Review: History and collective memory in South Asia, 1200-2000 (original) (raw)

The Process of Collective Memory Formation: Bridging the Divide Between Ancient and Modern Societies

Scholars should study collective memory formation as a social process in which individuals encounter bits and pieces of the past as represented in different social artifacts. These artifacts may be a social practice, such as the telling and retelling of epic poetry, or a physical artifact such as a drawing, painting, photograph or film. The individual interprets these artifacts in dialogue with others in a social setting. Collective memory scholarship tends to focus on single case studies, occasionally with a bit of implicit or explicit comparison. But even when comparisons do exist, they tend not to bridge the divide between ancient and modern societies, as distinguished by levels of technological development. By looking at different categories of data, common in collective memory work, the article identifies commonalities that stretch across ancient and modern societies, thus helping scholars to identify universal aspects of collective memory formation.

Philosophical Reflections on the Ways of Memory and History

History and Theory, 2018

Philosopher Jeffrey Barash seeks to clarify the concept of collective memory, which has taken on wide-ranging meanings in contemporary scholarship. Returning to the original insight of sociologist Maurice Halbwachs during the 1920s, he grounds the concept in the living social memory of the present, whose sphere is widened by its capacity to draw upon a past beyond its ken through the symbolization of its remembrance. He offers two preliminary propositions: first, there is a history to the way philosophers have contextualized collective memory through the ages; second, there is a politics in the transmission of collective memory, highly visible in the uses of memory by mass media in the contemporary age. He builds his argument around four interrelated interpretations concerning: the ever more circumscribed role attributed to collective memory in the passage from antiquity into modernity; the dependence of collective memory upon living memory; the rising power of media to mold collective memory to present purposes; and historical understanding vis-àvis evocation of collective memory as oppositional ways of accessing the past. I close with commentary that places Barash's philosophical interpretation within the context of contemporary historiographical practice, with particular attention to the scholarship of French historian Pierre Nora on the French national memory, and that of German scholars Jan and Aleida Assmann on the preservation and transmission of memorable cultural legacies.

Memory and History: An Introduction

Collective Memory and Collective Identity: Deuteronomy and the Deuteronomistic History in Their Context, 2021

Memory and History: An Introduction "Collective memory" is one of the issues that has attracted the attention and discussion of scholars internationally across academic disciplines over the past five decades.1 The origin of its theoretical frameworks derives from pioneering works of great thinkers in the 19th century. Despite the fact that Émile Durkheim never utilized the expression "collective memory," he is regarded as the one who gave the foundation to the idea, specifying the social importance of remembrance in The Elementary Forms of Religious Life. Durkheim characterizes society as an objective reality that maintains "collective consciousness." For him, "collective consciousness" has an impact on individual consciousness.2 "Collective consciousness" is the supreme form of the psychological life, because it is "the consciousness of the consciousnesses."3 Durkheim asserts that being located outside of or above individual and local contingencies, the "collective consciousness" sees things through their perpetual and essential nature, which it shapes into transmittable ideas. On the other hand, Henri Bergson accentuates the subjective facets of time, perception, reality and memory when he writes: Memory actualized in an image differs, then, profoundly from pure memory. The image is a present state, and its sole share in the past is the memory from which it arose. Memory, on the contrary, powerless as long as it remains without utility, is pure from all admixture of sensation, is without attachment to the present, and is, consequently, unextended.4 One generation later, Maurice Halbwachs, who was a student of both Durkheim and Bergson, presented the term "collective memory" in a sociological context, employing it not only to allude to collective portrayals but also to indicate the 1 The literature that discusses "collective memory" is extensive. A few selected monographs should suffice to get a glimpse of the general situation in current scholarship:

MEMORIES IN BROAD HISTORICAL SPHERE:-PRIVILEGED OVER HISTORICAL EVIDENCES AND FACTS

Representation is a crucial precondition for human perception in general: pure, organic, and objective, memories can never be witnessed as such.-TONY BENNETT History and memory explores the manifold ways in which the past shapes the present and is shaped by present perceptions. The journal focuses on a wide range of questions relating to the formation of historical consciousness and collective memory, the role of historical memory in modern and pre-modern culture and the relationship between historical research and images of the past in different societies and cultures. Something remarkable has happened in the past few decades. There has been an explosion of interest in the topics of memory, collective memory, cultural memory, and commemoration. With this there has been an intensive exploration of such related themes as trauma, testimony, witnessing and the meaning of evil. Memory and history are often dialectically discussed, where memory has served the critiques of history mounted by cultural anthropologists and contained within the various forms of historical anthropology. History, on the other hand tends to receive its power from the ubiquitous locales of the state and is often the domain of the archive, the repository of historical memory. In further, I will evaluate the many articles related to the memory and history just like modernity of slavery, nomadic narratives and the event of padmavati, and Marathi history and memories of political domain. In the book of history, Bhakti, and public memory , that is memory and history of Namdev's in legacy Maharastra can be approached as a lens through which to view religion and public memory within one important linguistic and cultural region in India and thus stand as an empirical example of pan-Indian phenomenon of regionalized religious practice and history. The locus of this regional cultural memory is the idea of bhakti, which we can viewed as a form of public memory, the preservation of a past full of sentiment and historical sense maintained by religious communities.1 But in form of historicize we can also show the namdev bhakti as a historical context. In my perception the tradition of bhakti as we can also read in form of history because it is the materialistic part of commemorates with as a symbolic and theological form of history. In almost all studies of namdev, we find the common, assumption that we are talking about someone who lived at some point in history and who composed songs. In some vernacular as well other literary sources mention that namdev's character is purely fictional. In the caste formation namdev has considered as a lowest caste society, but his caste were a tailor caste in current time period. He was from Maharashtra and spoke Marathi. Namdev's character is very famously recognized in north India as well northwestern India also. In Punjab, Sikh historiography, for example, namdev lived a majority of his life in Punjab, in the village of ghumnam, where Namdev figures prominently in local memory, both textual and architectural. He mainly figures of saint and in pan-Indian cosmopolitan biography and ethnicity attributed to 1 Christian lee novetzke, History, bhakti, and public memory, namdev in religious and secular traditions-(02)page

Relationship between Memory, History and Archive: Case study of South Asia

The relationship between memory, history, and the archive has introduced new ways of engaging with questions of social power and social subordination. There is the substitution of the linear progression of historiography by one which accepts divisions and multiplicity of truth. There is an attempt made to subvert the grand narrative of history with various facets of events and cases

Historiography and Collective Memory: a discussion on Yerushalmi’s Zakhor and its interpretations

História daHistoriografia: International Journal of Theory and History of Historiography, 2023

Zakhor is the commandment of remembrance often repeated in the Torah. It is also the title of an indispensable book for reflection on Jewish identity in relation to historiography. In this article, I will start with the thesis of the Jewish historian Yerushalmi to discuss the relationship between memory and historiography in the Jewish context and beyond. Yerushalmi pointed out a distance between collective memory and historiography that is an interesting starting point for reflection on the possibilities of a non-westernized historiography. The text is divided into an introduction, three topics that aim: to present Yerushalmi’s book; to present the main comments to the book; to reflect on the place or non-place of the national element in a Jewish history; and a conclusion. Thus, I will question the tension between memory and history and a possible approximation that goes beyond the modern notion of historiography. Thus, reading Yerushalmi’s thesis as a possibility of rethinking the instruments of historiography.

Texts of Memory and Texts of History

L2 Journal, 2012

The terms "memory" and "history" are used in various ways throughout the social sciences and humanities. Drawing on longstanding debates about nations and nationalism, I trace the roots of this distinction and see how they have taken on new significance in contemporary memory studies. I outline a few assumptions about humans as meaning makers, users of cultural tools, and "cognitive misers" and then turn to oppositions that have been drawn between collective memory and formal history. These concern the degree of subjectivity or objectivity involved, the source of authority for narrative tools, and the willingness to sacrifice evidence to preserve a narrative account about the past or vice versa. In order to translate these oppositions into more concrete means for discussing memory and history, I invoke a distinction between "specific narratives" and "narrative templates," and I examine the source of "ethnocentric narcissism" that characterizes memory to a greater degree than history. Insight into this issue can be derived from drawing out William James's comments on the "me-ness" of individual human memory to examine the "us-ness" of collective memory.