A Conceptual Tool Kit

Abstract

Abstract The chapter begins with a section on methods and forms of evidence that outlines the difference between top-down and bottom-up analyses of national memory and notes that the latter will be given more emphasis in this book than is the case in many studies of national identity and memory. The section also argues that by understanding how narrative tools can “co-author” individuals’ speaking and thinking, it is possible to avoid misguided notions of “primordialism” that are part of the rhetorical claims of nationalists. The next section examines the sense in which national memory is memory and argues for the need to focus on remembering individuals as members of groups. This involves a review of ideas from figures such as Maurice Halbwachs and Frederic Bartlett on collective and individual memory. This is followed by a section on “Flashbulb Memories as Memory in the Group,” which uses a body of literature in psychology to develop a conceptually grounded notion of national memory that includes the observation that Bartlett’s notion of schema underpins much of the entire discussion. The next section, on “symbolic mediation,” reviews the origins of this idea in the writings of several European and Russian scholars and goes into the case of literacy as an illustration as outlined in empirical studies by Luria and Vygotsky. It then poses an analogous line of reasoning for narratives as symbolic mediation. This includes a discussion of the “inner logic” of narrative tools, “narrative truth,” and two levels of narrative analysis (“specific narratives” and “narrative templates”).