Elicitation Techniques in the Construction of Family Memory: An Analysis from Photography

In memory theory, the functioning of memory discourses in the public sphere is often referred to using Aleida and Jan Assmann’s terminology of cultural and collective, or communicative, memory. In these concepts, cultural memory describes past representations and their functioning in fixed cultural forms and practices, while collective memory is the transmission by means of informal communication of important memories by different generations that are living now within a society or social group (Assmann 2008: 117). However, in modern societies the distinction and interaction between these levels is complicated by the fact that both communicative and individual memory are often articulated and transmitted in fixed forms of modern communication and these two levels often appear intertwined in a complex reciprocal interplay (Assmann, 2006: 214). The idiosyncrasy of family memory is that it has an intergenerational perspective of that memory. With the communication of memory, memory (re)construction takes place based on the incorporation of the past into the family memory repository. Mobility changes the patterns of communication; it affects the perception of the family (‘we’) and feelings of solidarity and transforms the composition of family influences and the multi-layered nature of memory, so that memory requires the renewal of information. Analysing the memories of families is important because it allows the identification of the ways in which family memory is constructed, by examining both communication channels and the content of communication. Memory construction requires two components: information channels and the content of the communicated information. This chapter presents data from a representative survey of Lithuanian residents. Empirical data reveal how the operationalisation of family memory communication channels takes place and which contexts of memory communication dominate. Memory’s communicative content consists of the historical context, revision of the family network, revision of the content of family togetherness, and revision of the content of common information.

Contrary to analyses of top-down national intervention in and construction of familial memory, a study of intergenerational memory work at communal sites of Holocaust memory shows the family’s enlistment of institutions as resources to salvage lost or silent Holocaust memory. The memory work carried out by families of Holocaust survivors at a number of such sites reveals both the top-down enlistment of familial memory and the bottom-up intergenerational transmission of Holocaust tales within the family. The findings highlight processes of negotiation and cooperation between state-run public institutions and survivor families in the construction of familial Holocaust memory and alternative sites of commemoration.

"My present is more than I remember" explores the entanglements of word and image and their role in constructing memory and identity. Drawing on my four-year practice at the KABK, it analyses the methods I’ve developed and examines the interrelation between memory, photography, and writing. Delving into personal memories and intergenerational connections within my family, I seek to understand how inherited experiences and stories shape my personal and artistic identity, guided by the act of weaving as a concept and a material. Furthermore, the paper examines the existential role of collective and familial memory in shaping Jewish and German-Jewish identity. Using a range of texts and styles, including sociological and art-historical theories, experimental diary entries, poems, and personal anecdotes, I explore the parallels between the construction of memory and the construction of photographs. Just as photography can never represent the essence of a person, memory will never be able to represent the full truth of the past. keywords: Collective Memory, Jewish, Germany, PHOTOGRAPHY, writing, intergenerational memory, weaving, family archives, Sociology, experimental writing, non-linear storytelling, art history and theory, intergenerationality, Jewish-German identity

Since the early 2000s, Spain has been shaken by mobilizations of “victims of Francoism,” promoting the memory of past violence. In this article, instead of apprehending such mobilizations as a sudden public display of private accounts, as is often stated, I contend that the “memory of Franco’s repression” is rather produced and constructed by the dynamics of mobilization. In order to demonstrate this, I analyze the process that led Spanish citizens to engage in defending the memory of the victims of Francoism, with a particular focus on the commitment of the relatives of the “disappeared.” While one might assume that these actors were the bearers of pre-existing family memory, they were content to disseminate in the public space on the occasion of their commitment; I argue quite the contrary: it is the experiences lived during the specific time of mobilization (social interactions, expert socializations, memorial activities) that have forged their status as relatives of the disappeared while profoundly reconfiguring their family memory.

Memory production, vandalism, violence: Civil society and lessons from a short life of a monument to Stalin

En el presente trabajo reconstruimos el camino transitado durante la génesis de un proyecto cuyo objetivo general es comprender los procesos de constitución de identidades en habitantes de la ciudad de Córdoba desde una perspectiva interdisciplinaria que busca poner en diálogo las herramientas y enfoques de la Bioantropología y de la Antropología Social. La aplicación de la tecnología del ADN para la obtención de información sobre la ancestralidad biológica, individual y poblacional ha ido penetrando en los diversos dominios y sectores de la sociedad, y nuestro objetivo es aportar a estas discusiones. Los primeros resultados de este estudio dan cuenta de una multiplicidad de representaciones, despliegues discursivos, perspectivas y posturas en torno a cuestiones nodales como el significado del estudio genético, la construcción de la identidad y las memorias familiares. Todo lo anterior nos ha llevado a considerar que la propia acción de la investigación opera como espacio-tiempo de resignificación, interviniendo activamente en la construcción de esas memorias e identidades. Aunque pudimos avanzar en nuestra propuesta al exponer las bases de esta investigación y realizar un análisis preliminar de nuestros datos —con miras a reflexionar acerca de las imbricaciones entre la identidad cultural y biológica y a comprender mejor las formas particulares de construcción identitaria y las lógicas de marcación en ellas implicadas—, todavía falta mucho por desvendar

How might funerary archaeology contribute to the discussion about religious identities in Late Antiquity and the Early Middle Ages? In answer to this question, I describe the different ways in which religious and social practices are expressed and evolve in a given context. In Roman Gaul, the large-scale switch to inhumation in the second half of the 3rd century may be linked to a change in perception of the idealised image of the deceased, and is not accompanied by any change in burial practices or in the organisation and dynamics of funerary areas. A century later, traditional funerary practices are widely represented in the archaeological series, but funerary areas are emerging whose organisation and dynamics differ from those of the early Roman empire. In larger cities, some are developing around a funeral basilica erected on the mausoleum of a saint, and their graves clearly show changes from past practices. These new funerary expressions, which become exclusive in the second half of the 5th century, can be linked with the rise and the structuring of Christianity, along with social changes. During the Early Middle Ages, before the completion of the parish system in the 11th century, societies successively build their Christian identity. Using their burial customs and the organisation of their deceased, these societies display their socio-cultural norms, both inherited from and partly reshaped throughout their history. Our archaeological data show that in the funerary sphere, sense of religious identity is not expressed in the same way at the end of the 4th, 6th, 8th and 10th centuries, and that the real break between Antiquity and the Middle Ages relates mainly to the silencing of individual and familial memory in favour of the construction of a collective Christian memory.

En su libro En busca del futuro perdido. Cultura y memoria en tiempos de la globalización (2002), Andreas Huyssen llama la atención sobre el desplazamiento del Holocausto, en tanto tropos de la historia traumática, a contextos norelacionados con el Holocausto histórico. A partir de sus planteamientos se analizarán en el presente artículo dos novelas: Morirás lejos (1967) de José Emilio Pacheco y Gefährliche Verwandtschaft (1989) de Zafer Şenocak. En la novela del escritor mexicano se aborda tanto el Holocausto perpetrado durante el Tercer Reich como los genocidios cometidos durante la Conquista e Inquisición españolas. A su vez, en la del autor alemán, de origen turco, el narrador autodiegético elabora la memoria familiar, por un lado, respecto al Holocausto y, por otro, en cuanto al genocidio de los armenios perpetrado durante el Imperio otomano. Así, ambas propuestas literarias contribuyen a la construcción de una especie dememoria histórica transnacional acerca de crímenes de guerra y delitos de lesa humanidad cometidos por regímenes autoritarios.

The archives of the Berliner Haus für kulturelle Arbeit, an institution of the GDR charged in the 1980s to prepare the 750 years commemoration of the birth of the city Berlin, show that a lapse of memory played a significant role in the production of the past which characterized this commemoration, that we analyze, within the meaning of Paul Connerton, as a set of “commemorative practices” which form the social support of the common memory. The typical case of the GDR where the memory is shared with West-Germany is interessant, because these ceremonies are significant by their assertions but also by their silences. We show how a lapse of memory was built in the GDR, and how this lapse of memory prescribed by the Berliner House of cultural work aimed at developping a feeling of common membership, an identification with the east-german State and with the socialist ideology, while overlooking of broad sides of history. Some categories of analysis of the family memory are transposed: whereas in the case of the family memory, the rewriting of history obeys a tacit law which is that of the family unit to preserve, memory construction in the case of the Berliner House of cultural work also rests on a unit to consolidate: a national unit. The corollary of this instrumentalisation of the past is that it was necessary to describe a linear historical evolution, with a direction and a sense of history. The objective was to promote a teleological approach of history, guided by the principles of the historical materialism. However, we also show that marginal critical voices could sometimes appear, in order to denounce the aporias of this speech on the past.

After Prince Albert’s death in 1861, Queen Victoria began an extended period of mourning that remains indelibly linked to perceptions of her identity and visual representation. This article firstly addresses the place of photography in the construction of family memory and examines how Victoria used photography to articulate her private grief and to remember Albert in the context of both her immediate and extended family. Secondly, I seek to establish the ways in which this private image is made public and is circulated by Victoria to generate popular empathy and support for political ends. Lastly, I touch on the global reach of this, and question how mourning and widowhood are implicated in international royal networks and imperial power. Thus, the article reveals the photograph of the mourning widow as more than just an illustration of Victoria and her grief; rather, it shows how the medium shapes that grief and makes it useful for monarchy and empire.

The books in the Treasury of the Trastámara monarchs at the Alcázar of Segovia during the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries, and in the nuptial trousseaux selected by Queen Isabel I of Castile for her direct descendants, not only fulfilled religious needs but also manifested dynastic and pedagogical interest in the preservation of lineage through memory. This article examines patterns in the management, reception, use, and inheritance of these manuscripts, through the analysis of their role in the construction of female, familial, and identity-based memory. Furthermore, it investigates the factors that conditioned the relationships of members of the lineage with the Royal Treasure, exploring readings associated with the perpetuation of family memory and the gender nuances they offered, through their uses and functions, the images that structured them, and their relationship with dynastic narratives.

The article illustrates the multi-sited use of the ethnographic method and the narrative in-depth interview in research on transnational migration between Bangladesh and Italy. Assuming a Sayadian perspective, the author explores the ways of accessing the transnational research field, the dynamics of anticipatory socialization at the interview within the transnational space, and the opportunity for collective self-socio-analysis and construction of a family memory that an in-depth interview implies. Finally, the article deepens the implications that the use of linguistic translators entails in ethnographic work and interpretative research.

The chapter considers how the concept of communicative figurations can be employed in researching communities and collectivities in today’s deeply mediatized world. It does so by providing specific examples from previous projects and by mapping out different perspectives of thinking about empirical challenges. In a first step, we introduce the concept of communicative figurations and consider how this concept can be fruitful with regard to the necessities and challenges that pertain to two central steps of the research process: (1) approaching and conducting cross-media research and (2) defining the field of research and its limits. We consider both of these central steps as necessities as well as challenges when researching the life worlds of individuals and collectivites in today’s media environment empirically, and we argue that the concept of communicative figurations can provide a useful tool when dealing with some of the challenges. At the same time, it comes along with a set of necessities, which we address along the way. In the final section of the chapter, we then illustrate our considerations by giving the example of an ‘ideal’ study design that employs the concept of communicative figurations for a research project on the communicative construction of family memory. Again, we explain our conceptualization of this project along the lines of the necessities and the challenges of conducting cross-media research and delineating the boundaries of the research field.

Since prehistoric times, the use of graves built within private houses has been a common burial custom of both Old and New World societies. Although efforts have been made by scholars to interpret the role these graves had in constructing the social, cultural and economic organization of ancient societies, there has been no attempt to clearly define the use of basic terminology, such as ‘intramural’, for this category of funerary depositions.The paper here presented will thus aim at defining a more coherent typology of ‘residential graves’ (i.e., a built tomb embedded within a dwelling and contemporary with it) and distinguish it from other types of funerary depositions that were part of the settlement (i.e. cists, pits, pithoi), but that are difficult to connect with the collective memory of the community. Such an epistemological exercise will facilitate interpretations carried out by scholars interested in mortuary archaeology and will also define the socio-economic value of residential graves as part of the construction of the familial memory. Moreover, to further elucidate the definition of residential graves I will also present a specific case study (i.e., Titriş Höyük during the late IIIrd millennium BC) in which the use of such funerary depositions was pivotal for framing the emergence of a new social class.

Nihonjin (2011) is the fi rst novel by the Brazilian author Oscar Nakasato and in which he re-enacts the process of integration of the Japanese immigrants who arrived in Brazil in the 1920s. Through the Inabatas’ saga, the ex-centric subject of the offi cial history is placed at the center of the novel, which lies within the scope of a new generation of narratives about immigration. The (re) construction of the family memory is thus the element that sparks a writing process which is, at the same time, autobiographical and metafictional which, in turn, defines the limits of its representation. Through an intercultural compromise and a permanent inter-generational antagonism, the present analysis will seek to understand Nihonjin as an arena to discuss the place that the Nippon-Brazilians – an entity made by permanent duality – occupy in the bosom of the “multicultural” nation.