Peter -
thanks so much for this example of memory-work - it brings to mind the
ethnographic traditions of 'oral history' (the art of interview, followed
by research to
balance the personal-historical perspective with the textually-sanctioned
perspective,
providing a rather brilliant opportunity for exploring the roles of
subjective memory
and "official" narratives of histories) -
i also read an interesting/disturbing article once about the ways
collective memory is
created in particular contexts, (in this case an elementary school
classroom), where
instruction guides subjective recall towards an official narrative that
will be
affirmed with school textbooks -
and then there are the brilliant works of Alice Miller, on the relations
between memory and
history-generational subjectivities, the ways a person can 'pass on'
trauma in the form of
remembered-history;
the point being that contradictions are often wrestled with in the work of
official narratives,
instead of being explored as a source for opening up the role that memory
plays in history,
and vice versa.
thanks again
diane
xmca@weber.ucsd.edu writes:
>I've been away from my desk for the last six weeks or so and have missed
>much of this thread. As part of my travels I spent about two weeks in
>Ireland, and as part of my trip I have read several books about Ireland
>(in
>my mother's ancestry are Irish potato famine refugees). I'm currently
>reading Richard White's Remembering Ahanagran: A History of Stories.
>White
>is a Stanford historian and his book is about his mother's memories of
>the
>townland of Ahanagran in County Kerry in the west of Ireland and her
>immigration to the US. As a historian, he is interested in coming to an
>understanding of what happened in the past--which he essentially sees as
>a
>story--which requires corroborative evidence from multiple sources and
>subjectivities (my language, not his). Set against this disposition is
>his
>knowledge of his mother's life, which comes from her memory of it, which
>he
>finds to be unreliable. One example: She vividly tells stories of her
>youth, particularly of IRA rebellion, that he later realizes occurred
>before she could have witnessed them; that, he realizes, are actually
>stories she heard as a child that she has incorporated into her own
>childhood memories. White's book (which I'm about one-third through)
>explores this tension between history and memory in a way that's quite
>different from the way that a psychologist would think about memory. A
>psychologist might find it imprecise (no memory nodes, etc.). But one
>thing that I find useful about CHAT, at least in Mike's architecture, is
>that it is an ecumenical approach that considers contributions from many
>fields. In White's book, memory is a memory of stories, those
>experienced
>and those believed to be experienced. In a sense it's about
>subjectivity,
>though he does not use poststructuralist language, and about
>appropriation
>and the orchestration of experience and story into a set of memories that
>provide one's life narrative. That narrative is not constant; he tells
>of
>how his grandmother's narrative as a young woman was cast as a romance
>(available through letters she wrote), but when her husband left for the
>US
>for several decades in order to save the family farm, her narrative (as
>told to her children) changed to a narrative of regret. And although he
>does not approach it in this way, I'm sure that he'd agree that memory is
>a
>matter of addressivity (to use Bakhtin's term), that is, what one
>remembers
>is a function of the dialogue through which the memory emerges. Memory,
>says White, serves the present.
>
>At any rate, undoubtedly a different take on the topic, and an
>interesting
>one. Peter
>
>At 05:07 AM 8/12/01 -0700, you wrote:
>> > Christophe-- There is a very deep and interesting
>> > mine to be explored if
>> > we are to head down the path of discussing memory.
>> > There is the middleton
>> > and Edwards book on collective remembering, the Star
>> > and Bowker recent
>> > book, *Sorting things out* which moves from
>> > knowledge in things and places
>> > in the home to the same principle at work in the
>> > technical infrastructure of
>> > society, a new collection on Bartlett......
>> > and......
>> >
>> > I believe that the incidental/involuntary
>> > distinction found in Smirnov and
>> > Zinchenko remains relevant and a place where
>> > American and Soviet views
>> > long diverged. I am not sure they any longer do, but
>> > perhaps so.
>> > mike
>> >
"I want you to put the crayon back in my brain."
Homer Simpson
diane celia hodges
university of british columbia, centre for the study of curriculum and
instruction
vancouver, bc
mailing address: 46 broadview avenue, montreal, qc, H9R 3Z2
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