Memory as a Cultural System: Abraham Lincoln in World War II

Abstract

Studies of how societies preserve the past have focused on the social frames of memory. This study of Abraham Lincoln during World War II extends a semiotic interpretation of culture as it focuses on memory as a social frame. Memories invoked in the context of a present crisis are rooted in generational experience. One-third of all Americans living in 1940 were born during the late nineteenth century, when Civil War resentments were fading and remembrances of Lincoln were more positive and vivid than ever. This generation understood the meaning of World War II by keying it to the Civil War. Patterned arrays of images of Lincoln were invoked by local and federal agencies to clarify the purpose of World War II, legitimate the preparations for it, and then to orient, inspire, and console the people who fought it. As a model for the present and of the present, images of Lincoln comprised a cultural system that rationalized the experience of war. I compare and contrast memory as a cultural system with constructionist theories of collective memory and discuss it in light of the erosion of American society's grand narratives