Cultural memory and the everyday

Abstract

Is there a model of cultural memory that matches the theorizations and practical investigations which have made ‘the everyday’ a workable and dynamic category in contemporary cultural studies? I argue that despite its emphasis on the present Michel de Certeau’s The Practice of Everyday Life retains, as part of its picture of the everyday, a mode of memory that may seem at odds with cultural memory as it is often perceived, but may in fact point to a potentially fertile version of cultural memory itself. To illustrate this I examine a) Certeau’s own account of the role of proper names in the city; b) Georges Perec’s Je me souviens, a list of 480 sentences beginning with the phrase ‘I remember’, but relating to collective rather than strictly personal memories; c) Annie Ernaux’s Journal du dehors, a sort of diary or log-book that records, in short fragments, observations culled in public spaces.