Miriam E. Wells Halbwachs [628071]

1
Maurice
Halbwachs.

On
Collective
Memory,
Lewis
A.
Coser,
trans.

Chicago:
University
of
Chicago
Press,
1992.

Miriam
E.
Wells

On
Collective
Memory,
by
Maurice
Halbwachs,
is
a
collection
of
interwar
writings
on
the
nature
and
constitution
of
individual
memories,
as
well
as
within
families,
social
classes
and
religions.

His
theory
of
memory
can
be
characterized
not
only
by
his
insistence
on
the
collective
nature
of
memory,
but
also
more
specifically
by
the
linguistic
basis
of
this
collectivity
(173).

He
also
demonstrates
that
memory
is
a
shifting
entity
because
it
is
continually
reconstituted
by
people
in
the
present,
as
they
convey
it
through
language.

Finally,
Halbwachs
allows
for
individuals
to
hold
simultaneous
frameworks
for
memory,
which
differ
depending
on
context—such
as
within
a
family,
class,
or
religion.

Halbwachs
derived
some
of
his
foundational
ideas
from
the
work
of
Emile
Durkheim
and
Henri
Bergson,
his
scholarly
predecessors.

Durkheim
wrote
about
collective
effervescence,
notably
in
his
ethnographic
work,
The
Elementary
Forms
of
Religious
Life.1

Henri
Bergson’s
ideas
about
the
inner
subjective
time,
and
the
two
types
of
memory2
were
also
important
influences
(48).

Halbwachs,
like
Durkheim
and
other
experimental
scholars
of
the
time,
was
resolutely
cross‐disciplinary.

To
the
psychological
and
philosophical
theories
of
Bergson,
Halbwachs
added
the
sociological
and
ethnographic
concepts
of
Durkheim,
and
to
that
he
also
added
his
own
background
as
a
statistician.


Viewing
the
mind
as
a
product
of
social
conditions
seems
to
have
been
paradigmatic
for
the
period
before
the
First
World
War,
and
may
have
gained
momentum
in
the
interwar
period
as
(in
part)
a
response
to
revolutions
and
the
rise
of
fascism.

To
the
ideas
of
Durkheim,
Halbwachs
was
able
to
add
the
connecting
feature
that
held
together
brief
periods
of
collective
effervescence:
memory.

By
viewing
memory
as
a
social
construct
that
is
dependent
primarily
upon
language,
Halbwachs
was
able
to
descibe
the
process
by
which
the
meanings
of
memory
to
change
over
time.

Though
he
does
not
express
it
in
these
words,
Halbwachs
demonstrates
the
collective
ability
of
people
to
create
a
paradigm
through
the
continual
reconstitution
of
memories.

In
On
Collective
Memory,
one
of
the
problems
Halbwachs
faced
was
the
inability
to
separate
a
human
from
his
societal
surroundings,
in
order
to
encounter
adult
memory
in
a
pure
form.

He
examines
two
specific
instances
to
get
as
close
to
this
state
as
possible:
through
dreams,
and
through
aphasia.

In
both
of
these
states,
an
individual’s
framework
for
understanding
memories
is
“deformed,
changed
or
destroyed
(43).”

The
only
instance
in
which
most
individuals
occupy
a
space
and
time
apart
from
the
influence
of
society
is
in
dreams.

For
this
reason,
dreams
can
be
used
as
evidence
for
the
social
construction
of
memory.

Halbwachs
notes
that
dreams
evoke
fragmentary,
not
complete,
images,
which
only
“slackly”
retain
the
conventions
of
the
waking
world.

The
dreamer,
Halbwachs
writes,
retains
an
“embryonic
social
life,”
which
includes
the
use
of
speech—but
no
real
or
complete
memory
appears
in
dreams
because
there
are
no
social
context
or
cues
with
which
to
respond
(39,
169).

























































1
Emile
Durkheim,
The
Elementary
Forms
of
Religious
Life,
Karen
E.
Fields,
trans.,
(New
York:
The
Free
Press,
1995).
2
The
two
types
are:
1)
habitual
or
action‐oriented
memory,
and
2)
that
which
expresses
a
disinterest
in
present
life.

2
The
person
with
aphasia
is
perhaps
an
even
more
useful
example
for
Halbwachs.

Aphasia3
is
a
condition
with
several
varieties
of
language
and
cognition
impairment.

In
some
cases,
it
only
affects
the
individual’s
communication,
and
in
others,
it
affects
his
understanding
of
language.

Halbwachs
discusses
the
inability
of
the
person
with
aphasia
to
“keep
or
recover
his
place
in
the
social
group.”

In
more
severe
cases
of
aphasia,
an
individual
can
perceive
the
world
as
images
or
physical
experiences,
but
without
the
use
of
language,
can’t
apply
meaning
to
those
images
or
physical
experiences—which,
according
to
Halbwachs,
eliminates
the
possibility
of
memory.

Some
time
is
also
spent
in
discussion
of
the
aged,
and
nostalgia.

Halbwachs
observes
an
increased
inclination
to
remember—which
is
not
a
naturally
acquired
trait
of
the
elderly,
but
an
active
reconstitution
of
the
past
in
which
adults
don’t
often
indulge,
using
personal
recollections,
the
recollections
of
others,
and
historic
materials.

Finally,
Halbwachs
makes
some
interesting
points
about
continuity,
from
a
national,
societal,
or
academic
standpoint.

He
suggests
that
a
person
transplanted
from
one
nation
to
another
will
not
understand
easily
the
frameworks
of
his
new
country—not
without
years
of
immersion
in
them,
which
will
help
him
develop
the
collective
memory
of
the
general
population.

Likewise,
he
characterizes
knowledge
as
a
collective
pursuit
in
which
a
scholar
places
his
“discoveries
in
the
chronology
of
the
history
of
knowledge
(176).”

These
two
points,
out
of
many,
may
be
some
of
the
most
useful
for
the
discussion
of
national
memory
and
the
changing
presentation
of
history.

In
recent
years,
Halbwachs
has
been
invoked
for
a
number
of
studies
that
deal
with
place
memory
and
association.

While
this
is
by
no
means
a
comprehensive
list
of
sources,
I
would
like
to
discuss
some
of
the
kinds
of
work
in
which
Halbwachs’s
On
Collective
Memory
has
been
used.

Max
Page’s
exploration
of
creation
and
destruction
of
New
York
landscapes
in
the
first
half
of
the
20th‐century
uses
Halbwachs
as
a
starting
point
to
talk
about
the
social
construction
of
memory,
but
adds
a
new
dimension
to
Halbwachs’s
almost
entirely
linguistic
understanding
of
memory,
by
adding
the
memory
that
is
continually
reconstituted
by
the
built
environment.4

Karen
Till
uses
On
Collective
Memory
to
suggest
that
people
who
are
remembering
are
doing
so
in
contemporary
spaces
and
through
contemporary
social
contexts,
and
through
Halbwachs,
Yael
Zerubavel
reminds
her
readers
that
monuments
and
commemorations
establish
historical
continuity
across
generations.5

Finally,
Halbwachs
is
still
used
in
contemporary
psychology
literature
(non‐pharmacological
literature!)
to
talk
about
topics
like
childhood
place
attachment.

Halbwachs
was
not
always
well
received
during
his
lifetime,
and
has
also
been
critiqued
in
recent
years
for
his
“implicit
assumption
of
a
Durkheimian
collective
consciousness.”6

In
addition,
On
Collective
Memory
has
the
arguable
flaws
of
a
manuscript
that
was
published
posthumously—it
can
be
assumed
that
Halbwachs
himself
would
not
have
been
happy
with
the
result—but
it
is
possible
that
his
raw
writing
has
taken
on
a
life
which
even
Halbwachs
himself
might
not
have
anticipated.
He
had
criticized
the
historians
of
his
time
for
emphasizing
description
rather
than
explanation,
and
an
inability
to
“cope
with
the
problems
of
historic
causation
(11).”
That
Halbwachs’s
memory
theory
has
been
applied
liberally
to
recent
historical
analysis
might
well
have
amused
and
pleased
him.
























































3
Commonly,
aphasia
is
one
of
the
sequelae
of
strokes,
and
may
have
been
even
more
prevalent
in
Halbwachs’s
lifetime
than
it
is
in
our
own.
4
Max
Page,
The
Creative
Destruction
of
Manhattan,
1900­1940
(Chicago:
University
of
Chicago
Press,
1999)
251.
5
Karen
Till,
The
New
Berlin:
Memory,
Politics,
Place
(Minneapolis
and
London:
University
of
Minnesota
Press,
2005)
14;
and
Yael
Zerubavel,
“The
Politics
of
Remembrance
and
the
Consumption
of
Space:
Masada
in
Israeli
Memory,”
in
Walkowitz,
et
al.,
eds.,
Memory
and
the
Impact
of
Political
Transformation
in
Public
Space
(Durham
and
London:
Duke
University
Press,
2004)
233.
6
Till,
233.