and points out that the “concerned individuals […] have not only forgotten when, where and how they have acquired their habitual dispositions, but they are also not aware that they have forgotten these formative experiences as such” (Wehling, 2011, p. 174). This fact, which is easily made plausible by one’s own person – when, how and where, for example, did I learn how to handle the silverware? – is interpreted twofold: on the one hand, forgetting about having learned schemata of perception, thinking and acting – as well as forgetting about this forgetting (see Hahn, 2010, p. 98) – may be understood as an immediate condition for dealing with the complexity of the world and for efficiently carrying out actions. If we always remembered (or had to remember) when, where and how we learned the respectively updated skills etc., this would probably seriously hamper, if not completely block, our thinking, perceiving and acting. In so far, the social memory of the body proves to be a mechanism for the reduction of complexity, relieving the social practice. On the other hand, according to Wehling, forgetting about the conditions under which habitus was created contributes to considering the power structures which have made the habitus as something natural. It is precisely because it has been forgotten that habitual dispositions are due to contingent social structures, which themselves are an historical product, that social hierarchies are in practice unquestionably reproduced and continued. Bourdieu considers his theory an attempt to work against this de-historicization and naturalisation of habitus. In this context those cases are interesting in which a habitus no longer fits to the social order, if there has happened some “radical” (Clausen, 1994) or rapid social or economic change. By help of the concept of the hysteresis effect Bourdieu points out that habitual dispositions show a certain degree of sluggishness – even if the social and economic conditions for their creation have disappeared, the incorporated behavioural dispositions are maintained for quite some time (see Sunderland, 2009). Thus, even in the greatest need, the dethroned king may not and cannot give up on his status-related behaviour. And vice versa, a sudden social or economic advancement will not come

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along with the status-specific dispositions one would expect, say, at a dinner in an elegant ambience. Thus, for the sociology of memory opens up a praxeological view of the connection between social change and continuity which – as Wehling remarks – may be judged quite differently: The ‘lagging behind’ of habitus may be considered a delay or even blockade of social progress and social evolution – or, vice versa, it may be considered a resistance of proven, incorporated dispositions against dubious, new impositions in a field, such as when scientists are expected to ‘market’ their research also by help of the media. (Wehling, 2011, p. 177)

Jörg Michael Kastl, on the other hand, uses Bourdieu’s practice theory as an opportunity to make connections to neuropsychology. In doing so, he understands habitus as “a specific sub-field or sub-aspect of non-declarative memory structures” which “is ‘typical’ – either for the individual or indeed for a certain social class of individuals” (Kastl, 2004, p. 213). This definition moves the brain as an organic part of the body to the foreground, while at the same time postulating similar memory structures for many people. Kastl comes to this conclusion by transferring empirical findings from neuropsychological memory research on the acquisition of motor skills, on learning rules and regularities as well as on perceptual learning onto Bourdieu’s concept and by working out common grounds. According to Kastl, this has far-reaching consequences for the sociology of memory in particular and for sociology in general. Memory, he says, is the crucial biological foundation of society and culture. Socialisation processes and thus society and sociality could not at all be imagined without achievements of (biologically rooted) memories, and this is exactly where they are empirically located. This is meant to say that any concept of non-bodily memory media (e. g. ‘social memory’) is in principle a metaphor or secondary in so far as anything ‘stored’ is still referred to achievements by ‘natural’ memories to have any effect on behaviour at all. Media such as writing, cultural artefacts (tools, buildings, articles of daily use, memorials), communicative routines as well as storage and distribution media (book, film, EDP etc.) always depend on an appropriate functional increase of biologically rooted memories. Without man’s capability, rooted in the brain, of dealing with these artefacts they would be completely useless as, so to speak, extra-corporeal memory aids. (Kastl, 2004, p. 215)

For memory research that is, in this sense, both fundamental and general, he states, this means that it must pursue an “interactive research strategy” (Kastl, 2004, p. 216) which systematically combines the insights and perspectives of social- and natural-scientific memory research. This way, says Kastl, it is not

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only possible to shed more light on the influence and role of non-declarative ways of learning within social contexts, but also to better understand and explain more complex behaviour processes in everyday life (see Kastl, 2004, p. 221-226). 6.3.2 The Memory of Objects Let us now turn to the second form of materiality which is brought into focus by theories of practice. In the past few years, sociology in the German-speaking countries has increasingly looked at the materiality of objects (see e. g. Belliger & Krieger, 2006; Kneer, Schroer & Schüttpelz, 2008; Wieser, 2012). This is particularly due to a catching-up adoption of the actor-network theory which, since the 1980s, had been mostly pursued in France and Great Britain. This perspective assumes that objects – no matter if technological devices, furniture or tools – are immediately interwoven with the architecture of the social. Thus, human actors are joined by objects which, as non-human actors, participate in the practice of the social, give reason to it, change and stabilise it. In this context, the social itself is imagined as a materially heterogeneous structure within which subjects and objects establish situational connections and are engaged in mutual exchange (see Callon, 1986; Latour, 1991, 1999; Law, 1992). The way in which objects may be included into practices of remembering and forgetting becomes obvious with the example of a hotel key to which the French sociologist Bruno Latour dedicates a special essay (see Latour, 1991; Rauer, 2014). The starting point is the problem of the receptionist of a hotel who misses room keys which guests did not give back when leaving the hotel and took with them. Many keys never return, which requires the costly installation of new locks. After oral requests have no effect, the receptionist displays signs on which the request to return the room keys is formulated in a way which is clearly visible for all guests. This way the number of guests returning their keys indeed rises, but still the receptionist is not satisfied with the achieved quota. So he takes another measure which makes the key – and thus the request to return it at the reception – literally a weighty issue: the receptionist has metal balls fixed at the keys which are a considerable weight in the guests’ pockets and make them bulge in an unpleasant way. Finally, this step produces the desired success: apart from some hopeless cases, from then on nobody takes his/her key with him/her. According to Latour, the door keys are immediately included into a “program[me] of action” (Latour, 1991, p. 107) consisting of a specific network of human and non-human actors. It is important in this context that the memory programme changes according to the used objects. Each variant of the programme develops its own selectivities:

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Thus, on the one hand, it is crucial which connections are established by objects and are made last in the context of a specific social memory practice, and on the other hand which selectivities are thus realized. Only the combination of the two objects of key and ball succeeds with establishing a practice in the course of which previously forgetful subjects become remembering subjects. The key is not just a forgotten or remembered object which depends solely on subjective perception. Rather, it is a constitutive part of the practice of remembering and forgetting itself. For the time being, the idea of the socio-materiality and networking of subjects and objects has hardly been noticed by the sociology of memory. Nevertheless, there is a handful of studies which decidedly deal with it and further develop the just-sketched basic idea. For example, Australian sociologist Katrina Schlunke understands memory as a socio-material effect which cannot be sufficiently understood by way of the traditional, human-centred, ideas of consciousness (Schlunke, 2013). With the example of two, very different, material representations of seafarer and discoverer James Cook, a hero in Australia, she demonstrates that objects, by creating memories, at the same time also constitute the remembering subject. Holding a small box of matchsticks in the hand which is decorated by a picture of Captain Cook evokes other emotions, connects in different ways to one’s own biographical and physical history, and addresses a different kind of knowledge than standing in front of a gigantic, coloured Cook statue in the court of a motel in Cairns. In both cases, the encounter with ‘little’ and with ‘big’ Cook, the act of remembering unfolds by an interplay with objects each of which suggests its own order of perceiving the subject. These orders of perception, however, change in the course of remembering. According to Schlunke, remembering with an object (and not by it or remembering the object) means leaving oneself to flowing, contingently connecting associations which develop by the interplay and exchange of material, bodily, cognitive, social and biographic orders.28 The individual’s

28

This may be read as a criticism of the category of ‘cultural memory’ introduced by Jan and Aleida Assmann: the confrontation with the – as we might believe – remembrance-culturally

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consciousness and body play a role with this, but the order cannot be determined as being central right from the beginning (see Schillmeier, 2009). Studies presented by Michael Heinlein (see Heinlein, 2010) and Valentin Rauer (see Rauer, 2014) are also dedicated to the question about the volatility and stability of object-communicated memories. Both authors connect to Bruno Latour’s media-sociology which distinguishes between two kinds of media: intermediate links transport “meaning or force without transformation” (Latour, 2005, p. 39), that is, they have a clear effect within already established collectives or societies and contribute to their stability. For the social memory of a family, for example, photos are intermediate links: each look at the photo album or each evening slide show result in similar, ‘typical’ memories, confirming the framework of the family. With intermediate links being firmly rooted in a remembrance practice, they make a specific selectivity last. This also holds for the key with the ball which, as a material act, succeeds with maintaining a certain remembrance practice between the hotel and its guests. Mediators, on the other hand, “transform, translate, distort, and modify the meaning or the elements they are supposed to carry” (Latour, 2005, p. 39). This type of media or object is described by Schlunke: objects do not clearly evoke memories, they are not part of an established remembrance practice but establish connections in a way which cannot be foreseen or planned. Whereas Heinlein makes use of this distinction to describe object-communicated ways of communalisation performed by German children of the war, Rauer deals with remembering and forgetting in post-conflict societies. Here objects – such as tanks or destroyed buildings – are of particular significance, as they are “material bearers of past conflicts” which have ‘survived’ the conflict to “then [take] a particular remembrance-pragmatic position. Their sheer presence cannot be denied. Their ‘material’ demands a debate” (Rauer, 2014, p. 59). By way of a variety of examples – which cannot be mentioned here – Rauer develops Latour’s idea of the memory programme further, by relating the way of making an end to the conflict (victory/defeat, compromise, reconciliation), which is crucial for remembrance in post-conflict societies, to the distinction between intermediate links and intermediaries, imagined as poles of a continuum, or material acts and speech acts (see Rauer, 2014, p. 70). For a sociological theory of social memory this means that objects are, on the one hand, constitutive for observable selectivities and path-dependencies but, on the other hand – if appearing as intermediaries – may irritate and challenge settled orders. In both cases, the focus is on those network-like stable, material representation of a national hero does indeed not result in a clear memory but unfolds contingent ways of remembering and forgetting.

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connections and relationships between subjects and objects which are created situationally by social practice and are being crucial for the respective possibilities of remembering and forgetting.29 With the help of the actor-network theory it is possible to show that social memories are always included in a reality which not only happens inter-subjectively but also inter-objectively. In this context, remembering and forgetting – depending on the type and intensity of the subject-object link – are stable or volatile events. 6.4

Summary: Social-Theoretical Points of Connection

By pointing out memory motifs in sociological practice theories we have concluded our walk through selected social theories. As hardly any sociological theory does without at least a rudimentary clarification of the reference to the past, the search for connection points could be far more extensive: from the point of view of the sociological observer, any individual or collective behaviour or action could be traced back to dispositions which developed or were created in the past. Almost any kind of situational adjustment as well as of the reflective definition of a situation looks back to a past and may be analysed as being oriented, determined, organized or regulated by it– no matter if those involved are aware of this past or not. However, as within each individual theoretical line has developed different conventions of speaking about the reference to the past and as there has been little interest in a particular emphasis by way of concepts such as memory, remembering and forgetting, there exist a large amount of possible connection points and inspirations but no comprehensive theory of social memory. In view of the many scattered memory motifs, only one thing is clear: the analytical potential of a sociology of memory which extracts a common terminology from the different theory languages and brings together the manifold references to the past is much higher than that of the currently existing particular memory concepts of communicative, generational, cultural or collective memory. Only from the various constructivist as well as structural- and practicetheoretical perspectives it is possible, by way of insights into the manifold conditions for an analysis of social memories, to achieve a tripartition as presented by Oliver Dimbath in his analysis of social forgetting in the sciences. 29

For working out a sociology of memory in the network-theoretical sense which, apart from the actor-network theory, also systematically discusses Harrison White’s network theory, we may refer to the study by Marco Schmitt (2009).

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From his analysis of social-theoretical approaches he gains three dimensions of a sociological concept of memory: the declaratory-reflective dimension corresponds with semantic knowledge and communication. It is understood as a “socially constituted while at the same time cognitively schematized association structure” (Dimbath, 2021, p. 100). Crucial in this context is the consciously remembering resort to experiences. Secondly, he demarcates an incorporated-practical dimension which – from Bergson via Merleau-Ponty, Schütz and Connerton and as far as to Bourdieu – represents any imprint on the organism which is not (or no longer) accessible to the reflecting consciousness and has been experienced in the past. In this case, the memoryspecific selectivity is oriented towards the settled and imprinted structures of implicit knowledge. The third dimension of memory is called the objectivizedtechnical one and can be attributed to the object aspect of practice theories. Orientation happens through the past of the relationship to objects and, to the same degree, by way of the programmatic past of the socially constituted objects themselves – for example in the field of information technologies (see Dimbath, 2021, pp. 99-103). These three dimensions are oriented towards the issue of selectivity and orientation – that is knowledge – and can now be referred to any field of the social. This way they allow for a field-specific construction of social memories, as it is predetermined by the theory of social systems – however there is the difference that not communication, but the acting and behaviour of individuals and groups in each respective topical-specific contexts, are the focus of interest. This indicates that the search for sociological concepts of memory would now have to be continued in the field of the sociological research disciplines or special sociologies, especially as there already exist studies on the memories of family, education, organisation and so on. There is no doubt that there we might find one or the other valuable hint at the further manifestation of social concepts of memory – however it must also be assumed that the memory terminology of such studies serves rather for describing the subject than for working on a theory of memory. We will thus stay away from such an inspection and, in the following and final chapter, are going to deal with a sociological field which is clearly more closely connected to the issue of reference to the past and thus to the social memory: the relation of social memory and modern society as it has been described in the context of social theory and the sociological diagnosis of time.

Chapter 7

Modernisation-Theoretical Perspectives of Social Memory As it is well known, Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels described the transition from a class-based to a modern society based on industrial capitalism in rather impressive words: All fixed. fast-frozen relations, with their train of ancient and venerable prejudices and opinions, are swept away, all new-formed ones become antiquated before they can ossify. All that is solid melts into air, all that is holy is profaned, and man is at last compelled to face with sober senses his real conditions of life and his relations with his kind. (Marx & Engels, 2014, p. 13)

If for once we ignore the usual adoption routines, this quotation may be read as a goodbye to any kind of memory rhetoric: in a world in which everything traditional ‘evaporates’ and newly developing social orders are toppled and become obsolete at the very moment of coming into existence, a social memory which creates and organises references to the past and provides for continuity and coherence both in the individual consciousness and in long-term society does not seem to play any role at all. Notions of ‘modernity’ and ‘modern times’ are associated not only with Marx and Engels with a fundamental change, with an upheaval and departure for the new, leaving behind tradition, the common and the ‘mechanically’ practiced (Émile Durkheim). In sociological literature we find – perhaps under the impression that the social memory has been lost – an extended debate on the connection between modernity and memory which we are going to look at and systematise. Given the strong emphasis on change and the overthrowing of outmoded structures and traditions, it does not seem so astonishing that modernity is more associated with forgetting than with remembering. It is thus necessary to take a first step by fathoming out the relationship of remembering and forgetting in the memory of modernity and asking about specifically modern dynamics of remembering and forgetting. The second step consists of tracing post-modern perspectives on social memory and of sounding out the possibilities of a specifically post-modern kind of memory. The third and final point deals with the figure of ‘cosmopolitan memory’ which developed in the context of the theory of reflexive modernisation

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(Ulrich Beck) as an answer to the increasing loss of significance of national borders in a globalized world. 7.1

The Memory of Modernity

Being an empirical science, sociology is very oriented towards the analysis of the social present. Since its beginnings in the early 19th century, it has been dealing with modern society, by asking what makes the respectively analysed social order special in comparison to its past and what might happen if the direction into which this society is obviously developing is maintained. That is why, if it is about a sociological consideration of the social present as a whole, one speaks of a diagnosis of time or the present. The background of such considerations is the assumption that certain current phenomena and developments might be capable of turning the inevitable social change over time or in long-term society into a certain direction. As is well known, the sociological contribution to such debates starts with Auguste Comte’s (1798-1857) positivist philosophy, who in the context of his law of the three stages – and with a strong normative tendency – announced the appearance of a positive age.1 At the heart of this law there are three ages of intellectual development, the first one being defined by theological interpretations of the world, whereas the second one is based on metaphysical constructions of meaning. In the third, positive, stage the mistakes of religion and metaphysics will have been overcome; world knowledge will exclusively be gained from the empirical observation of nature and an appropriate theory building. The power of traditional influential factors – nobility and clergy – will have been overcome; the new power will exclusively be with a scientifically educated elite whose legitimacy comes from rational considerations. With his programme Comte describes an epochal change in the course of which most of all old leading elites will be replaced by more or less democratic systems of rule. It is then that the distinction, fundamental for sociology, between an outmoded order, which is demarcated as being traditional and a new one characterized as being modern because of its triggered overcoming of the old order, becomes established. 7.1.1 The Age of Oblivion From the point of view of a humanities memory research, this transition marks a crucial reorientation. Thus, since the mid-19th century some intellectuals 1 On this see the short overview of the law of the three stages in Oliver Dimbath (2011a).

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identify a fundamental change in the way of dealing with the past. Since the first steps mankind made in the course of its cultural development, a high appreciation of the masters of the art of memory has developed. In oral cultures it was very important to adopt knowledge, to develop it further and – most of all – to memorise it as well, to keep it over the generations. Professional roles were custom-made for the function of the ‘one who remembers’, the performance of remembering was attributed with high social prestige. The starting point of this development is the insight that domination of nature and civilisation must be protected against one powerful enemy: oblivion. A group without memory is incapable of learning and might thus be condemned again and again to live through its catastrophes.2 In this context, historian David Gross identifies five fields of pre-modern society for which ways and practices of remembering are of particular significance: firstly, piety in the sense of dutifully respecting the ancestors is a basic way of remembering. The worshipping of the ancestors is grounded in the knowledge that social values do not come from nothing but are passed on, by way of tradition, from generation to generation. A pious person believes in being obliged to the memory of his/her cultural heritage. In the Christian tradition this finds expression by honouring the deceased who are ‘kept alive’ by way of prayer and rituals. Secondly, ethical behaviour is hardly possible without remembering, as the foundation of ethical decisions can only come from memory. Those people were highly appreciated who were best able to integrate their memories into their behaviour. The development of somebody’s positive character traits is, thirdly, based on the memory of the influence as well as the practicing of honest manners in the course of ‘good breeding’. Positive habits as a principle of life – and not as aspects of a broad range of behaviour one just uses as a tool – were considered a kind of solidified memory which had become ‘second nature’. Fourthly, remembering was also crucial for religious or spiritual practice, as the striving for ‘higher’ ways of living could only be realized by way of disciplined efforts and the repetition of appropriate exercises. The opposite, in the sense of remaining at a lower level of civilisation, was achieved by way of oblivion, in connection with laziness, weakness or laxity. Saints of Christianity gained their spirituality from their power of recollection, when for example it was said about Thomas Aquinas that he had never forgotten anything, or 2 An appropriate statement was made by American philosopher George Santayana: “Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it” (Santayana, 1905, p. 284). Since antiquity there exist myths about the curse of eternal repetition due to forgetting or to the incapability of learning lessons from experiences. It cannot be denied that, because of the specific constitution of historical remembering, learning from history does not automatically result in improving the social situation.

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about St. Anthony that he had learned the Bible at heart just by listening.3 In the pre-modern age, creativity as a fifth memory-communicated principle is less associated with producing something new but with connecting to existing intellectual and cultural qualities. The more aspects from the past were remembered, the more voluminous was the treasure trove of reference points. In this context there exist two approaches to this, one of which takes different perceptions, impressions, emotions or associations of earlier experiences into consideration, while the other one focuses on the ideas and ways developed by the ancestors, that is the cultural tradition. Based on these examples, David Gross formulates the thesis that in the pre-modern age remembering was always positively interpreted and forgetting, on the other hand, was negatively interpreted. With the end of the Middle Ages and increasingly since the 17th century, however, this changed fundamentally. This development was triggered, he says, by the appearance and spread of capitalism, the success of political revolutions, the progress of processes of urbanisation, industrialisation and mobility, as well as – as a consequence of all this – the erosion of traditional forms of society and ways of living (see Misztal, 2003b). This way Gross concludes that modernisation and modernity are, among others, responsible for the decline of memory-related values. Under stable circumstances, he says, the reference to the knowledge of past generations is appropriate. If, however, the living conditions are subject to rapid change, the past has less to tell than the present – and this not least because under a high pressure to adjust remembering and repeating may result in maladjustment or dysfunctionality. Under such circumstances the past might no longer be a source of wisdom but an obstacle to growth which is best forgotten soon (see Gross, 2000, p. 31). Apart from the socio-political change in the wake of Enlightenment and revolutions, the significance of remembering was, from the mid-19th century, reduced by the sciences, by researchers such as Hermann Ebbinghaus, Hermann Helmholtz or William James calling the reliability of individual memory into question and stating that memory processes must be understood as the selective processing, reversal, interpretation or whitewashing of memory traces. To this there was added the insight that too much memory may result in an incapacity to act. In his criticism of a purely archival science of history, Friedrich Nietzsche demanded giving up on the piling up of useless knowledge in favour 3 Older sources of early theories of memory mentioned by David Gross (2000) are Pythagoras, who recommends memory training to improve the quality of the soul, or Plato’s idea that as a result of being born man forgets the highest spiritual truths and will know them again only by way of memory work in the course of his/her life.

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of all-encompassing oblivion (see Nietzsche, 1998). Living on memories was vilified as living in an ivory tower or as being escapist, the social roles of those ‘remembering’ experienced a drastic loss of significance. To illustrate the problem of referring to the past in the modern age, American literary scholar Bill Schwarz reaches back to a character in D. H. Lawrence (see Schwarz, 2010). In Women in Love this author presents a modern woman who does not want to have any past. Past is a burden both for the present and the future, which finds expression by the phrase ‘a woman with a past’. Accordingly, the protagonist of the novel wants to free herself from her past, by living exclusively in the present. Another indication for a fundamental reorientation concerning the way of dealing with the past is found in view of the capability of remembering many things. Until late in the Middle Ages this was appreciated as special talent, in the modern age, on the other hand, there developed a trend of pathologizing such a talent as hypermnesia,4 that is, a psychic disorder. Against this background, David Gross identifies the four guarantors who, under the conditions of modernity, defend remembering. It is important that in all these cases the point of departure is a primacy of forgetting in modern society. As some of these positions have already been pointed out elsewhere, here we will just present short sketches of the modern view of memory. At first sight, psychoanalysis according to Sigmund Freud prefers oblivion. For example, the melancholic type, who buries himself in his own past, can be healed by making him forget by the help of hypnosis. Remembrance stimuli such as memorial plaques are less suitable as reminders of societally significant events but are used by the subject as projection surfaces for his/ her own experiences. If then emotions are discharged by referring to such a medium, this does not contribute to solving possible future coping tasks. From this point of view, remembering rather appears as a problem, whereas forgetting is understood to be a solution.5 At a closer look it becomes obvious, however, that Freud makes oblivion a topic of discussion and recognizes remembering as a solution. For, if traumatising childhood experiences cannot be coped with by way of venting, suppression happens in the form of shifting the problem into the unconscious. Then the unresolved affect finds expression in those symptoms which were the reason for the patient to seek treatment. The goal of analysis is then, by means of working through it, to remind one of 4 Hypermnesia refers to the burdensome incapability of forgetting sensual impressions or experiences. Although there exist studies on actual cases of hypermnesia (see Korte, 2001), the literature on social or cultural memory frequently reaches back to the fictitious character of Funes in Jorge Luis Borges story Funes the Memorious. 5 For Sigmund Freud’s Five Lectures on Psychoanalysis see David Gross (2000, p. 41).

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the traumatising event and the affect. Thus, Freud assumes that ‘memories’ count among the main sources of human unhappiness insofar and as long as they work unconsciously. If, with Freud, we understand oblivion as suppression, guided remembering is preferable. However, as soon as a memory has been identified as being unconscious and in terms of its triggers and affects, it can be left to a therapeutically guided oblivion. This instrumental way of dealing with the issue reveals the Enlightenment motif of modernity. The implicit motif of oblivion in Henri Bergson, whom Gross names as the second authority of modern memory theory, is in the concept of drive mechanisms. These mechanisms come from memories which have become habits. Behaviour routines are connected to many advantages, yet still Bergson considers a routine-guided person dull and superficial because he/she does not develop any moral ideas of him/herself. What is forgotten is the development and meaning of these drive mechanisms. For a conscious life, says Bergson, the so-called independent memories are suitable. They are stored as memory images and may come to the individual’s mind either spontaneously, for example as irritations or daydreams, or they are purposefully visited in the context of seeking solutions for current problems. Thus, in Bergson oblivion is a foundation from which the conscious and memory-based behaviour of modern man stands out. In contrast to Bergson, the German philosopher Walter Benjamin, whom Gross identifies as the third modern memory theoretician, rejects any instrumental usefulness of remembering for the solving of problems. Such a use of memories makes them lose any possibility to enrich experiences. According to Benjamin, in the late modern age individual experience is separated from its chronological dimension, this way the event rises to become the predominant way of experiencing. By event Benjamin means an experience aiming at respectively current circumstances, and he does not take into consideration its embedding in a continuity or the existence of a specific past. The event as a mode of experience makes experience volatile, an episode, a fragment and thus, in view of the timeline, taken out of context. As the original way of experiencing Benjamin defines a way of experiencing which maintains the connection between current perception and images of the past. This way precisely those memories are particularly valuable which are in contrast to the currently perceived situation – such as differences between individual and collective past. By making us forget the past, modernity works towards the decline of chronologically embedded experience; by defending personal – and sometimes allegedly unnecessary – remembering Benjamin reminds us to maintain this quality.

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Finally, as the fourth defender of remembering in modern times, Gross introduces Marcel Proust who, apart from his considerations on a body-related memory in his novel In Search of Lost Time, unfolds a theory of remembering. For this purpose, Proust assumes a self which is intermittent in time, which is attacked by involuntary memories (mémoire involontaire), irritated and disoriented and thus forced to oscillate between present and past.6 The focus is thus on a contemplative self-assurance of the subject, from whom the access to his self is threatened to be blocked or snatched away by moments of oblivion. After these four significant approaches at a theory of memory, according to Gross, the debate stagnated in the first third of the 20th century and has hardly received any new stimulations since. 7.1.2 Enlightenment and Revolution Along social-historical events and developments it is possible to comprehend the development of a modern memory as having been partly influenced by dealing with the political turmoil in the course of Enlightenment and revolution. In this context, Barbara  A.  Misztal points to the development of the national state, starting in the 18th century (see Misztal, 2003b). The newly created national communities had to develop collective identities in connection with new ways of commemoration (memorials, remembrance days and national holidays, hymns and flags) to symbolically consolidate national unity. Finally, in the French Third Republic there happens a purposeful shaping of official memory when religion as a subject in school is deleted from the curriculum and more Republican remembrance days are installed. Sometimes the establishment of such bearers of remembrance happens in a group-related way, when the working class introduces its own parades and holidays or the bourgeoisie starts museums to maintain a certain view at the past.7 After all, the development of the science of history must be placed into this context. 6 In premodern times and, again, in Romanticism, the character of the ghost, in the shape of the sinister, represented the involuntary memory of violations of the collective consciousness – outstanding scores to be settled or unfinished business. The individually- or collectively-suppressed returns in the form of haunting and demands to be pacified. As to how far in forgetful modernity things past still strive for recognition and in which ways this may happen – as a psychosis or as terrorism – is an open question. At least the concept of the ghost, as far as it is taken out of superstition and parapsychology contexts and is understood as a social principle of an unresolved relation to the past, provides an inspiring backdrop for interpretations (see Dimbath & Kinzler, 2013). 7 Considerations on a class-specific theory of memory – as a kind of bottom-up history – are found in Zygmunt Bauman (1982).

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Misztal notes that national historians become ‘priests of the culture’, a broad audience taking notice of their works. From the mid-19th century, the technological inventions of photography and cinema opened up new possibilities for creating particularly authentic and realistic remembrance stimuli. For the late 19th century Misztal states a growing fear concerning the way of dealing with the past, as people increasingly perceived themselves as being separated from their past. The new ideal of modernism demanded the deletion of everything which had been before, thus producing an ambivalent problem. On the one hand, one had to explicitly turn to the past, whereas on the other hand one had to orient oneself towards the future and to put any tradition into question. For the newly emerging social sciences and, in particular, for sociology, dealing with processes of organisation and the bureaucracy, any way of dealing with ways of remembrance must have been irrelevant right from the beginning. For societies in the later stages of modernity Misztal sees a collapse of extended collective memories, resulting in a memory crisis by the end of the 20th century. This, she says, can be seen most of all from the decline of authoritative (national state) memory. This decline resulted in a kind of self-description according to which modern societies understand themselves as pathological forgetting societies. With such societies, Misztal says, we observe a loss of significance of identity-creating remembrance events – such as in the course of presenting them as entertainment events – and at the same time an obsessive remembrance culture by way of an inflationary establishment of museums and exhibitions.8 Apart from the breaking up of outmoded memories of large groups, she says, a continuation of identity-creating commemoration in the context of small groups happens.9 Thus, Misztal speaks of a denationalisation, fragmentation and democratisation of remembrance, while at the same time there develops an industry of remembrance and nostalgia which constantly produces new places of remembrance,10 memorial sites as well as theme parks and nostalgic products (see Misztal, 2003b, pp. 46-49). 8 9 10

On this see also Andreas Huyssen (2005) as well as analyzing the “pathologies” of collective memory as a “reduced” and “excessive” memory as done by Walter L. Bühl (2000, p. 132). Such considerations are based on theories of globalization and the dissolution of national state frames as developed i.e. in the context of Ulrich Beck’s (2000a) cosmopolitan concept. We are going to discuss this in more detail below. The theory connected to this concept was developed in the course of a number of publications by French historian Pierre Nora (1989). It is based on the thesis that, due to a lack of identity-creating aspects in modernity, there develop specific ‘places’ – this does

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7.1.3 Capitalism and Acceleration Paul Connerton also attests a shift of emphasis towards oblivion when it comes to modern society. His analyses are oriented towards the basic categories of time and space when he points to aspects of both temporality and the topography of modern oblivion. He starts out by stating that we must distinguish the local nature of remembrance from the modern invention of places of remembrance or memorials. Modern societies cultivate their memorials as soon as there is the impression that the nation is no longer a historical place on a long line of memory. However, monuments installed under the impression of being threatened by oblivion generate oblivion in their turn: “If giving monumental shape to what we remember is to discard the obligation to remember, that is because memorials permit only some things to be remembered and, by exclusion, cause others to be forgotten” (Connerton, 2009, p. 29). Connerton illustrates this connection with the examples of war memorials which remind us of the names of the fallen but not of the violence or the circumstances of their deaths. Furthermore, he says, it is only about the dead and not about the invalids and the bereaved who are obviously not commemorated. Memorials established for the sake of remembrance are highly selective and represent a certain kind of cultural or politically determined memory. However, it is not just the socially defined places of remembrance where commemoration happens – similar to Halbwachs, with his idea of space as a social reference frame of memory, Connerton points out that any place to which meaning is attributed may trigger both individual and socially classified reflections on the past. In individual cases, this meaning may be very different, depending on whether it is coming from general knowledge of the place in question or from some specific knowledge. At the heart of attributing meaning is the aspect of appropriation. Connerton states that the idea someone has of a public building will always be different from the idea of a person living in this building (Connerton, 2009, p. 32). It is the selectivity of inattentive experience to which he draws our attention. In this context, he focuses on aspects of the social memory of modernity which were not meant to prevent certain collectively relevant events from being forgotten. His considerations circle around the question of how far modern societies can change the selectivity of their memories and thus the preconditions for remembering without being aware of it.

not only refer to topographical sites but also to appointments, landscapes, concepts or persons – where common remembrance can be stimulated (see also Schwarz, 2010).

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In view of the chronological analysis of forgetting, Connerton identifies four interwoven processes of social development, emphasizing their temporal aspects: the temporality of work, of consumption, of the course of life, and of the production of media and information. The main motif of modern society is its dealing with work, resulting in the development of capitalist economy. Due to the rationalisation of work processes as far as with industrial labour, the time ratio of production are shifting. Due to focusing on the exchange value of goods, the process of making them falls into oblivion. The multitude of work steps a product has gone through are irrelevant in the shop window or for presentation in a catalogue. This kind of oblivion resulting from the organisation of work processes is in line with concepts of false consciousness, delusion or fetishization used by Critical Theory. The separation of any object from its origin or genesis is described by the concept of objectification. In view of the suppression of the aspect of working time, we may claim, in Theodor W. Adorno’s words, that any objectification is like oblivion.11 For his considerations on the temporality of consumption Connerton also goes back to Marx. However, now the emphasis is on the transition from exchanging gifts to exchanging goods. In contrast to the exchange of goods, which is understood to be a typical feature of modern society, the exchange of gifts as it is practiced in less developed cultures produces a remembrance process which is based on a threefold obligation: the obligation of giving, of receiving and of rewarding.12 Apart from the fact that in this way the exchange of gifts results in an endless chain of gift and return gift, whereas the exchange of goods is usually a unique act without further obligations, with the system of exchanging goods Connerton identifies a change of the temporality of consumption by way of aestheticizing the commodity. If the focus is no longer on the utility value of the commodity but on its exchange value, the exchange of goods is given new horizons. It is no longer only about the time required for the exchange but about the time of the spectacle, that is, the preparation for the exchange, the presentation and aesthetic staging, in short: advertisement and fashion. In this way, the speed of the turnover of goods is increased, products become outmoded much sooner or are even provided with aspects of artificial ageing, of planned obsolescence. The control of time, Connerton states, shifts

11 12

With these considerations Paul Connerton (2009), starting out from Marx, refers mostly to Georg Lukács, Walter Benjamin, Max Horkheimer and Theodor  W.  Adorno. On the oblivion-theoretical debate on the objectification process see Harald Hofer (2011). For this, Paul Connerton (2009) draws on Marcel Mauss’s gift theory.

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from production time to consumption time – another aspect of alienation and objectification. The change of the life course-related time regime at the transition from traditional to modern societies is first identified by Connerton by the notions of time connected to professional activity as well as to the professional career. He observes that due to the progressing vocation-specific division of labour and tasks and the connected rationalisation of time horizons, the opportunities for collective memory among groups change. Connerton gives a reason for this assumption by first pointing out the change of traditional professional work to full-time employment, the gender-specific division of labour and the orientation of the course of life towards the period of gainful employment, all of this coming with so-called ordinary employment, to then point out other changes of the time regime, referring to the debate on the dissolution of ordinary employment (part-time employment and low-wage labour market). All of this comes with a reorientation from the past to the future and, as trust in the stability of social situations depends on a stable past, long-settled expectations concerning individual ways of life dissolve. Connerton states that “in acts of trust one implicitly reduces the hypothetical complexity of the future, because in bestowing trust on persons or circumstances one commits oneself to courses of action as if there were only a certain limited set of possibilities in the future” (Connerton, 2009, p. 76). Elsewhere he states that with the disappearance of the standard biography encased in the previously standard employer–employee relationship, the sense of time, as institutionally structured and personally experienced, is fundamentally altered; and along with this, with respect to the whole context of individual life trajectories, culturally specific acts of remembering and forgetting are altered. (Connerton, 2009, pp. 76-77)

For Connerton, the change in the perception of time as a result of the development of modern mass media is the fourth process by which the forgetting aspect of modern societies can be described. In the course of the process of modernisation, he says, older forms of narrative have been replaced by information, and information has finally been replaced by sensation. According to Connerton, the starting point for this development is the invention of printing which allowed for the multiplication of impressions and traces. Furthermore, he says, due to the multiplication of typographic remembrance stimuli new dimensions of memory-specific selectivity were opened up, among which one can count the possibility of controlling memory by way of newspapers and TV. Newspaper readers, Connerton says, are trained to adopt fragmentary and decontextualized information in the form of newspaper articles and to associate

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it to other information simply because of their chronological coincidence. In this way the perception of what is happening in the world is changed into a sequence of parallel, albeit independent, events. From this, Connerton derives, following Walter Benjamin, an oblivion effect. Due to the echo of earlier repetitions, the ritual of reading the newspaper does not support a strengthening of memory but, due to the fragmentary nature of perceived information, a loss. This kind of media communication obstructs original and, above all, affectual experiences. Here too, concerning the individual possibilities of experience, one may observe a degree of forgetting about anything original, which is further increased by television. The fact that TV produces far more information leads Connerton to present the thesis of culturally-institutionalized oblivion, resulting from being overburdened with information. This development becomes most obvious in the field of electronic data processing. Nowhere else, says Connerton, does more information fall into oblivion than there, where information is collected and stored on the largest possible scale. To this there is added the exponential acceleration of the capacity of data processing as well as of the presentation of information, producing the result that the observer’s attention becomes accustomed to a rapid sequence of micro-events. This, again, makes it difficult to really understand even the most recent past – the present is just a “narrowly defined time period unlinked from past causes” (Connerton, 2009, p. 87). However, Connerton does not only discuss those chronological aspects associated with a change of social memories at the transition to modern society, but he also turns to the topography of remembering. There he distinguishes three points of view which refer to the specifically modern aspects of social memory and which we would like to briefly discuss below: the opening up and structuring of the living environment, the development of speed, and the deliberate destruction of the built environment. In antiquity, the art of memory follows a social-spatial orientation; the distinction between centre and periphery is crucial, as well as that between the fortified and topographically structured city and the country. Cities, Connerton states, closed themselves off to increase the intensity of their communication – after all, they were fortified crossroads. In the Middle Ages the European city was still characterized by the two features: ‘the wall perimeter’ and ‘the centre’. The city became topographically memorable because of the fact that exposed buildings – such as churches – provided orientation. However, what is crucial for the pre-modern age is the fact that cities were always limited and could be viewed from vantage points. But as a result of the rapid growth of the cities not only the surrounding walls disappear, but also the possibility to orientate oneself towards buildings is reduced because the city can no longer be overseen.

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For Connerton, the change in the structure of the living space means that the fundamental preconditions for location, out of which memory art developed, have disappeared and vanished from consciousness. One possibility of dealing with the new spatial structure is the increase of speed when it comes to coping with spatial distances.13 Mechanical transportation and films allow one to evade the tyranny of distance – the relation between field of view and movement is changed. The perception of the overview establishes itself as the new mode of perception: objects are viewed with the help of mechanical apparatuses, and there is no longer the need for them to be in the same space. In this context, the dominance of transport routes is a crucial feature of the modern cultural landscape – localities are restructured by the automobile, by streets being destroyed as places of looking, and the traffic destroys the social space of the neighbourhood. But, as Connerton remarks by referring to Michel de Certeau, for the system of the city walking has the same function as speaking has for the system of language. By way of walking, which requires relations between far-away points, the walking person appropriates the topographic system, by walking the surroundings are ‘spatially realized’. Mobility machines and growing speed, however, destroy the stability of the local system. Given this development, the assumption that what is visible must be stable can no longer be supported. The increase of speed is reflected by the pace of restructuring the urban space. Friedrich Engels already pointed out the fact that newly-built quarters for the working class were made for about 40 years. In London, in the 1930s, houses were renovated after 30 years, and they were demolished and exchanged after 60 years. In the modern age, the restructuring of the building structure is increased by architectural fashions and new building materials. “Cultural memory is eroded in this process because the building blocks of the city have been broken down. The district, the square, and the street were the basic building blocks of the city, and it is their breakdown which generates a diffuse cultural amnesia” (Connerton, 2009, p. 120). In conclusion, Connerton states that it is mostly the capitalist production process with its effects on the experience of time and space which makes modernity an age of oblivion. This oblivion happens mostly unnoticed, as a structural change of the selectivity of social memories as well as in the sense of a change of the possibility to reflect on path-dependencies or – in other 13

Similar considerations can be found in Hartmut Rosa’s (2013) acceleration diagnosis. While referring to Rosa’s approach and Walter Benjamin’s works, Felix Denschlag (2014) connects the problem of alienation resulting from increased acceleration and social remembering.

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words – of the meaningful and sense-conveying reference to the past which is replaced and discredited by the ‘imperative’ of looking to the future. 7.1.4 The Evolution of Social Memory Italian sociologist Elena Esposito, on the other hand, emphasizes another aspect of the modernisation of social memories. In her system-theoretical study Soziales Vergessen (Italian title: La memoria sociale) (Esposito, 2002) she describes different kinds of social memories, by bringing an evolutiontheoretical model to the fore which is oriented towards Niklas Luhmann. As is well known, Luhmann distinguished four kinds of the differentiation of society which can be chronologically organized according to the kind of social differentiation which was predominant for a certain epoch: segmentary differentiation (tribal societies, villages, clans), spatial differentiation or differentiation according to centre and periphery (pre-modern advanced cultures, city states with their surrounding areas), stratificational differentiation (estate-based societies with an ‘upper’ and a ‘lower’ class), and functional differentiation (modern societies with functional systems of equal value). For each of these kinds of differentiation Esposito identifies a specific social memory which is independent of the involved psychological memories. The crucial point of her argument is not – as might be expected – that the type of memory of a society is not solely and immediately dependent on the respectively prevailing form of differentiation. Rather, she understands the memory of society as the result of an interplay of the dominant forms of differentiation and the historically available possibilities of communication. Thus, Esposito’s crucial assumption is “that in the course of social evolution there are a pressure of mutual adjustment and a constant interaction between the ways in which a society is differentiated and its communication technologies. In each given situation, the memory of society is the result of these dynamics” (Esposito, 2002, p. 38). Esposito bases her argument on Luhmann’s evolutionary motif and his system-theoretical concept of memory as discussed above. Also, for Esposito the function of memory – and not only of modern memory – is to observe the communication of the system and to always take out of the constant flow of new events that which, from the point of view of the system, is repetitive. The system is no longer forced to develop everything completely anew, but it may assume that at least certain elements of perceived events are already known. Thus, the task of memory is not to store and provide information but the selective processing of perceptual contents which are distinguished by being known (redundancy) and being new (variety). Here also, oblivion is the necessary rule.

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Each stage of social differentiation has other conditions of communication, coming with each different kind of memory of society. There are four kinds of memory which have developed in the course of the development of society: divinatory memory which is observed with societies using non-alphabetical writing; the rhetorical memory of stratificationally differentiated societies provided with alphabetical writing; culture as the memory of functionally differentiated societies where printing has become established, and finally, with the establishment of the computer and the transition to the post-modern age, telematic memory. Whereas divinatory and rhetorical memory are more oriented towards the ideal of remembering and ‘ars memoriae’, there happens a change at the transition to the modern age or the transition from stratificational to functional differentiation – now it is forgetting and ‘ars oblivionalis’ which move into the foreground of the memory of society, as a result of the development of mass media. Modern societies are societies characterized by various and equal perspectives which cannot be standardized – such as political, economic or legal perspectives. For modern mass media, which ‘bear’ culture as a memory, this means that they must filter the abundance of information in a method which results in most aspects being ignored or forgotten. Only in this way does it become possible to relate and compare information from a certain perspective, to be found by the newspaper, by TV or radio. In this context it is important to see that it is not about the political, economic or legal perspective but about what is remembered, yet at the same time forgotten, by the mass media. Thus, mass media develop their own specific selectivity, making modern memory an archive characterized by “forgetting as effectively and soon as possible – complemented by an appropriate growth of the capability of remembering” (Esposito, 2002, p. 41). Finally, with telematic memory ‘ars oblivionalis’, the art of forgetting, is increased and realized by a medium which, in contrast to the mass media, reacts in real time to the unpredictability of communication and, by way of search engines, creates memories “which, however, have never before been thought and are exclusively the product of the context-related orders of the user” (Esposito, 2002, p. 41). According to Esposito, this is accompanied by more contingency and more oblivion. Like Luhmann’s levels of differentiation, this model must “not be understood in the sense of a historical reconstruction of an evolutionary process in the course of which there happened ever more complicated kinds of memory” (Esposito, 2002, p. 41). Esposito envisions a process of change in the context of which older types of memory oriented toward remembering can persist alongside newer ones that emphasize oblivion. However, the older types have no social power anymore. In other words: different kinds of differentiation

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may exist parallel to each other, in the sense of a simultaneity of the nonsimultaneous. In modern societies families are an example of segmentary differentiation, and the hierarchies of organisations are an example of stratificational differentiation, whereas the predominant kind of differentiation is functional differentiation. If we compare the kinds of memory described by Esposito with the kinds of differentiation postulated by Luhmann, two points are striking: on the one hand, with the post-modern telematic memory Esposito provides an indication that there might be a kind of social differentiation which is beyond functional differentiation. However, this point, which is reflected by her thesis on the inadequateness of the cultural model in the digital age and of the “hypermodernity” (Esposito, 2002, p. 290) of social structures, leads rather to a timediagnostic argument of social oblivion instead of leading to a modification and extension of the system-theoretical evolution theory. On the other hand, there is no kind of memory which might correspond to the differentiation type of segmentary differentiation. According to Esposito, this is because in segmentarily differentiated societies communication can process only on the basis of an interaction between individuals belonging to the same group and that also there is the possibility to store communication. […] Without writing, communication happens only under all too concrete conditions and is thus dominated by the features of the situation it is embedded in. (Esposito, 2002, p. 40)

The absence of communication technologies, the resulting situation-bound natures of all communication and the connected constraints of constantly readjusting schemata do not allow for the development of an autonomous memory in the segmentarily differentiated society. In oral cultures it is only possible to communicate about subjects “which are remembered by all those participating in communication” (Esposito, 2002, p. 33). Thus, the memory of society would be like the highly contingent memory of interactions which cannot draw on stored schemata, as they are not provided with elaborate communication technologies. It is easy to understand that such a type of memory cannot develop any autonomy from the mental systems participating in communication. Only the materiality of communications technologies such as writing, printing, photography or film allows for separating symbols from the individual consciousness as a bearer of memory and for maintaining them over time. In this way the social memory is extended considerably. The new quality of memory consist in the fact that it is no longer based on repetition alone, but must integrate references or connections. By making procedures available with which information may be gained e. g. from books, the constantly

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renewal of modernized social memory allows for a new quality of stability (see Esposito, 2002, p. 35). 7.2

Post-Modern Memory

Due to the programmatically-induced and empirically-proven exponential growth of information, modernity, characterized by the Enlightenment and rationalism, is confronted with problems resulting from an increasingly complex selectivity. This results, on the one hand, in the spreading insight into the necessity of a reduction of complexity, which is reflected in the considerations on switching from remembering to forgetting. On the other hand, the quantitative extension of knowledge comes with a pluralisation of interpretative perspectives, producing the result that the meaningful reflection on pathdependency is no longer limited to one narrative. With modern thought aiming at the (re)production of clarity and explicitness, it constantly produces more ambiguities which can neither be avoided nor ignored by the demands to forget. Such a development can be seen, for example, in the increasing legitimacy of the detachment of individual memory from collective memory or on empowerment of equally valid and possibly very different group memories of formerly unifying collective events. In other words: a kind of history which is – ‘top-down’ – determined by political or scientific authorities is replaced by a kind of ‘bottom-up’ history. This does not really change the basic functions of social memories, but it does change their utilisation when it comes to the relevance of social reference frames as well as the development of collective identities. Since historiography as a frame of reference relevant to memory no longer provides or can provide unifying narratives with regard to the nation, it becomes difficult to orient oneself towards a ‘national feeling’ or ‘national pride’. This is where considerations on a fundamental change begin, with which modern thought might be suspended and in the course of which its guiding ideas will no longer have any enduring power. Considerations aimed at such an overthrowing of basic patterns of modern thought can be summarized by the term ‘post-modern’. According to Jean-Francois Lyotard, post-modernity results from the destruction of modernity exactly when it is assumed that modernity is now realized.14 Such an assertion is made in the context of what 14

The debate on post-modern thought includes a great number of people and positions from the most diverse fields: from philosophy all the way to the fine arts and architecture. Often it is less about diagnosing a new age or a new motif of social change but, rather,

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he describes as ‘techno-science’. This kind of science assumes progress when it comes to objects being ruled by subjects which, he says, results in an increased safety of facts, but not in more freedom, education or wealth. At best, however, this would result in an acceleration of delegitimization and not the realisation of universalism. This idea can be illustrated by an extended quotation: What is the source of the legitimisation of modern history since 1792? It is said: the people. But the people are an idea, and there are debates, there are quarrels about the correct idea of the people and about how it could be enforced. Thus, the spread of civil war in the 19th and 20th centuries and the fact that even the modern war among nations is still a civil war: I, the government of the people, deny the legitimation of your government. At ‘Auschwitz’ a modern sovereign was physically destroyed: an entire nation. There was the attempt of destroying it. This crime marks the beginning of post-modernity: offending the sovereign, no longer the murder of kings but murder by the people (in contrast to genocide). (Lyotard, 1993b, p. 51)

For Lyotard, the transition to post-modernity is marked by the legitimisation crisis of the great narratives of modernity. These meta-narratives are narratives having a legitimisation function – such as the idea of a people, of the nation, of nature or of history. This is connected, however, not to a loss of significance of all the narratives that everyday life consists of, it is only about great, unifying narratives which can no longer claim universal validity or which no longer show any interpretive consensus. The modern sciences, Lyotard states, complete modernity by making man the master of nature. However, the concept of nature also includes elements of the human subject, its physique, its way of communicating or how it organises its group life. This may result in having to pay by providing evidence of naturalness on the one hand and by accepting artificiality or technology on the other. The great selections of knowledge, made into a narrative memory by way of inherited narratives and believed to be undeniable – the achievement of which is the goal of all modern thought – prove to be ambivalent and thus unachievable as they are being realized (see Lyotard, 1993b, pp. 52-53).15

15

about announcing a new way of thinking and its normative-programmatic consequences. In the context of the controversial debate on post-modernity, memory motifs are also referred to. For example, philosopher Burghart Schmidt (1994) attests much varied strategies of forgetting to the post-modern program – a debate which we cannot discuss in detail here. At this point the diagnosis is in line with Ulrich Beck’s (1992) statement that the certainties of a First Modernity, as a result of their successful implementation, dissolve the epistemic basic conditions for modernity – in the sense of a Second or Reflexive Modernity – which is post-modern thought.

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Zygmunt Bauman concludes with the related uncertainty from the namingand classification-function of language which produces the illusion of an orderly and organized world and provides humans with certainty within a world of coincidence. Because of our learning/memorizing ability we have vested interests in maintaining the orderliness of the world. For the same reason, we experience ambivalence as discomfort and a threat. Ambivalence confounds calculation of events and confuses the relevance of memorized action patterns. (Bauman, 1991, p. 6)

As an answer to this problem, modernity has begun to fulfil the growing demand for reality in the sense of unity, simplicity or certainty by help of ideological realisms (see Lyotard, 1993a). In view of the theory of memory this means that, given the openness and plurality of knowledge-related selectivity, there begins an uncertainty and disorientation which is supposed to be alleviated by society providing clear orientation – an enterprise which, however, can hardly be credible and can thus be effectively implemented, even in totalitarian systems. Due to having, in principle, a choice between often disparate basic orientations, late- or postmodern individuals may, on the one hand, interfere with the memory process and select their own offers of meaning. On the other hand, now ‘minor’ pathdependencies and narratives implicitly or ‘automatically’ influence the search for orientation. Which orientation offer is perceived as given and, thus, made absolute depends largely on social origin or the milieu of origin. Independent from the idea that the social memory differentiates into different functional system memories, from a post-modern point of view it must be stated that in a modern society there do indeed exist different collective memories adjacent to each other and which may lead people in very different directions. To this it can be added that path-dependency, which previously has been proven to be memory-specific and a subject which must be reconstructed through a search for traces, must be assumed as being objectively given but can only be transferred into a scientific narration in the form of an assumption about connections. This does not change the basic way that social memories work but, once again, points to the fact that the reconstruction of memory processes must happen in a sense-adequate instead of a causally-adequate way and, thus, rather by way of understanding instead of explaining.16

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Max Weber’s (2002) search for the traces of the formation conditions of Western capitalism which, as it is well-known, ends with Protestantism, is a telling example. At the same time, it is a document of a comprehensive analysis of modern forgetfulness.

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Such a sense-adequate interpretation can be summed up in the context of the changing way of dealing with social memories. In pre-modern times, humans were aware of their civilisation being threatened by structural amnesia,17 which is why remembering, or rather different social positions were given the function of remembering and cultivating. The origin and development of religions may be understood as such a way of organising social memories in view of complex and highly differentiated systems of remembering. In modernity a reorientation towards the future happens, in the course of which the systems of remembering are put into question and the social positions of the ‘rememberers’ are discredited. However, one does not give up on referral to the past – it is only fundamentally changed. Indeed, in view of ‘grown’ or ‘incorporated’ memory systems and thus of ‘tradition’ no scientifically satisfying reconstruction of meaning is possible, which results in a separation of the linked orientation imperatives. However, there develop new constructions of the past which are more modest but comparably well-founded: basic narratives of modern ideas and institutions which, however, are structurally similar to the archaic founding myths, because they classify founding figures as pioneers,18 trail blazers, classics,19 discoverers or revolutionaries20 and founding events as functional indications of new, modern memory systems. Thus, one contribution from post-modern thought is to reveal the re-enchantment of modernity. The subsequent questioning of society’s power of definition 17

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The term structural amnesia goes back to ethnologist John A. Barnes (1947, p. 52) who analyzes forgetting in the context of social relevance structures – in his case: filiations. The term is adopted by Jack Goody and Ian Watt (1963) who extend it to a general principle of social oblivion as a result of social change in oral cultures. The pioneer is somebody exploring previously unknown territory. On this Nicolas Pethes states that the memory of pioneers is “retrospectively dedicated to the memory of their unprecedented deeds; however insofar as these are referred to the specific forward virtues of P.e (inventiveness, innovation, decisiveness), this memory serves protectively for establishing the founding myth of progress” (Pethes, 2001, p. 443). The term ‘classical’ refers to ages which are considered the heyday of certain fields of activity. The classic is the perfect representative of this heyday. “As a current aesthetic practice, the classical period appears as appreciation and constructive memory of a past artistic top achievement which has no equivalence in the present. The cultural-political far-reaching significance of the classical period is its formation of a canon which, by way of institutions such as schools and universities, determines and passes on cultural knowledge and guarantees a certain continuity of classical works.” (Erdmann, 2001, p. 304). At the heart of revolutionary aspirations is the always disputed attempt “to revolutionize the present towards a changed future by way of (even ideologically) referring to a past of whichever memory” (Beise, 2001, p. 498). The revolutionary represents – in the context of benevolent remembering – a social change which, from the point of view of those living in the present, would have been desirable in the past.

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in view of the construction of modern memory systems enforces the dissolution of already well-established meta-narratives. They are replaced, on the one hand, by differentiated narratives which meet the requirements of the now-demanded pluralism of perspectives, and, on the other hand, by fundamentally calling under question the legitimisation of a collectively consensual narrative reference to the common past. 7.3

Cosmopolitan Memory

Our final point leads us to a phenomenon which is a common experience of modern societies: globalisation. In our times, it is taken for granted that economic, political, cultural and social processes no longer end at the borders of the national state, but go beyond. As shown by sociology, this results in new, transnational contexts and social forms which affect all fields of work and life – such as love relationships and families, the production and consumption of goods and services as well as social movements. Globalisation may be understood as a fundamental change which has transformed incorporated social orders in a variety of sometimes ambivalent and contradicting ways and goes on doing so. It is, thus, obvious to ask about the effects of globalisation on the memory of modern society. Or, to put it in other words: how do well-practiced selectivities and path-dependencies react to globalisation – and vice versa? A widely-discussed study dealing with this issue has been presented by sociologists Daniel Levy and Natan Sznaider from the USA and Israel respectively. Here, they pursue the question of how collective memories of the Holocaust change over the course of globalisation. In this context, globalisation or cosmopolitanisation, as is the term borrowed from Ulrich Beck (see Beck, 2000a; 2000b; 2006), is understood as “a non-linear, dialectic process” “in the course of which the global and the local do not exist as cultural contradictions but as mutually connecting and mutually conditioning principles” (Levy & Sznaider, 2007, p.  21). It is not about the worldwide adjustment and standardisation of collective memories and the selectivities they are based on. Rather, those exchange processes are in the foreground, existing between local, and in our case this means: nationally specific, path-dependent, memories on the one hand and globally available and in this sense ‘de-localized’ memories on the other. Levy and Sznaider place the Holocaust at the center of their analysis because “in many Western states [it has become] the moral criterion for the distinction between good and bad” (Levy & Sznaider, 2007, p. 15). As the catastrophe which puts the self-conception of modern civilisation into question, the Holocaust proved to be a “catalyst for a ‘conscience of the world’” (Levy

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& Sznaider, 2007, p. 50). By way of a comparison of public Holocaust remembrance in Germany, Israel and the USA Levy and Sznaider come to the conclusion that in the course of time the Holocaust has been increasingly taken out of its particular contexts and has been transformed into a globally-available interpretation pattern for bad pasts. In other words: a historically unique case is transformed into a universal type. No longer does the Holocaust represent the genocide of the Jews committed by Nazi-Germany but appears as a figure of memory characterized by a highly connectable selectivity: “For, the cosmopolitan significance of Holocaust remembrance becomes obvious also by the fact that it allows many groups of victims to identify with the Jewish victims” (Levy & Sznaider, 2007, p. 56). The authors state that it was particularly the mass media which acted as a driving force for the chronological and spatial classification of Holocaust remembrance, which was necessary for its delocalisation, thus making it at all possible. Due to the mass media spread of Holocaust memories, it becomes “common property, thus allowing the people from the most different countries to deal with it in the most different ways” (Levy & Sznaider, 2007, p. 17). However, Levy and Sznaider emphasize that this does not go along with a common interpretation of the Holocaust: Certainly the Holocaust will not become a ‘total’ figure of reference with the same meaning for everybody. Its significance comes from the encounter of global interpretation schemes and local circumstances […]. In this context, the national state loses its interpretation monopoly on remembrance. (Levy & Sznaider, 2007, pp. 16-17)

By this thesis Levy and Sznaider distance themselves from an understanding of collective memory which is inseparably connected to the national state. Such an understanding, the authors say, is found already in Halbwachs, as he had developed his theory of social frames of reference at a time when “collective memories were still an integral element of national and ethnic culture” (Levy & Sznaider, 2007, p. 13). In a global world however, they say, the assumed unity of memory, ethnicity and nation is no longer appropriate, as the national state itself as a reference point for collective memory is subject to fundamental change.21 Against this background, Levy and Sznaider develop the idea 21

A view at Halbwachs’s writings shows that the concepts of collective memory and reference frame are not remotely linked to any explicit or implicit ideas of a nationally framed ‘container’ or that they are ethnically pre-formatted. Rather, Halbwachs understands the national state as one possible reference frame among many (see Halbwachs 1980: 51.). At the same time he points out the virtuality and contingency of the reference frame when writing that those events as being relevant for the national memory can only be experienced indirectly: “During my life, my national society has been theater for a number

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of a cosmopolitan memory in the context of which the representations and symbols that collective memories are based on are de-localized and re-located in the course of the globalisation process. After the symbols connected to the Holocaust have been made globally available by the mass media, they can be appropriated, reflectively broken and interwoven with one’s own memories at the local level.22 What is decisive is the reciprocity of global and local memories, which point to the development and path dependency of nationally framed memories. Such a “cosmopolitanized memory is thus no common global memory but a contextual universal memory” (Levy & Sznaider, 2007, p. 30). The selectivity of the global memory of the Holocaust, with which an event can be interpreted as an intended genocide, the roles of victims and perpetrators being clearly distributed, is used by certain collectives and nations for framing and, thus, changing their own histories. The history of a collective articulates itself, in a way, with the help of a globalized explanation pattern – and vice versa. Thus, the cosmopolitan memory is a theoretical figure which does not imagine local, global or even one’s own memories and those of others as mutually excluding entities. Against this background, the sociologist of memory is provided with a perspective allowing for observation of the mutual influence and change of nationally framed, path-dependent social memories and for viewing the newly-resulting selectivities. How this cosmopolitan perspective could contribute to the research of actual memory practices is shown by sociologists Bernt Schnettler and Alejandro Baer, by the example of public Holocaust remembrance in Spain. For their study they move the connection between remembrance rituals and collective identity to the foreground. Rituals are not only a typical remembrance practice with which collective identities are updated.23 Rather, they are

22 23

of events that I say I ‘remember’ events that I know about only from newspapers or the testimony of those directly involved. These events occupy a place in the memory of the nation, but I myself did not witness them. In recalling them, I must rely entirely upon the memory of others, a memory that comes, not as corroborator or completer of my own, but as the very source of what I wish to repeat.” This principle also holds for cosmopolitan memory as described by Levy and Sznaider. In a subsequent study Daniel Levy, Michael Heinlein and Lars Breuer (2011) called this phenomenon reflective particularism. We have already encountered the motif of memory-based collective identity-creation and -preservation in the course of discussing the French Durkheim school. In his religious-sociological studies Émile Durkheim himself pointed out to the meaning of the ritual which, as stated by Bernhard Giesen, “is particularly suitable for the construction of commonality”: “The participants believe the form of the ritual to be mostly without alternative, it need not be based on certain goals, from the point of view of those acting ritually it cannot be improved or criticized, and it does not distinguish individuals from each

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part of the memory-cultural equipment of society and are, accordingly, normatively supported. Nevertheless, rituals – although they are generally not put into question in everyday life and sometimes show enormous chronological stability – are consciously shaped and adjusted to changing social framework conditions. This becomes obvious with the public rituals on the occasion of International Holocaust Remembrance Day in Spain which Baer and Schnettler videotaped between 2006 and 2009 and subsequently analysed. According to a decision by the United Nations of 2005, this Remembrance Day is celebrated on January 27th; the date is supposed to be a reminder of the liberation of the extermination camp of Auschwitz-Birkenau by the Red Army. For Spain, however, for a number of reasons the public remembrance of the Holocaust is a challenge: on the one hand, the authors say, there is “no (significant) Spanish involvement in the Holocaust” (Schnettler & Baer, 2013, p. 6). On the other hand, there is no established remembrance culture in Spain as is found in Germany. In this respect, in Spain the public celebrations may be understood as being in search of an appropriate way of dealing with the Holocaust. The celebrations themselves always happen “at the so called ‘Paraninfo’, the auditorium of Complutense University in Madrid. The place is that of a former Jesuit seminary which today is used for academic ceremonies. In general, the ritual structure consists of three alternating elements: speeches, song and prayer. The act of lighting candles is central” (Schnettler & Baer, 2013, p. 8). A total of six candles are lit, each of which represent one group persecuted and murdered by the National Socialist regime. The first candle is dedicated to the six million murdered Jews, the second one to the one and half million children murdered in the gas chambers, the third one to the Republican Spaniards murdered ‘at the German concentration camps of Mauthausen, Gusen, Buchenwald and Bergen-Belsen’ who, in agreement with Franco, were deported to German concentration camps as prisoners of war from France after the invasion of the German Wehrmacht. The fourth candle is lit ‘for the righteous among the nations who risked their lives for those persecuted’. Finally the sixth candle is dedicated to ‘those having survived’ ‘who found refuge in Israel’. (Schnettler & Baer, 2013, pp. 8-9)

An analysis of lighting the candles shows that in the course of the period under analysis the Spanish ritual changed significantly – other. Rituals such as singing a national anthem or saying a prayer cannot be improved or made subject to progress. They have this form because they have this form” (Giesen, 1999, p. 15).

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from year to year it becomes ever more inclusive because a growing number of people are involved in the symbolic act of lighting the candles. Whereas in 2007 only seven people were entrusted with this and were emphasized, by mentioning their names, as representatives of the respectively honoured collective, in 2009 it is already 22 representatives of a variety of collectives of victims and other groups participating in lighting the candles. (Schnettler & Baer, 2013, p. 9)

By way of this extension, more collectives are integrated into the ritual and recognized as victims of National Socialism. Baer and Schnettler understand this as a universalisation of remembrance that is not unproblematic in the context of Holocaust remembrance. This is due to fact that the central act of lighting candles has been adopted from the Yom-Hashoah celebrations in the context of which Jews are reminded of the victims of the Shoa: the Spanish ritual transcends the inherently Jewish reference and becomes an inclusive ritual, by way of emphasizing the Spanish relation to the Holocaust by including Republican concentration camp survivors as well as Romani people. Furthermore, universal categories are addressed (children, ‘the righteous’, survivors), which transforms the event concerning its tendency and intention: the Jewish Shoa of the Jewish ceremony becomes the universal Holocaust. By way of this comprehensive concept, not only the Jewish victims of the genocide are reminded to and honoured but all those persecuted by the Nazi regime (the Romani people as well as the politically persecuted are symbolically included by way of one candle and one representative lighting it). (Schnettler & Baer, 2013, p. 9)

By means of consciously changing the ritual and making it cosmopolitan, the existing order of the negotiated collective identities is broken up and completed by further collectives or identities of victims. Thus, the act of lighting candles is not at all trivial but proves to be highly (cosmo)political: due to its selectivity; it makes collective identities visible which are not derived from the historical event but require the public recognition of group-related pasts. Baer and Schnettler consider the fact that a traditional Jewish ritual is adopted for this and integrated in a non-Jewish context of Holocaust remembrance: an indication “of a universalisation and also a popularisation of religious symbols and concepts for the purposes of modern remembrance rituals” (Schnettler & Baer, 2013, p. 9). 7.4

Summary: Modernity and Memory

Time-diagnostic views of (post-)modernity give a specific answer to the question of what can be understood by social memory: it is oblivion which moves

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increasingly into the foreground and becomes more significant in late-modern societies. However, there are different reasons for this diagnosis. On the one hand, modernity is associated with oblivion as modern societies liberate themselves from outmoded structures and traditions and inexorably move towards the future. To this there is added a rapid acceleration of social life, which can be read both in the increasingly shorter half-life of mass media information and from the changes in consumption as well as from the growing difficulty of making experiences. Post-modern perspectives complete this image with the loss of ‘great’ narratives, among which can also be counted historical narratives: society can no longer be reduced and referred to an image of the past and a homogenous time but expects itself, as well as the individuals living in it, to make their own histories. However, that this does not come with a loss of memory but, at best, with a shift of contexts and framework conditions, has been demonstrated by the contributions by Elena Esposito as well as Daniel Levy and Natan Sznaider. The burgeoning complexity of modern society, which has, on the one hand, to do with the digitalisation of communication and, on the other, with the globalisation of societies which were formerly hedged in by national states, results in new kinds of memory – the ‘telematic’ one and the ‘cosmopolitan’ one – which, under changing conditions, establish inherently logical ways of organising references to the past. Thus, there is no reason to be pessimistic: even (post-)modernity must selectively refer to the past and follows specific path-dependencies. Or, to put it in other words: even (post-)modernity has a memory which can be deciphered with the help of the set of tools presented in this book.

Chapter 8

Conclusion and Prospects In this book we have compiled a number of positions which have the capability of shaping and delineating the field of a sociology of memory. In doing so, it was not our main intent to provide an overview of the many and varied publications dealing with issues of social memory, remembering and forgetting. Rather, we were interested in opening up the topic for sociological thought. Such an enterprise cannot be realized utilising just meta-analysis or a synthesis of the many topically-relevant research works, but requires a conceptualtheoretical analysis. Thus, the systematisation refers instead to the question of where in sociological theory the topic is already manifestly or latently existing and where it can be fruitfully connected. Depending upon the degree to which one succeeds with identifying and presenting such connection points, it is also possible to identify empirical questions which, on the one hand, can be dealt with more adequately with the help of a new terminology and which, on the other hand, are only revealed as being relevant for sociology with the help of this terminology. Thus, the Social Memory, which the title of this book refers to, must still prove its worth as a new theoretical and research perspective. To achieve this, we firstly discussed some basic philosophical problems which point to the sociological relevance of the triad of concepts: memory – remembering – forgetting. This was firstly developed in view of the individual and the problem of the individual time consciousness, for, without reflection on continuity, neither the observable behaviour of others nor one’s own actions can be imagined. However, as we have shown, this reference to the past cannot be understood as being an exclusively cognitive reflection process; as thinking. Since the mid19th century, it is known that experiences are not only ‘remembered’ but are rather imprinted or inscribed into the body. This goes as far as to cover the entire sensory system’s capability of perception being controlled by traces left in or at the body by past experiences. Only against this background does it become obvious that the situations one encounters and in which one must find orientation are co-shaped by the ‘grown’ potential of perception. What we believe to be relevant is imposed on us, first of all, by the course of what we have been experiencing so far; then, when starting to think, we make use of those opportunities for reflection and interpretation that our previous contact to our environment made possible. A conceptually clear analysis of the associated problems, however, becomes possible only if the concepts of event,

© Brill Fink, 2022 | doi:10.30965/9783846767399_009

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experience, experiences and remembering are brought together. By having made an associated systematisation offer we have made obvious that remembering and forgetting do not contradict each other. At this level, forgetting – we have spoken of forgetfulness – happens, first of all, unconsciously, whereas remembering is necessarily a conscious process. As, due to the corporeality of memory, the reference to the past mostly evades conscious reflection, remembering must be understood as an exceptional case which comes into question only if one has become aware of one’s own forgetfulness. Subsequent to these reflections, which were mostly oriented towards the individual and were supposed to allow the communication of a better understanding of some memory-theoretical concepts and connections, in the context of an excursion the topic of time already developed was taken up once again. For sociology, it is not only the individual time consciousness – in the sense of the possibilities and limitations of reflectively reaching back to the past – that is of significance, but also the question of the social or societal construction of time. Above all in modern society, social time is a crucial social reference frame for drawing on the past, as orienting towards measured, limited time may structure the past. By taking theories of the social construction of time into consideration, the preparations were concluded for working out the connection between society and memory. Also, there was a chronological approach to this: following the examples of the French-functionalist sociology of Durkheim and Halbwachs, followed by US Pragmatism in the tradition of William James and then of social phenomenology according to Bergson and Husserl, the beginnings of memory-sociological analyses were presented. The appearance of Fascist regimes in Europe as well as World War II mark a historical break for not only sociological, but also memory research. It was not only that research traditions were interrupted by flight, emigration or –as in the cases of Walter Benjamin and Maurice Halbwachs – by persecution and death; the aftershocks of the war and the reconstruction of Europe left almost as little room for a memory-scientific, critical debate on chains of events and path-dependencies as had been politically intended in the authoritarian wartime societies. Especially in Europe, when it comes to social-scientific memory research there is a generational gap across the disciplines between the end of the war and the events of 1968, which was only gradually closed from the 1970s onwards, as a result of Holocaust research and the historical reappraisal of National Socialism.1 However, as we have shown, the ‘memorylessness’ of 1 This refers most of all to Europe, however also in the United States of America the topic of memory could not push through to the post-war period. When in the 1970s Mary Douglas edits the Halbwachs volume on collective memory in English, there is hardly any resonance.

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post-war sociology was only characterized by circumscriptions of memory terminology. Structural functionalism and, in its wake, systems theory explains the continuation, or the continuity, of social systems by way of other concepts; only the theory of social systems adopts the terminology of memory in the 1980s. In the 1990s the social-phenomenological sociology of knowledge rediscovers the issue of memory, however (for some inexplicable reason), treats it as only a marginal part of its research topic. Also, the research traditions of sociological practice and network theories manage without an integration of memory theories. However, since the 1970s they have been dealing intensively – by making use of complicated surrogate constructions – with problems of reference to the past in a social order being inscribed into bodies and objects. In view of this more recent theoretical development of sociology, we aimed at revealing the starting points relevant to the sociology of memory and at suggesting the use of appropriate theoretical figures and terms. After having presented an overview of essential social theories, in the final section we returned to a main subject of sociological thought and raised the question – this time not historically but theoretically – of whether the disinterest in the topic of memory might have been due to the nature of sociology as a modern science. As long as sociology pursues its positivist programme – dating back as far as to Auguste Comte – it may be satisfied with a present that extends just until the most recent past and may use its potential for working out visions of the future of society. Thus, the more the discipline makes itself subject to the basic principles of modernity, the less seems the legitimising potential of any reference to the past.2 Since the appearance of new research questions, which in the context of globalized social orders deal with the development of a collective identity beyond the national state, sociological thought starts accepting the necessity of constant social reflection. Accordingly, we assume that the sociology of memory as an element of general sociology, sociology of knowledge and sociological theory – and not as a special kind of sociology – is currently experiencing a fresh start. The new challenges the social sciences are facing in a globalized world suggest a revaluation of even established, comprehensively-discussed, sociological research issues, at the heart of which are three prospects of analysis which are closely connected to each other and crucial for the sociology of memory: the reconstruction of the development of the social present on the basis of path-dependencies (historicity) which can Nevertheless, dealing with memory and remembering goes on, even if it is at a minor scale, so that there is no reason to suspect suppression. 2 The fact that positions of a historical sociology have almost disappeared and have been rediscovered only in recent years may be due to such a development.

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be understood and perhaps even explained by drawing on selection patterns, and social relevance structures which, due to past experiences, allow for the provision of the ‘perception’ of individuals and groups with orientation, when it comes to current situations and shaping the future. As a conclusion –in the sense of presenting prospects – we would like to point to those fields of research in the context of which the terminology of memory could further be systematically developed. These prospects can be organized by distinguishing four general characteristics of social memories: autonomy, mutuality, plurality and change. a) The autonomy of social memories: American sociologist Jeffrey Olick distinguishes two cultures of social-scientific memory research: on the one hand, he identifies an approach at the sociality of memory which focuses strictly on the individual, is sceptical about any memory formation which might be imagined as being supra-individual, orients itself mainly at (social-)psychological questions and, as to its methods, makes use mostly of data collected by way of surveys. He calls the concept of memory which such studies are based on (and which again is based on the aggregation of individual memories), “collected memory”: that is, a kind of collected or compiled memory (Olick, 1999, pp. 338341). On the other hand, Olick identifies theoretical approaches that ascribe to social memories the status of autonomously operating social spheres in which individual remembering takes place. This is not about the “aggregated individual memories of the members of a group” (Olick, 1999, p. 338) but about the independent existence of groups and the symbolically pre-structured social memory contexts within which individuals, being social beings, always move. For this concept of memory Olick chooses the term “collective memory” (Olick, 1999, pp.  341-345). Usually, sociological theories of memory start out from this second concept and understand social memories – in the sense of Émile Durkheim – as a sui generis reality which follows its own logic and cannot be explained and described by just adding up individual memories. What this means exactly can be illustrated with the example of the memory of the family. As has been demonstrated by a number of studies, families do not only maintain images of a common past, but they also implicitly determine the rules of how to speak about this past and which narratives of the past are passed on from one generation to the next.3 The memory of a family 3 How far such a family memory may reach and which topics are maintained over time is demonstrated by Mary Douglas (1986) who connects to studies by British social anthropologist Edward E. Evans-Pritchard. Hildegard Macha and Monika Witzke (2008) as well as Nicole Burgermeister and Nicole Peter (2014) carried out more recent empirical studies on the coconstruction process of family memories.

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develops its own selection patterns which have to do with the relations of the family members to each other, with their intimate knowledge of each other, with their expectations of loyalty, and with their emotional ties. One crucial factor – which includes membership to organisations or belonging to cultural circles maintaining their own memories and traditions – is that the family, as a long-standing social group, usually has always existed before: individuals are born into the family and are socialized there in the context of a social memory they have not created themselves. In the course of an empirical study Harald Welzer and his team reconstructed the selection patterns of the memory of National Socialism among German families with the help of group discussions and qualitative multi-generational interviews (see Welzer, 2005). At a first glance, the astonishing result is that it is obvious that among families an image of the past is maintained which is in stark contrast to the public memory of National Socialism: according to the memory of the family, even the grandfather who was actually counted among the perpetrators of the Third Reich was no Nazi but at best a fellow traveller, in the ideal case a resistance fighter. On the whole, the overwhelming majority of family memories, as they are found in the transcripts, are about heroes or victims – explicit hints at perpetrators during the Third Reich are a rarity.4 If we look at the family structure, which is strongly influenced by emotional ties and expectations of loyalty, we find a plausible explanation for this striking selectivity of family memories: For the communicative consciousness of the past among the family is not just a process of passing on experiences and events but a common practice which only defines the family as a group, which has its own history each member participates in and which does not seem to change. By way of ‘conversational remembering’, by way of speaking about the past among each other, families celebrate their histories as that of interaction communities, and this is about confirming the social identity of the we-group. (Welzer, 2008, p. 151)

As demonstrated by the interviews and group discussions, the family members themselves are not aware that, in the course of the joint conversation, they create a memory narrative which shows considerable differences to the verifiable history of the family, and does not meet expectations concerning an appropriate reappraisal of a National Socialist past. As suggested by the study, the cross-generational memory of the time of National Socialism indeed does not largely follow the path of the perpetrator-centred, guilt-confessing public memory but one’s own, victim- and hero-centred logic which is a consequence 4 See Harald Welzer (2001, p. 567) whose finding of a cumulating lionization is also confirmed by a study on the inter-generational passing on of family memories by Nina Leonhard (2006).

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of the social dynamics described above. The example of the family memory demonstrates impressively that groups, communities and contexts into which the individual is embedded can, in a variety of ways, influence which topics are remembered, and in which ways.5 Thus, to develop a thorough understanding of social memories it is not enough to collect the memories of individuals by way of standardized interviews and to calculate mean values from them. Rather, social memories are autonomous realms whose stubborn selection logic must be understood and reconstructed by the help of genuinely sociological means. b) The mutuality of individual and social memories: individual and social memories are separate entities but cannot be considered in isolation from each other. In the practice of social remembering they are constantly crossedover – and nothing else is possible, as is demonstrated by the simultaneous use of engrams and exograms as well as by the inescapable embedding of the individual in social contexts. Talking about social memories, however, does not mean that all members of a group remember an event in the same way or that, vice versa, no individual memories are possible. To explain this once again with the example of the family memory: […] individual family members may well remember different versions of the family history […] – but the ‘family memory’ provides a frame which secures that all those involved believe to remember the same thing in one and the same way. The family memory has […] a synthesizing function, securing the coherence and identity of the intimate memory community of the family precisely by all those involved assuming the fiction of talking about and remembering one and the same thing. (Welzer, 2008, p. 151)

Still, individuals are provided with a stubborn consciousness as well as a specific memory. Participating in memory communities implies participation in shared horizons which, although not ensuring the topical adjustment of all memories, are able to control and guide the memories happening in their context. If this finding is generalized, it means that social memories influence individual remembering insofar as, by way of narratives, discourses, symbols or media, they produce and provide contextually similar selection triggers for the individual memory. In this sense, social memories are frames for individual memories, helping it – as well as all other participants – by providing suitable 5 The fact that social groups are not necessarily interaction communities but may also be based on technology-based communication practices allowing for bridging spatial and chronological distances between their members underlines the relevance of a memory-sociological perspective on modern processes of communitization. See Hubert Knoblauch (1999), Erik Meyer and Claus Leggewie (2004) as well as Gerd Sebald and Jan Weyand (2011).

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references to the past, each according to the framing. Concerning theories of social memory, this raises the question of how the memory-immanent “dialectic of individuality and sociality” (Welzer, 2008, p. 221), that is the inescapable interaction between individual and social memory, may be understood in terms of sociology. c) The variety of social memories: The plural, which has been used so far as a matter of course, makes it obvious that there is not ‘a’ or even ‘the’ social memory but that social memories must always be imagined as being plural. Also, apart from families, any bigger or smaller long-lasting group develops its own memory. As emphasized by Gerd Sebald and Jan Weyand, this also applies for social fields which are otherwise differentiated: At different social levels, in different action fields, and not least in different milieus there develop each different social memories. The legal system with its consideration of legal history is different from the political system with its consideration of political history. Different functional systems do not only show different social and topical but also different socio-spatial points of reference: e. g. economy refers to the world, law on the other hand (as far as it is not about international law) refers to the national state. (Sebald & Weyand, 2011, p. 181)

If, furthermore, we relate the concept of memory to crucial dimensions of social inequality, then social memories of the sexes (see Addams, 2002; Lengermann & Niebrugge, 2009; Penkwitt, 2006); the generations (see Bude, 1997; Mannheim, 1952; Welzer, 2001);6 migration (see Georgi, 2003; Glynn & Kleist, 2012); religions (see e. g. Griffin, 2004)7; and of classes (see Bauman, 1982; Debouzy, 1986) emerge. It is obvious that the different manifestations and types of social memory overlap and interact when it comes to the actual practice of remembering.8 If we look at the family memory, generational memories are at work there: gender memories, the social memories of certain regions, stratum- and class-specific memories, nationally framed memories and so on. Against this background, family memories can be described less as homogeneous entities but as “heterogeneous spaces of memory” (Burgermeister & Peter, 2014, p.  118) where different, sometimes contradicting, versions of the past are negotiated. As Nicole Burgermeister and Nicole Peter demonstrate 6 Above all in Nina Leonhard (2006) it is about the non-simultaneity of the simultaneous, when in one and the same present there clash different generations with their each authoritative past. 7 Or – in view of the regional differentiation of memories of the former GDR – Dietrich Mühlberg (2002). 8 This insight allows for connecting issues of the sociology of memory to inequality-theoretical issues of intersectionality.

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in their study on family memories of the period of National Socialism, family memories refer to different sources – “reports (by contemporaries) and conversations, books, films, newspapers, radio, teaching materials used at schools, places of remembrance” (Burgermeister & Peter, 2014, p. 124) – when jointlyproducing a memory narrative. If we assume that each of these sources adopts and reproduces the selectivity of a specifically constituted and legitimized social memory, the assumption of a heterogeneous space of memory, in contrast to the idea of “family memory” as a closed container, becomes plausible. For theories of social memories, these findings mean two things, above all: on the one hand, they face the problem of developing a theory which does not only apply to certain, selected memories but may claim general validity. The way in which this claim is realized has again to do with theoretical and methodological decisions which may be very different, each according to the tradition of a theory. On the other hand, the sociology of memory is confronted with the far more complicated task of providing information about which interactions might exist between the various levels of memory. The functioning of individual fields in general – such as nations, families or legal systems – has meanwhile been sufficiently developed by way of both country- and culture-comparative analyses and of diachronic studies (see Welzer, 2010, pp. 7-8). However, if and how the social memories of individual fields are structurally interconnected – which common grounds and contradictions exist when it comes to processing the past, and how in concrete situations different versions of the past are synchronized – cannot be satisfactorily answered given the current state of research and the development of theories. In a way, this reflects the reciprocity of individual and social memory: it is easy to see that the respective fields cannot exist in isolation from each other but are interconnected in a variety of ways – yet, how exactly this works is still an open question. Harald Welzer even categorically rules out the possibility of giving an answer: “The relation between large-scale social patterns of interpretation and individual memory is so complex that any analysis would necessarily get stuck in wild speculation” (Welzer, 2008, p. 148). However, there is no need to be this pessimistic when it comes to the variety of social memories, even more so as sociology is provided precisely with concepts and theories which have been developed against the background of the problem of linking and synchronising idiosyncratic social fields. d) Changing social memories: in conclusion it must be stated that social memories are, themselves, socially conditioned. Admittedly, their basic feature is still the event-communicated creation of orientation structures which are accessed at any given moment. Memories are selection apparatuses whose

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shape remains relatively stable, whereas the contents adjust to the respective circumstances. In view of the great variety of social memories, for sociological research it is still an interesting question as to which selection aspects and relevances develop in each individual case and what their effect is. The genealogy concept according to Michel Foucault, as well as the method of discourse analysis developed by connecting to his ideas provide some stimulation in this respect, however they do not recognize the way in which social memories function, which are by no means exclusively power-mediated (see Foucault, 1972; Keller, 2008). Accordingly, the form of memory changes at best with the ‘long waves’ of social evolution. The contents of the manifold social memories, on the other hand, correspond to the respective established routines, practices and habits. Only a change of ‘traditions’, ‘myths’ or ‘narratives’ can, in this sense, be reconstructed in the context of memory-specific and, thus, communicative reflection. Admittedly, this allows us to take a look at memory cycles and social taboos, but in this way we will neither grasp all the processes determining the development and adjustment of social memories, nor the social conditions of stability and change – such as with changes that are currently observed in the course of the implementation and dissemination of information technologies.

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The Authors Oliver Dimbath, born 1968, is Professor of Sociology at the University of Koblenz-Landau. He is interested in collective and cultural memory studies, sociology of knowledge and sociological theory. His publications include: Oblivionism. Forgetting and Forgetfulness in Modern Science (2021), Forms of Articulating Epistemic Critique: the Necessity and Virtue of Internal Skepticism in Academia, in: Science and Technology Studies (2016 with S.  Boeschen) and Exploring the Dark Side of Social Memory: Towards a Social Theory of Forgetting, in: G. Sebald/J. Wagle (ed.): Theorizing Social Memories (2016 with P. Wehling). Michael Heinlein, born 1977, is a sociologist at the Institute for Social Science Research in Munich (ISF München). He is interested in collective and cultural memory studies, sociology of knowledge and sociology of digitalization, technology and work. His publications include: Futures of Modernity (2012, coedited by Cordula Kropp, Judith Neumer, Angelika Poferl and Regina Römhild), Reflexive Particularism and Cosmopolitanization: The Reconfiguration of the National in Europe, in: Global Networks (2010 with D. Levy and L. Breuer) and Moving Homes: From House to Nursing Home and the (Un-)Canniness of Being-at-Home, in: Space and Culture (2009 with M. Schillmeier).

Index Addams, Jane 75, 97-102, 104, 185, 191, 200, 205, 207 Adorno, Theodor W. 162 Albert, Gerd 205 Alberth, Lars IX, 191 Alexandre, Jeanne 85, 86, 191 Anderson, John R. 191, 92 Aristotle 4 Assmann, Aleida IX, 19, 20, 99, 137, 148, 191, 198 Assmann, Jan IX, 67, 76, 129, 137, 191, 192, 198 Augustine 3, 4, 192 Baecker, Dirk 130, 192 Baer, Alejandro 175-177, 205 Baraldi, Claudio 45, 192 Barnes, John A. 172, 192 Bartlett, Frederic C. 45-48, 192 Bartz, Christina 61, 192 Bauman, Zygmunt 159, 171, 185, 192 Beck, Ulrich 154, 160, 170, 173, 192 Beise, Arnd 172, 192 Belliger, Andréa 147, 192 Benjamin, Walter IX, 158, 162, 164, 165, 180, 191, 192, 194 Bentham, Jeremy 118 Berek, Mathias 54, 132, 135-137, 192 Berger, Peter L. 76, 132-136, 192 Bergson, Henri 4, 8-12, 14, 23-32, 42, 45, 50, 51, 71, 72, 75, 81, 85, 103-105, 139, 151, 158, 180, 192, 193, 196, 199 Bernet, Rudolf 11, 13, 193 Binswanger, Ludwig 28 Birx, H. James 199 Bittner, Günther 206 Blondel, Charles 86, 203 Bohnsack, Ralf 109, 193 Boltraffio 18, 20 Bonß, Wolfgang 117, 193 Boothe, Brigitte 60, 193 Borges, Jorge Luis 157 Botticelli 18, 20 Bourdieu, Pierre 81, 144-146, 151, 193, 207 Brachet, Tanguy 115, 194 Breuer, Lars 175, 201

Brown, Stephen D. VIII, 202 Bude, Heinz 185, 193 Bühl, Walter L. 160, 193 Burgermeister, Nicole 182, 185, 186, 193 Burton, James 25, 193 Callon, Michel 147, 193 Carneades 34, 35, 38, 40 Caruth, Cathy 62, 193 Casey, Edward S. 29, 193 Cevolini, Alberto 129, 193 Cicero 63 Clair, Robin 81, 194 Clausen, Lars 145, 194 Cohen, Robert S. 198 Comte, Auguste 75, 154, 181 Connerton, Paul 81, 141-144, 151, 161-165, 194 Cook, James 148 Cooley, Charles H. 75, 97, 102-104, 194 Corsi, Giancarlo 45, 192 Coss, J. 202 Cozolino, Louis 66, 194 Czaplicka, John 76, 192 Dabag, Mihran 191 David, Guy 115, 194 de Certeau, Michel 165 Debouzy, Marianne 185, 194 Denschlag, Felix 165, 194 Descartes, René 59 Dewey, John 101 Dimbath, Oliver 48, 64-67, 73, 89, 124, 128, 138, 141, 143, 150, 151, 154, 159, 191, 193-200, 204, 207 Docherty, Thomas 201 Donald, Merlin 65, 195 Dörr, Margret 202 Douglas, Mary 46, 180, 182, 195 Draaisma, Drouwe 19, 195 Dreher, Jochen 206 Durkheim, Émile XI, 66, 67, 70, 72, 73, 75-87, 96, 97, 113, 114, 116-119, 121, 128, 132, 137, 139, 140, 153, 175, 180, 182, 195, 200 Ebbinghaus, Hermann 46, 47, 156, 195, 205 Eco, Umberto 64, 196

210 Egger, Stephan 67, 196 Eichenberg, Ariane 197, 199, 208 Eiland, Howard 192 Elias, Norbert 73, 74, 142, 196 Endreß, Martin 138, 196 Engell, Lorenz 26, 52, 196 Engelmann, Peter 201 Engels, Friedirch 153, 165, 202 Erdfelder, Edgar 62, 196 Erdmann, Eva 172, 196 Erll, Astrid IX, 196, 202 Esposito, Elena 45, 87, 88, 122, 123, 127, 130, 166-169, 178, 191, 192, 196 Evans-Pitchard, Edward E. 182 Feindt, Gregor 204 Foucault, Michel 187, 196, 199 Freud, Sigmund 17-20, 60, 59, 157, 158, 196 Fröhlich, Gerhard 207 Georgi, Viola B. 185, 196 Giddens, Anthony 140, 197 Giesen, Bernhard 175, 176, 197 Gillen, Francis James 80, 207 Glynn, Irial 185, 197 Goffman, Erving 89 Goody, Jack 172, 197 Griffin, Larry J. 185, 197 Gross, David 61, 155-159, 197 Gudehus, Christian 197, 199, 208 Gurwitsch, Aron 36 Haag, Hanna 99, 197 Habermas, Jürgen 138 Hahn, Alois 144, 145, 197 Halbwachs, Maurice X, XI, 66, 67, 72-76, 85-96, 103, 114, 119, 122, 123, 128, 133-137, 139, 161, 174, 180, 191 196, 197, 203 Hassard, John 200 Hausstein, Alexandra 55, 56, 197 Heidegger, Martin 13, 49, 197 Heinlein, Michael 66, 67, 138, 141, 143, 149, 175, 191-195, 197, 198, 199, 201, 204 Helmholtz, Hermann 156 Hemken, Kai-Uwe 191 Hillebrandt, Frank 140, 198 Hobbes, Thomas 116, 118 Hobsbawm, Eric J. 94, 198 Hofer, Harald 162, 198

Index Höfer, Renate 199 Holl, Mirijam-Kerstin 124, 198 Hölscher, Tonio IX, 192 Holzer, Jerzy 201 Honegger, Claudia 199, 205 Horkheimer, Max 162 Hradil, Stefan 199 Husserl, Edmund 4, 11-15, 26, 29, 30, 36, 51, 53, 70, 75, 103, 110, 113, 125, 180, 193 Huyssen, Andreas 160, 198 Isaac, Jeffrey C. 202 Jakoby, Nina R. 21, 198 James, William 4-8, 14, 51, 72, 75, 101, 103, 105, 156, 180, 198, 206 Jarausch, Konrad H. 203 Jedlowski, Paolo 90, 198 Jennings, Michael W. 192 Joachimsthaler, Jürgen 58, 198 Joas, Hans 96, 97, 198 Junge, Matthias 200 Jüttemann, Gerd 204 Kaern, Michael 198 Kastl, Jörg Michael 132, 146, 147, 199 Kattago , Siobhan VIII, 199 Kearns, Thomas R. 84, 205 Kecskemeti, Paul 202 Keller, Reiner 187, 199 Keupp, Heiner 57, 199 Khurana, Thomas 130, 131, 199 Kinzler, Anja 159, 195 Kissmann, Ulrike Tikvah 142, 199 Klein, Regina 202 Kleist, J.Olaf 185, 197 Klinger, Judith 198 Klose, J. 15, 199 Kneer, Georg 147, 198, 199 Knoblauch, Hubert 132, 134, 135, 137, 184, 199 Knorr-Cetina, Karin 205 Kölbl, Carlos 46, 47, 199 König, Helmut 84, 199 Korte, Hermann 118, 199 Korte, Martin 157, 200 Krapoth, Hermann 67, 85, 191, 200 Krapp, Peter 63, 200 Krawatzek, Félix 204 Krieger, David J. 147, 192

211

Index Kron, Thomas 76, 200 Kühner, Angela 62, 200 Laborde, Denis 67, 85, 191, 200 Latimer, Joanna 205 Latour, Bruno 147, 149, 199, 200, 208 Lau, Christoph 64, 200 Lavabre, Marie-Claire 201 Law, John 147, 193, 200 Lawrence, D.H. 157 Leggewie, Claus 84, 184, 200, 202 Lehmann, René 194, 197, 206, 207 Lengermann, Patricia 101, 185, 200 Leonhard, Nina 183, 185, 200 Levy, Daniel VIII, 84, 173-175, 178, 201, 204 Liebsch, Burkart 49, 201 Lieury, Alain 19, 201 Luckmann, Thomas 33, 35-41, 76, 107, 110, 132-136, 192, 206 Luhmann, Niklas 3, 6, 70, 115, 116, 118, 121-123, 125-130, 166-168, 192, 198, 201, 206 Lukács, Georg 162 Lustiger Thaler, Henri 67, 201 Lyotard, Jean-Francois 169-171, 201 Macha, Hildegard 182, 202 Maguire, Eleanor O. 65, 66, 208 Malhotra, Sheena 194 Mannheim, Karl 137, 185, 196, 202 Mariezcurrena, Javier 84, 205 Marotzki, Winfried 202 Marshall, Alfred 117 Marx, Karl 153, 162, 202 Maurer, Andrea 193 Mauss, Marcel 162 May, Eva-Lotte 84, 202 McNally, Richard J. 62, 202 Mead, George H. 56, 57, 75, 97, 102-105, 202 Merleau-Ponty, Maurice 23, 26-29, 31, 42, 45, 151, 202 Merton, Robert K. 69, 70, 71, 207 Meyer, Erik 184, 202 Michailow, Matthias 29, 202 Middleton, David VIII, 202 Miebach, Bernhard 120, 203 Mills, John Stuart 118 Minow, Martha 84, 203 Misztal, Barbara A. VIII, 81-84, 156, 159, 160, 203

Möller, Jens 44, 208 Mucchielli, Laurent 86, 203 Mühlberg, Dietrich 186, 203 Namer, Gérard 90, 203 Nassehi, Armin 124, 203 Naumann, Klaus 208 Nentwig-Gesemann, Iris 193 Niebrugge, Gillian 101, 185, 200 Nieder, Ludwig 193 Niethammer, Lutz 57, 203 Nietzsche, Friedrich 49, 156, 157, 203 Nohl, Arnd-Michael 193 Nohlen, Dieter 198 Nora, Pierre 160, 203 Nünning, Ansgar IX, 196, 202 Öchsner, Florian 194, 197, 206, 207 Oettler, Anika 84, 203 Olick, Jeffrey K. VIII, 67, 68, 182, 203, 204 Osiel, Mark 84, 204 Packard, Noel 200 Pareto, Vilfredo 117 Parsons, Talcott 78, 115-121, 201, 204 Pelizäus-Hoffmeister, Helga 193 Penkwitt, Meike 185, 191, 204 Pensky, Max 198 Pestel, Friedemann 84, 204 Peter, Nicole 182, 185, 186, 193 Pethes, Nicolas 172, 192, 193, 196, 197, 200, 204, 205, 207 Pfeiferová, Štěpánka 121, 207 Phillips, Bernard S. 198 Pickel, Gert 202, 208 Pickel, Susanne 202, 208 Plato, Alexander IX, 156, 204 Platt, Kristin 191 Proust, Marcel 60, 61, 159, 204 Quante, Michael 58, 204 Radstone, Susannah 206 Ranger, Terence 94, 198 Rauer, Valentin 138, 147-149, 204 Reckwitz, Andreas 140, 141, 204 Reddig, Melanie 76, 200 Rehbein, Boike 207 Ricoeur, Paul 205

212 Rieger, Stefan 46, 205 Robbins, Joyce VIII, 67, 68, 204 Roht-Arriaza, Naomi 84, 205 Rosa, Hartmut 71, 165, 194, 205 Rosenthal, Gabriele IX, 205 Ross, Dorothy 97, 205 Rowe, Aimee Carrillo 194 Ruchatz, Jens 192, 193, 196, 197, 200, 204, 205, 207 Sabrow, Martin 203 Santayana, George 155, 205 Sarat, Austin 84, 205 Schacter, Daniel L. 62, 205 Schatzki, Theodore R. 140, 205 Schillmeier, Michael 149, 205 Schindler, Larissa 141, 143, 195, 198, 199 Schluchter, Wolfgang 201 Schlunke, Katrina 148, 149, 205 Schmid, Michael 193 Schmidt, Burghart 170, 205 Schmidt, Julia 199 Schmidt, Siegmar 202, 208 Schmidt, Siegfried J. 207 Schmitt, Marco 121, 124, 144, 150, 205 Schneider, Wolfgang Ludwig 118-121, 127, 205 Schnettler, Bernt 175-177, 205 Schroer, Markus 147, 198, 199 Schultze, Rainer-Olaf 198 Schulze, Gerhard 71, 206 Schulze, Theodor 206 Schüttpelz, Erhard 147, 199 Schütz, Alfred VIII, XI, 4, 13, 23, 29-42, 53-55, 75, 106-112, 132, 133, 135, 136, 138, 139, 151, 202, 206 Schützeichel, Rainer 124, 206 Schwan, Gesine 201 Schwartz, Barry 103, 206 Schwarz, Bill 157, 161, 206 Schwelling, Birgit 201 Sebald, Gerd 29, 30, 41, 66, 67, 78, 121, 132, 137, 138, 184, 185, 194, 197, 202, 206, 207 Seigfried, Charlene H. 100, 101, 207 Shilling, Chris 141, 207 Sicking, Manfred 199 Sigmund, Steffen 205 Signorelli 18

Index Simmel, Georg 90, 137, 198, 207 Sorokin, Pitrim A. 69, 70, 81, 207 Spencer-Brown, George H. 130 Spencer, Walter Baldwin 80, 207 Srubar, Ilja 29, 202 Stöckmann, Ingo 60, 207 Straub, Jürgen 46, 47, 58, 199, 207 Šubrt, Jiři 121, 207 Suderland, Maja 207 Sznaider, Natan 84, 173-175, 178, 201 Themistocles 63 Tholen, Toni 54, 207 Thomae, Hans 204 Traxler, Franz 199 Trimçev, Rieke 204 Vieth, Andreas 52, 207 Vinitzky-Seroussi, Vered VIII, 204 von Felden, Heide 202 von Foerster, Heinz 125, 207 von Savigny, Eike 205 Watt, Ian 172, 197 Wearing, Clive 14 Wearing, Deborah 14, 207 Weber, Max 29, 30, 109, 117, 171, 207 Wehling, Peter 64, 141, 144-146, 194-196, 198-200, 207, 208 Wehr, Ingrid 84, 208 Weinrich, Harald 4, 19, 63, 67, 208 Wells, Herbert George 1, 2, 208 Welzer, Harald 61, 62, 65, 134, 137, 183-186, 197, 199, 208 Wetzel, Dietmar J. 85, 208 Weyand, Jan 132, 137, 138, 184, 185, 206 White, Harrison 150 Wieser, Matthias 147, 208 Wild, Elke 44, 208 Witzke, Monika 182, 202 Wobbe, Theresa 205 Wolf, Gerhard 198 Woollett, Katherine 65, 66, 208 Young, Alan 62, 208 Zemeckis, Robert K. 2 Zerubavel, Eviatar 85, 208