MEDIATION OF MEMORY: TOWARDS TRANSDISCIPLINARY PERSPECTIVES IN CURRENT MEMORY STUDIES. PREFACE TO THE SPECIAL ISSUE OF TRAMES

Abstract

DOI: 10.3176/tr.2008.3.01 1. Introduction Memory has become one of buzzwords in today's humanities and social sciences. Concepts like 'collective memory' (Halbwachs 1950), 'lieux de memoire' (Nora 1989, 1996, 1998), 'cultural memory' (Bal et al. 1999), 'social memory' (Fentress and Wickham 1992, Misztal 2003), and many others catch our attention in titles of recently published books and articles, in tables of contents and lists of keywords. We are witnessing an increasing 'memory boom' (Winter 2000) in humanities and social sciences and a new field of research--memory studies--has emerged and develops rapidly. Under these circumstances we should, more than ever, pose ourselves question--what do we mean by 'memory'? Is memory an object of study, a unit of research, or is it a theoretical perspective through which we investigate other phenomena? What are differences between concepts of memory and history or memory and tradition? In which aspects do processes of individual memory and collective memory correlate, and in which they diverge? How far can we extend sub-concepts related to memory like remembering, forgetting, or trauma? And how can individuals' remembering be juxtaposed to construction of social memory? What is agency of language or artefacts in producing memory, in reflecting experience of temporality? What kind of potential, individual and collective, cultural or political, does inversion of temporal order extend in narratives of memory? The current special issue aims to raise some of these questions while implementing an interdisciplinary perspective on particular phenomena that arise from these explorations, in order to consider different aspects of memory with particular focus on cultural memory. 2. From memory boom to critical contemplations Taking into account abovementioned developments, 'memory' has become an excessively used and 'abused' concept, in humanities and social sciences, to extent that 'memory's' meaning and heuristic value become almost unclear (see Berliner 2005, Klein 2000, Fabian 1999). Misuses of memory seem to stem from feeling that it may be easier to avoid providing an adequate account of memory rather than to risk providing an insufficient definition. In field of anthropology Johannes Fabian warns against 'dangers of overextension' of concept of memory in 'current boom of memory, whereby memory becomes indistinguishable from either identity or culture' (Fabian 1999:51). It appears that concept of memory is undergoing developments similar to those that concept of culture recently underwent (cf. Fox and King 2002). We, as authors of this introduction, recognize that whereas it is probably impossible to provide an exhaustive definition of memory, it is nevertheless necessary, in ongoing academic boom of memory research, to continue discussion on possibilities and limitations of memory as an object and as a method. One of first significant critiques of 'the memory boom' by historian Kerwin Lee Klein (2000:128) pointed out that memory has become a 'metahistorical category', something like a Foucauldian field of discourse, referring to both individual and collective practices of remembering. However, it does not mean that memory is becoming a more abstract object, quite opposite--we witness the new materialization of memory to status of a historical agent, and we enter a new age in which archives remember and statues forget (Klein 2002:136). Wulf Kansteiner has argued that cumulative research on collective memory has not yet established a clear conceptual or methodological basis for cultural study of collective memory processes. The characteristics of individual memory are too eagerly attributed to collective memory, ignoring that memory in group processes does not function same way as it does in individual mind, and collective memory as an object of study needs therefore appropriate methods for its analysis. …