Hostname: page-component-586b7cd67f-rdxmf Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-11-26T05:22:01.090Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

Generations of Memory: Elements of a Conceptual Framework

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  04 January 2018

Harald Wydra
Harald Wydra*
Affiliation:
St Catharine's College, University of Cambridge
*
[email protected]
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Abstract

This paper links memory to generations of meaning and argues that generational belonging mediates access to memory. Generations of meaning create memories because they connect experiences, beyond the lifetime of individuals, with the wider cultural existence of social communities. Such connections can be understood as a hermeneutic and relational process. Meaning is not a factor of causation, but is cumulative, as meanings are recollected across generational thresholds of experience. This paper conceptualizes such thresholds of experience through three lines of enquiry. First, generativity produces new carriers of culture and memory, which sustain perceptions of historical beginnings. Second, generational change is a condition of liminality and in-betweenness, which people work to transcend by mediating fractures and thus connecting past problem spaces to frameworks of anticipation. Third, narrative commitments emerge as memories are recollected across different temporalities, incommensurability, and forgetting. Memory is not the product of one determining generation, but relational, cumulative, and stretched out in time.

Keywords

generationsmeaningmemorygenerativityin-betweennessexperiential backgroundrecollection
Type
Histories/Geographies of Theory
Information
Comparative Studies in Society and History , Volume 60 , Issue 1 , January 2018 , pp. 5 - 34
Copyright
Copyright © Society for the Comparative Study of Society and History 2017 

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

Alber, E., van der Geest, Sjaak, and Reynolds Whyte, Susan, eds. 2008. Generations in Africa: Connections and Conflicts. Berlin: LIT Verlag.Google Scholar
Arendt, H. 1951. The Origins of Totalitarianism. New York: Harcourt Brace.Google Scholar
Assmann, A. 1999. Erinnerungsräume: Formen und Wandlungen des kulturellen Gedächtnisses. München: DVA.Google Scholar
Assmann, J. 1997. Moses the Egyptian. Cambridge: Harvard University Press.Google Scholar
Assmann, J. 2000. Religion and Cultural Memory. Stanford: Stanford University Press.Google Scholar
Berg, M. L. 2011. Diasporic Generations: Memory, Politics, and Nation among Cubans in Spain. New York: Berghahn.Google Scholar
Bernecker, W. and Brinkmann, S.. 2008. Kampf der Erinnerungen: Der Spanische Bürgerkrieg in Politik und Gesellschaft 1936–2008. Nettersheim: Verlag Graswurzelrevolution.Google Scholar
Bhabha, H. 1996. Culture's in-Between. In Hall, S. and du Gay, P., eds., Questions of Identity. London: Sage, 53–60.Google Scholar
Bledsoe, C. 2002. Contingent Lives: Fertility, Time, and Aging in West Africa. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.Google Scholar
Cenci, C. 1999. Rituale e memoria: le celebrazioni del 25 aprile. In Paggi, L., ed., Le memorie della Repubblica. Firenze: La Nuova Italia, 338–49.Google Scholar
Coetsier, M. 2014. The Existential Philosophy of Elly Hillesum. Leiden: Brill.Google Scholar
Connerton, P. 1989. How Societies Remember. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Connerton, P. 2009. How Modernity Forgets. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Echternkamp, J. and Martens, S., eds. 2013. Experience and Memory: The Second World War in Europe. New York: Berghahn.Google Scholar
Edmunds, J. and Turner, B. S., eds. 2002. Generational Consciousness, Narrative, and Politics. Lanham: Rowman & Littlefield.Google Scholar
Elder, G. H. 1974. Children of the Great Depression: Social Change in Life Experience. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.Google Scholar
Elias, N. 1996. The Germans. Cambridge: Polity Press.Google Scholar
Elias, N. 1997. Die höfische Gesellschaft. 8th ed. Frankfurt/Main: Suhrkamp.Google Scholar
Erll, A. 2011. Travelling Memory. Parallax 17, 4: 4–18.Google Scholar
Feindt, G, Krawatzek, F., Mehler, D., Pestel, F., and Trimçev, R.. 2014. Entangled Memory: Toward a Third Wave in Memory Studies. History and Theory 53: 24–44.Google Scholar
Figes, O. 2003. Natasha's Dance: A Cultural History of Russia. London: Penguin.Google Scholar
Fogu, C. and Kansteiner, W.. 2006. The Politics of Memory and Poetics of History. In Lebow, R., Fogu, C., and Kansteiner, W., eds., The Politics of Memory in Postwar Europe. Durham: Duke University Press, 284–310.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Forlenza, R. 2017. The Politics of the Abendland: Christian Democracy and the Idea of Europe after World War II. Contemporary European History 26, 2: 261–86.Google Scholar
Giesen, B. 2004. Triumph and Trauma. Boulder: Paradigm Publishers.Google Scholar
Giesen, B. 2010. Zwischenlagen. Göttingen: Velbrück.Google Scholar
Greenberg, J. D. 2005. Generations of Memory: Remembering Partition in India/Pakistan and Israel/Palestine. Comparative Studies of South Asia, Africa, and the Middle East 25, 1: 89–110.Google Scholar
Haffner, S. 2000. Geschichte eines Deutschen, Die Erinnerungen 1914–1933. Stuttgart/München: DVA.Google Scholar
Halbwachs, M. 1950. La mémoire collective. Edition critique établie par Gérard Namer. Paris: Albin Michel.Google Scholar
Heidegger, M. 1962. Being and Time. John Macquarrie and Edward Robinson, trans. Oxford: Blackwell.Google Scholar
Hirsch, M. 2008. The Generation of Postmemory. Poetics Today 29, 1: 103–28.Google Scholar
Hoffman, E. 2004. After such Knowledge: Memory, History, and the Legacy of the Holocaust. New York: Public Affairs.Google Scholar
Ingold, T. 2000. The Perception of the Environment. New York: Routledge.Google Scholar
Jaspers, K. 1960. Psychologie der Weltanschauungen. 5th ed. Berlin: Springer.Google Scholar
Jaspers, K. 1996 [1946]. Die Schuldfrage. 2d ed. München: Piper.Google Scholar
Jauregui, P. 1999. National Pride and the Meaning of Europe: A Comparative Study of Britain and Spain. In Smith, D. and Wright, S., eds., Whose Europe? The Turn Towards Democracy. Oxford: Blackwell, 257–87.Google Scholar
Jureit, U. 2005. Generationen als Erinnerungsgemeinschaften. In Jureit, U. and Wildt, M., eds., Generationen: Zur Relevanz eines wissenschaftlichen Grundbegriffs. Hamburg: Hamburger Edition, 244–65.Google Scholar
Kansteiner, W. 2002. Finding Meaning in Memory: A Methodological Critique of Collective Memory Studies. History and Theory 41: 179–97.Google Scholar
Koselleck, R. 2003. Zeitschichten. Frankfurt/Main: Suhrkamp.Google Scholar
Koselleck, R. 2006. Begriffsgeschichten. Frankfurt/Main: Suhrkamp.Google Scholar
Koselleck, R. 2010. Vom Sinn und Unsinn der Geschichte. Frankfurt/Main: Suhrkamp.Google Scholar
Kriegel, A. and Hirsch, E.. 1978. Generational Difference: The History of an Idea. Daedalus 107, 4: 23–38.Google Scholar
Latour, B. 1987. Science in Action. Milton Keynes: Open University Press.Google Scholar
MacIntyre, A. 2007. After Virtue: A Study in Moral Theory. 3d ed. London: Duckworth.Google Scholar
Mann, T. 2002. Über mich selbst. Frankfurt/Main: Suhrkamp.Google Scholar
Mannheim, K. 1928. Das Problem der Generationen. Kölner Vierteljahreshefte für Soziologie 7: 157–85, 309–30.Google Scholar
Marias, J. 1970. Generations: A Historical Method. Birmingham: University of Alabama Press.Google Scholar
Marino, G. 2006. Le generazioni italiane dall'unita all repubblica. Milano: Bompiani.Google Scholar
Meier, C. 2010. Das Gebot zu Vergessen und die Unabweisbarkeit des Erinnerns. München: Siedler.Google Scholar
Moses, D. 2007. Stigma and Sacrifice in the Federal Republic of Germany. History and Memory 19, 2: 139–80.Google Scholar
Nietzsche, F. 1997. Werke. Vol. 1. Darmstadt: Wissenschaftliche Buchgesellschaft.Google Scholar
Nora, P. 1992. La génération. In Nora, Pierre, ed., Les lieux de mémoire. Vol. 3. Paris: Gallimard, 931–71.Google Scholar
Olick, J. 2007. The Politics of Regret. New York: Routledge.Google Scholar
Ortega y Gasset, J. 2003 [1923]. El tema de nuestro tiempo. Madrid: Espasa.Google Scholar
Petrusewicz, M. 2000. A Nazione Mancata: The Construction of the Mezzogiorno after 1848. In Strath, B., ed., Myth and Memory in the Construction of Community. Zürich: Peter Lang.Google Scholar
Rilke, R. M. 1993. Notizen zur Melodie der Dinge. Ein Stundenbuch. Bern: Bären-Presse.Google Scholar
Rosenstock-Huessy, E. 1953. The Hinge of Generations. Eugen Rosenstock-Huessy Fund. At: www.erhfund.org/lecturealbum/volume-06-hinge-of-generations-1953 (accessed 17 Aug. 2017).Google Scholar
Rothberg, Michael. 2011. From Gaza to Warsaw: Mapping Multidirectional Memory. Criticism 53, 4: 523–48.Google Scholar
Rousso, H. 1991. The Vichy Syndrome: History and Memory in France since 1944. Cambridge: Harvard University Press.Google Scholar
Schuman, H. and Corning, A.. 2015. Generations and Collective Memory. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.Google Scholar
Schuman, H. and Scott, J.. 1989. Generations and Collective Memory. American Sociological Review 54: 359–81.Google Scholar
Scott, David. 2014. The Temporality of Generations: Dialogue, Tradition, Criticism. New Literary History 45, 2: 157–81.Google Scholar
Seran, Justine. 2015. Australian Aboriginal Memoir and Memory: A Stolen Generation Trauma Narrative. Humanities 4: 661–75.Google Scholar
Szakolczai, A. 2015. Liminality and Experience: Structuring Transitory Situations and Transformative Events. In Horvath, A., Thomassen, B., and Wydra, H., eds., Breaking Boundaries: Varieties of Liminality. New York: Berghahn, 11–38.Google Scholar
Turner, V. 1987. The Anthropology of Performance. New York: PAJ Publications.Google Scholar
Wohl, R. 1979. The Generation of 1914. Cambridge: Harvard University Press.Google Scholar
Wood, N. 1999. Vectors of Memory: Legacies of Trauma in Postwar Europe. Oxford: Blackwell.Google Scholar
Wulf, M. 2016. Shadowlands: Memory and History in Post-Soviet Estonia. New York: Berghahn.Google Scholar
Wydra, H. 2015. Politics and the Sacred. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Zweig, S. 2014. Die Welt von Gestern. 41st ed. Frankfurt/Main: Fischer.Google Scholar