Continuing commentary: Beyond recollection: Toward a dialogical psychology of collective memory
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Date
2012
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Abstract
Collective memory implies the social and psychological production of meaningful acts of
memory, a special kind of truth claim about a controversial past. Memory acts are thus
conceptualized as ideological positioning movements toward others, which is impossible to account for from individual cognition. What kind of psychological processes, if
any, would be involved in collective memory? A three-fold model is sketched to account
for a whole act of memory. One analytical component is the generation of a knowledge
structure about the past object. A second component is the construction of an attitude
toward the theme. The third is the understanding of the ideological dimension within
which the knowledge structure and the attitude under production are contextualized.
An information storage-and-retrieval mechanism is not needed in this theoretical
account. It is suggested that psychology of memory may contribute to accounting for
these three micro-genetic levels as integrated into meaningful memory acts.
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Keywords
Acts of memory, Collective memory, Dialogical approach to memory, Rhetorical meaning, September 11