[xmca] Cultural Fogetting & social Amnesia

[Larry Purss <lpscholar2@gmail.com>]

Mike and others discussing cultural memory and mediation

Mike you asked us to consider Wertsch's project exploring cultural memory.
Andy's drawing my attention to the larger context of artefacts n collective
memory is particulary important for siuating "mere intersubjectivity" The
question of the social relations and mediational processes constituting [not
influencing or determining] mere intersubjectivity.  I read an artcle by Z.
Vinchenko referring to his father's legacy on collective and personal memory
The article is "Living Memory". In that article he points out the centrality
of "collective forgetting" as a fundamental dialectical aspect constituting
collective memory.  Collective forgetting as social amnesia.  Wertsch
mentions he gathered stories of Russians who lived through the horrors of
the gulag.
The issue of "exile" and the role of collective forgetting in forming
new beginnings through collective remembering.  I'm connecting this to the
"debt crisis" and the "occupy wall street movement"  The debt crisis as a
master MORAL narrative of collective memory with social amnesia at its
center.  In North America social amnesia is a turning away and forgetting
the denial of death and violence in the formation of the Nazi regime and the
shame of being indebted after the 1st world war.

Vinchenko mentions Bartlett was exploring the centrality of social amnesia
to the forming of collective memory in his earlier works but when
incorporated into the activity structure of a university shited to a focus
on personal memory.  Intersubjective psychoanalysis has moved away from the
notion of "repression" and now is deeply exploring "dissociation" as a
process of turning away from vulnerability and dependency at the center of
our humanness.  It is easy to accept and recognize in the mother-infant
archetype but their is a denial of these dependency needs in adult
relationships.
Social amnesia and dissociation [as intersubjective social interactional
aspects of narrativity] may need to be reflected on if the "debt crisis" is
to shift from an economic master narrative to a moral master narrative.
Larry
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