"How can I recall a thing that I have forgotten" Story and memories in folklore fieldwork notes in Serbia (original) (raw)

Arv Nordic Yearbook of Folklore 2010, Special Issue on MEMORY

Special issue of ARV on Memory, Memory studies and Cultural Memory. Edited by Henning Laugerud. In various forms, the perspective of memory has held a central position in many areas of cultural-historical research since the beginning of the twentieth century. This perspective is, however, part of a long and complex tradition. The theme of this issue of Arv is also memory, but in this yearbook, the focus is slightly shifted in relation to the earlier research interest in the collective, or the supra-individual memory. In this collection of contributions, the perspective – to a greater degree, but not solely – will be to look at memory as something both individual and collective, and the way in which the “individual” and the “collective” can be said to meet – not always without resistance – in memory. Reflections on memory, its art, meaning and significance, has a long tradition going back to antiquity, also in matters concerning human knowledge and understanding of culture. We shall attempt to encircle the subject through a series of concrete examples from Antiquity, the Middle Ages and early modern times up to our near past, taken from the historic empirical material, where the examples also will serve as exempla in the classical rhetorical sense – namely as exemplary.

Memory and Local Stories: Sources of History and Knowledge

We speak so much of memory because there is so little of it left now. To reclaim the realms of Memory, many countries have invested heavily in memory sites, such as monuments, museums, archives, and others though they can never replace the lost memory. But, they are just another way to refresh and nourish our memory of the past. In this context, oral history that touches particularly on topics scarcely touched in the available history books is important, especially oral history preservation that deals with the care and upkeep of oral history materials, whatever format they may be in is essential. Using interviews with living survivors, this method of historical documentation can fill in gaps of records that make up early historical documents. This method of collecting oral history through memory is getting popular the world over thinking that much of local history and wisdom and knowledge and other cultural memories would vanish with the loss of elders who were willing to preserve and pass along. what they knew. With the advent of writing

ETHNOMUSICOLOGICAL RESEARCH OF THE GUSLARS MEMORY A PILOT STUDY

This paper concerns the research on guslars' memory (singers of epic songs accompanied by the gusle, a single-string bowed lute) in Serbia. In the context of research on improvisation—a principle of creating while performing, a comprehension of memorization strategies as part of music cognition is necessary. This kind of knowledge deems significant for deeper penetration into the centuries old survival of this genre in conditions of oral transmission. It is also a prerequisite for contriving measures for preservation of gusle singing, as one of representatives of intangible cultural heritage in Serbia and the Balkans. Particular attention in this paper is devoted to the actual research method—a specific solution as a result of work in one 'national and regional ethnomusicology' whose research strategies are determined not only by the primary focus on regional musical practice, but by general conditions of the discipline growth in this region. The author of the present study designed the field research according to experimental psychology research examples, and realized it as a pilot project.

Literary stories: cultural memory

2017

Historical and cultural memory is put into practice through narratives. As a narrative medium, literature plays an important role in the process of transformation of the past events in cultural memory. This transformation includes critical reflection or affirmation of various aspects of memory and its social context. Literary texts in this paper include short stories of Jan Drda, Josef Škvorecký and Zdeněk Rotrekl which deal with the final days of the World War Two. We never get closer to the truth than in a novel. Louis Begley. Between Fact and Fiction (Zwischen Fakten und Fiktionen, Frankfurt am Main 2008) Memory in Cultural Studies The words ‘memory’ and ‘trauma’ appear in semantic nuances and various contexts of everyday speech fairly often1. Serving their own purposes and agenda, politics and official power discourse tend to remember some historical events and forget others. But what do the notions of memory and trauma mean from 1) Terms like memory (and remembrance) are now us...

What is the folk concept of remembering

Preprint, 2025

Abstract What is involved in understanding the concept of remembering? According to the Causal Theory, the most popular analysis of remembering in philosophy, someone can be said to remember if and only if (1) the remembered event occurred (Factivity), (2) one has had personal experience of the event (Prior Experience), and (3) there exists an appropriate causal connection between one’s current memory and one’s prior experience of the event (Causality). We tested whether this way of understanding remembering is shared by native English speakers more widely (Experiment 1) and by native speakers of nine other languages around the world (Experiment 2). We asked participants to judge (a) what beliefs are entailed by someone’s subjective judgment of remembering, and (b) what conditions have to hold for someone to “actually” remember. Our results suggest that the folk concept of remembering across our samples largely falls in line with the analysis provided by the Causal Theory, while also showing significant cross-linguistic variation. These results have implications for how we should think about the scientific and philosophical objects of memory research as well as for the question of whether “remembering” and its translations express a culturally universal concept. Keywords: Remembering, Episodic Memory, Experimental Philosophy, Folk Concepts