Collective Narratives Research Articles

Sustainable city storytelling: cultural heritage as a resource for a greener and fairer urban development

PurposeIn the past years, the importance of the cultural economy has led urbanism to a new perspective. Simultaneously, the main international institutions have pointed out the need to shift the urban economy into a sustainable one, green and energy efficient. The confluence of both flows explains why the imaginaries of the urban future are related to the concept of creative cities. Hence, the new economic engine of the cities should be founded on art, creativity and culture, all of them understood as clean energies. This study aims to show the crucial role of cultural heritage as a propeller of a new kind of urban development, more flexible and democratic, based on the construction of the city as a communicational, collective and open effort. Therefore, the city is conceived as a cultural heritage platform where tangible and intangible, social and creative interactions happen. Within this context, urban narratives appear as a dynamic material drawn on the possibilities offered by the heritage received from the past as a resource to be used for re-thinking and re-shaping the future.Design/methodology/approachThe approach of this paper is based on a profound analysis of historical cities, mainly in the European context, supported by the work carried out within the H2020 ROCK project. The cities within the project are: Athens, Bologna, Cluj-Napoca, Eindhoven, Lisbon, Liverpool, Lyon, Torino, Skopje and Vilnius. A wide variety of case studies coming mainly from these cities have been considered to understand better the theoretical point of view on the role of heritage, urban development and city branding. The information about cultural heritage projects used as case studies has been collected and selected coming from the direct work made on the field and the communication open with institutions and cultural stakeholders in every city. Even more, parallel seminars on cultural heritage and city branding organized within the project have allowed the authors to gather very valuable, updated and fresh information on these issues in every particular case.FindingsThe study proves that cultural heritage has been traditionally underrated as a mechanism for developing the future of the city and its communicative strategy. Cultural heritage appears as a practical tool for constructing more cohesive urban communities based on the use of public space and shared memories as storytelling platforms. The capacity of resiliency and sustainability revealed by cultural heritage through the time is, as well, a clear reference to construct a potential sustainable city, socially, culturally and environmentally.Social implicationsCultural heritage projects are shown as a perfect way to build stronger communities. Through the engagement and participation of citizens, urban storytelling reinforces a more open, real and sustainable city able to face the challenges of contemporary life (gentrification, pollution, mobility, etc.). Like that, heritage appears as a feasible tool for including citizens coming from all ages and backgrounds in the construction of a collective narrative of the city, based on the past and looking at the foreseen.Originality/valueThis study tries to relate fields that traditionally have remained not well connected: urban development, city branding and cultural heritage. The study demonstrates that cultural heritage is crucial as an urban narrative tool and consequently, as a planning/branding mechanism. Moreover, cultural institutions and cultural projects are very relevant platforms for social interaction, inviting citizens to have a more active role in the construction of the city as a collective communicational effort based on a network of social and cultural relations. Storytelling turns up as a new key element for communicating the city from grassroots, in a sustainable, democratic and inclusive manner, far away from the traditional top-down official perspective. Crowdsourcing methods are very powerful for establishing a shared and cohesive city brand, now rooted in its cultural and social foundations and not the marketing campaign clichés. Finally, storytelling emerges as a creative resource that enhances the social, cultural and economic layout of the city, forcing urbanists to include a greener, fairer and more democratic perspective in the future of cities.

Exploring Borders in a Texas Prekindergarten: Storytelling from the In-Between

ABSTRACTThis article is a collective narration of our work in a prekindergarten and its curriculum, designed to employ student choice as a connection-making mechanism. We describe a series of “boundaries,” social constructions, recognitions and physical barriers to illustrate the movement of the students within the curriculum, their negotiation of these boundaries, the meanings made, and our negotiated storytelling.

Special Issue: Heredity and Evolution in an Ibero-American Context

Special Issue: Heredity and Evolution in an Ibero-American Context

Gender and sexuality in contemporary Greek theatre: red-light landscapes and city legends

The article explores the representation of female sexuality, in particular prostitution and its association with urban landscapes. The subject forms part of a wider research venture examining the different ways in which contemporary Greek theatre depicts and discusses the female body, female discourse and women’s experiences. The analysis of recent productions focuses on two major points: first, on the mise en scène of the prostitute body and, second, on the way in which each production exposes the association between the characters’ biography and the geography and history of the city. Our aim does not lie in discussing the productions’ ideological views on the issue of prostitution and the contemporary sex industry, but in exploring the mode in which the stage narrative operates as a field in which the life story of these women is first heard and performed and then incorporated into the collective narrative of the city’s history. The productions discussed are Η τελευταία μάσκα–Fallimento (The Last Mask–Fallimento), based on a text by Kostas Logaras, adapted for the stage and directed by Thodoros Terzopoulos (2006); Η γυναίκα της Πάτρας (The Woman of Patras), based on a text by Giorgos Chronas and adapted for the stage and directed by Lena Kitsopoulou (2010); and Γκάμπυ (Gaby), based on Gabriella Ousakova’s autobiography, adapted for the stage by Anastasia Tzellou and Kirki Karali and directed by Karali (2015).

Generativity in Creative Storytelling: Evidence From a Dementia Care Community.

Background and ObjectivesCreative group storytelling as utilized in TimeSlips is a social activity that focuses on communication, improvisation, and creativity among its participants with dementia. A collective narrative is a channel through which participants express themselves, and it thus signifies clues about their identities, values, and experiences. No study to date, however, has examined the contents of the stories. Using the generativity model as a theoretical underpinning for analysis, this paper examines the emergent themes of such collective stories.Research Design and MethodsThis study used the data collected in a memory care community where a research team recruited and engaged 21 out of approximately 80 residents with dementia in 6 weekly creative storytelling sessions; 4 small groups of 4 to 6 participants created a total of 24 collective stories. Three researchers analyzed these stories by open-coding emergent themes. Once coded manually, the narratives were managed and analyzed in NVivo.ResultsConsistent with the concept of generativity, a thematic analysis of collective narratives revealed various aspects of participants’ generative concerns. Three themes related to generativity: (1) caring and promoting the well-being of others, (2) family values, and (3) positivity.Discussion and ImplicationsThe narratives show that participants living with dementia continue to express their generative values and concerns. The findings reveal generative identities held by persons living with dementia, which help destigmatize dementia. The findings also shed light on why creative group storytelling may affect multiple positive outcomes for its participants.

The Use of Ripple Effect Mapping to Understand Successes of the SC Pregnancy Assistance Fund: A Participatory Evaluation Approach

ObjectivesThe South Carolina Pregnancy Assistance Fund (SCPAF) funded four counties to increase the amount, quality, and awareness of services for young parents; increase educational attainment among expectant and parenting youth; reduce the number of repeat teen pregnancies among youth; and improve parenting skills. The purpose of this paper is twofold: (1) to describe our application of the Ripple Effect Mapping (REM) technique as an innovative evaluation strategy to gather perspectives from SCPAF stakeholders and (2) to share key findings generated by participants in REM sessions on the perceived success of local SCPAF community collaboratives.MethodsREM, an innovative evaluation strategy, was used to gather perspectives from SCPAF stakeholders. Five REM sessions were conducted with 52 participants. REM sessions included partner interviews and collective development of visual maps to illustrate stakeholder perspectives of program successes. Visual maps, as well as transcripts of discussions, were analyzed using an inductive approach.ResultsStakeholders reported that the connections to resources, supports, and services provided through SCPAF had the potential to alter the life trajectories of expectant and parenting teens (EPT). Stakeholders also described that SCPAF fostered growth in collaboration among partners and reduced duplication of services in funded communitiesConclusions for PracticeThis paper describes how an innovative evaluation strategy was used to provide a space for stakeholders to dialogue, synthesize their experiences, and construct a collective narrative of key program successes. This paper also illustrates how such approaches can be applied to complex community initiatives.

Vanessa Siddle Walker: Honoring Keepers of Knowledge by Using Their Stories to Improve Education

Dr. Vanessa Siddle Walker, a renowned historical researcher in the field of education, is a leading voice in the history of school desegregation in the United States. In this interview, she discusses positioning black educators as significant agents of change in the collective narrative of schools and highlights how their organized action and strategic advocacy has led to social justice and equity for black students. Her research informs how our schools have worked in the past, and how lessons from our past can serve to mobilize resources for the equitable education of all children today.

A Concubine’s Rape, an Apostle’s Flight, and a Nation’s Reconciliation

Abstract This article applies collective trauma theory to biblical interpretation in order to respond to a 21st-century humanitarian crisis. Utilizing recent advances in social-scientific theory, the article examines how the books of Judges and the Acts of the Apostles can function in distinct and complementary fashions as “collective trauma narratives.” Judges 19-21 is interpreted as narrating the Levite’s “polarizing” trauma narrative and subverting it with a reconciling narrative. Acts 6-8 and 12 are also examined as trauma narratives speaking to the loss of early Christian leaders, promoting a vision of forgiveness and hope of divine justice. The article applies trauma theory to biblical interpretation for the purpose of addressing the armed conflict in Colombia. We propose that the theological visions of the trauma narratives of Judges and Acts (regarding forgiveness, resistance, flight, and reconciliation) are poignant for Colombian religious communities seeking peace and healing in the wake of violence and displacement.

Preserving cultural heritage: Shifting paradigms in the face of war, occupation, and identity

Abstract War is often an amalgamation of various objectives and occupation a realization of one core aim, that is, the suppression of the identity of an occupied population. Thus, warfare not only affects people but also the collective narrative of their environments, history, culture, and identity. Consequently, deliberate destruction of cultural heritage becomes part of any political struggle. Once political struggles infringe on a nation’s history, both local and global institutions and entities must take responsibility for preserving the authenticity of the global narrative. Deprioritizing urban conservation policies, especially during times of war, is known to inflict sheer, and sometimes irreversible, damage on a national and global scale. Despite the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization’s (UNESCO) regulations on protecting cultural heritage during war, the enforcement of such responsibilities on the ground remains questionable. The Palestinian experience is among the rare existing narratives of cultural heritage and architectural conservation becoming the crux of resistance against loss of land and identity. Lacking a central authority and having only been operational for the last three decades, the conservation movement has nonetheless succeeded in conserving a considerable part of Palestinian architectural heritage. The quality of work produced by these efforts has received international recognition and various accolades, despite ongoing difficulties faced under occupation. This paper highlights the role of non-governmental organizations in Palestine, particularly of Riwaq, and details their internationally recognized conservation efforts in several locations, such as Jerusalem and Hebron. These examples are presented to foster the argument that architecture is intrinsic to preserving historical authenticity and local identity. A dependable future rests on preserving the cultural heritage of all places, requiring universal compliance among nations that transcends physical borders and boundaries to promote the continuity of shared legacy.

Acknowledging the Collective Narrative of the “Other” in Dialogue Groups: The Case of Israeli Jews and Arabs

Acknowledging the Collective Narrative of the “Other” in Dialogue Groups: The Case of Israeli Jews and Arabs

Art Rebels: Race, Class, and Gender in the Art of Miles Davis and Martin Scorsese

In Art Rebels: Race, Class, and Gender in the Art of Miles Davis and Martin Scorsese, Paul Lopes digs deep into what he calls the “public stories” of two artists to illuminate an analysis of the Bourdieusian concept of the Heroic Age of art. Lopes argues that the Heroic Age of American Art, a time when independent entrepreneurial artists became a permanent fixture of the American art world, emerged in the 1940s–1970s. By focusing on artists’ autonomy, innovation, and the interplay of the artist’s identity in society, Lopes examines how the Heroic Age is exemplified in the careers of jazz musician Miles Davis and film director Martin Scorsese. The book is a strong example of a Millsian analysis of the interplay of biography and history within the creative industries. Lopes introduces the concept of a public story as collective narratives crafted by critics, journalists, and artists themselves that contribute to the structured meanings of artists and their work in society. Ultimately, such public stories unfold over time and shape the production and reception of artists’ work. He simultaneously uses the concept of biographical legend, the joining of an artist’s career with personal biographical details, to answer the question of what such public stories and biographical legends tell us about the Heroic Age of American Art. The ambitious empirical approach that Lopes employs led him to collect and inductively code over 3,000 documents and artistic works from the 1940s to the present that make up the public stories of both Miles Davis and Martin Scorsese.

How Economic Inequality Fuels the Rise and Persistence of the Yellow Vest Movement

Our analysis explores the rise of the Yellow Vest movement as a collective response to perceptions of growing levels of economic inequality in France whereby collective action is triggered by the perceived illegitimacy of the growing gap between the ‘haves’ and ‘have-nots’. We highlight different psychological processes that might explain why concerns about economic inequality have become more salient. We focus on two dynamics in particular: (a) President Macron’s perceived alignment with the elites and disconnection from ordinary French people, and (b) historically dominant collective narratives that frame growing inequality as breaking with long-standing values and norms of equality. Both processes enhance ‘us’ (the victims) versus ‘them’ (the elite and those that are not true to national values of equality) categorizations along wealth lines whereby, ‘us’ becomes a broad category. To explain why the movement continues to go strong, we focus on ongoing intergroup processes (i.e., the police response, lack of support from intellectuals and the middle class) and intragroup processes (i.e., the movement brings together all those who self-categorise as victims of inequality, uniting those that may at other times be seen as ‘strange bedfellows’). We conclude that a proper understanding of the way in which economic inequality might divide society creating new intergroup dynamics is essential to understand the Yellow Vest movement.

The care by obstetric nurses: the encounter between self care bodies and other woman who is cared for

ABSTRACT Objective: To analyze the obstetric nurses’ discourse on self-care and decisions make of their life and body, and their relation with care for other women. Method: A qualitative, post-structuralist research with 14 obstetric nurses. Data were obtained from in-depth interviews and submitted to discourse analysis, based on the concepts of Foucault. Results: The findings reveal that caring of obstetric nurses is produced in the encounter between their own body and the body of the women under their care. The nursing profession was presented not only as a means of work and support but as an essential device for the training of women as subjects. The collective narrative is marked by the attitude of compassion, by the processes of subjectivity incited by the professional practice, by indicators of critical and political care, and by the construction of an interlocking network among obstetrical nurses. Conclusions and implications for practice: Acting in obstetric nursing results in self-care and care(less) effects of other women. The study contributes to the analysis and knowledge of the life and work scenario of obstetrical nurses. It also reassures the potential of care as an art that is present in the women’s practices.

Our collective narrative was being constructed in the film production. A conversation at the crossroads between militants, media production and research

espanolEste texto se basa en una conversacion entre miembros del Movimiento de Trabajadores sin Tierra de Brasil (MST), una directora de cine y una investigadora en comunicacion sobre el proceso de produccion del documental Chao (Landless). Chao documenta los procesos de ocupacion de tierras del MST y las luchas para conseguir derechos sobre la tierra en el estado de Goias entre 2014 y 2018. Las practicas de movilizacion del MST desde el surgimiento del Movimiento en 1984 han estado muy influidas por la pedagogia emancipadora de Paulo Freire. La accion social historicamente situada del Movimiento construye conocimiento sobre la realidad al mismo tiempo que la cambia. El documental es un ejemplo de produccion de medios participativos en el que el cineasta y los militantes construyeron juntos una narrativa desde sus diferentes perspectivas. Este proceso participativo se usa aqui como punto de partida para discutir la dinamica experiencial del proceso de concientizacion desde las diferentes perspectivas de investigacion, produccion de medios y militancia. EnglishThis text is based on a conversation between members in the Brazilian Landless Workers Movement, a film producer and a media and communication researcher about the production process of the documentary Chao (Landless). Chao documents MST’s processes of land occupation and the battles to gain rights to land in the state of Goias between 2014 and 2018. MST’s mobilization practices since the emergence of the Movement in 1984 have been much informed by Paulo Freire’s emancipatory pedagogy. The Movement’s historically situated social action constructs knowledge about reality at the same time that it changes reality. The documentary is an example of participatory media production in which the filmmaker and the militants constructed a narrative together from their different perspectives. This participatory process is used here as a departure point to discuss the experiential dynamics of the conscientization process from the different perspectives of research, media production, and militancy.

Heteroglossia: Interpretation and the Experiences of Coptic Immigrants from Egypt in North America, 1955–1975

Scholarship on Coptic Orthodox Christians, built on textual sources left behind by elites and institutions, has focused largely on the unwavering persistence of an insular faith community. Instead, oral history can focus on the material engagements of immigrants to central Canada and the northeastern United States in its analysis. In doing so, the histories of Egyptian migrants reveal how some people carved out a space for autobiographies within collective communal narratives. Adopting a methodology that privileges the heteroglossia—varied and opposing voices—of migrating actors, the author insists that a transnational and reflexive analysis is necessary to appreciate the everyday lives and motivations of Copts from Egypt in North America.

Natasha PulleyThe Lost Future of Pepperharrow

love most: “As sage gives its scent when you crush it. As stone / is hard. They were happy and I could touch it.” Even as it treads through deeply difficult subject matter, the book manages to be celebratory, extravagant, and often erotic; a matrix of intense noticing that makes it possible to understand how we live through and past all the difficulties of our lives. “Oh, blame life. That we just want more.” Or, Bass seems to say, blame the unrestrained blooming of fungus; the grizzly whose “shitting ferries the seeds”; the always separate and unknowable depths of a lover. Bailey Hoffner University of Oklahoma Natasha Pulley The Lost Future of Pepperharrow New York. Bloomsbury. 2020. 512 pages. FOR ALL ITS strange science, clairvoyance , and electrical ghosts, The Lost Future of Pepperharrow presents a nineteenth century remarkably analogous to our own history and fraught present. It is 1888, five years after Thaniel Steepleton, a Foreign Office translator, and Keita Mori, a clairvoyant watchmaker, met in Natasha Pulley ’s 2015 debut novel, The Watchmaker of Filigree Street. Together they travel with their daughter from their home in London to Mori’s estate in Japan as international tensions brew and nationalism secures an increasingly mainstream foothold. Greeted by Mori’s wife, Takiko Pepperharrow , the pair navigates their uncertain future in which the stakes are at once intimate and global. Mori is unsettled, and not just because of the hauntings. Meanwhile, Thaniel, ill and despondent, begins his post at Tokyo’s British legation as the strain in his relationship with Mori magnifies. Then Mori goes missing, leaving Thaniel and Takiko to untangle the connection between the ghosts, a labor camp, and a corrupt prime minister whose warmonger disposition threatens Mori’s life and the safety of civilian populations. Whereas Watchmaker is set largely in London, its sequel expands in both page Books in Review Major Jackson The Absurd Man New York. W.W. Norton. 2020. 112 pages. MAJOR JACKSON’S FIFTH book of poems is troubled by its own age. “The soil overruns with honey,” says the speaker in “I’ve Said Too Much,” a confession ripe with seasons of overindulgence . But satiety may not quite be what Jackson has in store for us this time. As though it had spent the five years since the release of Roll Deep (2015) weighing a smattering of gray hairs before embracing salt-and-pepper, The Absurd Man brings a different feel to Jackson’s perennially strong poetry. With a dose of self-awareness that is by turns playful, thought-provoking, and heartbreaking, the poems in this book offer up a collective narrative to complement their stand-alone lyricism. Return readers will mark a change in this book’s “Urban Renewal” suite, a recurring, sequential section that Jackson has described as a sort of autobiographical bildungsroman spread out across his collections. As in the book’s earlier poems like “November in Xichang,” the poetry in this section deploys Jackson’s signature roaming ekphrastic. But, often, Jackson doesn’t quite rhapsodize, leaving us a handbreadth short of the rapture of his habitual syllabic alchemy. Ultimately, his keenest lyric notes come not in poems like “Paris” but in the last half of “North Philadelphia” (the home of Jackson’s youth): “tunes / not so much learned yet risen, earth’s laments / gardened in our throats from black soil, a slow grumbling, / fitful drawn-out grunts grafting onto gospel notes / not recognized but felt, a ring-shout.” He ends, “I’m still in that dimness, several rows behind their wails, / writing their moans so you can feel them like Braille.” In The Absurd Man, the tune of Jackson’s most tactile, Braille-like passages takes after Albert Camus’s The Myth of Sisyphus, whose epigraph heads the section, valorizing the art of “the absurd creator.” In many ways, though, the epigraph toes the line between being a deceptive frame and an ironic foil, a presiding duplicity the reader is alert to from the book’s coy opener, “Major and I,” a playful take on Jorge Luis Borges’s “Borges y yo” that similarly exploits the sometimes troubling implications of a writer’s multiple personae. Indeed, the speaker resists the absurd...

Mesochronous Marechera: African Aesthetics, Violence, and Temporality in The House of Hunger

This article theorizes a new temporal category, the mesochronous (or “middle time”), via analyzing The House of Hunger (1979), the debut novella by Zimbabwean author Dambudzo Marechera. Marechera's vulgar, irreverent aesthetic has expanded the definition of postcolonial African writing while at times prompting his categorization as a cosmopolitan or global modernist author. Within postcolonial literary studies, questions of political commitment or individual identity often accompany aesthetic categorization: for instance, to what extent does an author's stylistic choices reflect an individual or collective narrative of national struggle? Marechera’s fictional and essayistic writings disallow easy assignation as local or universal, African or Western. Rather than considering his work as reflective of a hybrid identity, I argue that it proposes a mesochronous, coeval relation between Western and African aesthetic and material worlds in the post-War era. Marechera enacts this historico-aesthetic relation through representing 1970-80s Zimbabwe with violence and vulgarity—which, in turn, confronts and subverts the dialectical fashioning of Africa as outside history, modernity, and the universal. I read The House of Hunger (1979) as a theorization of this mesochronous relation between Africa and its others, rather than merely a realist depiction of a violent postcolony.

Historia de Lidia: esbozo étnico-biográfico de una Pankararu, entre Aldeia y Metrópoli

This text addresses the situation of indigenous people in the big city, through the pankararu located in Sao Paulo, Brazil. We recover the most general features of the historical and cultural route of the pankararu collective between the sertao and the metropolis, and describe a life path between them. The individual narrative introduces complexity and contradiction in the collective narrative and gives us access to a fundamental theme for the studies of migration or indigenous diaspora: the process of transposition and transformation of a tradition between radically different contexts

Bir ‘meçhul asker’ kurgusu: Yakup Kadri Karaosmanoğlu’nun “Ses Duyan Kız” hikâyesi

Milliyetçiliklerde millî kimliğin devamlılığını sağlamak için zaman ve mekânda var olan ortaklıklar sıklıkla ön plana çıkarılır. Bu bağlamda millî anıtlar, millî efsaneler, millî bayramlar, anma törenleri, kolektif anlatılar, ritüeller ortak hafızanın canlı tutulmasını sağlayarak millî kimliğin içselleştirilme sürecine önemli katkılar sunarlar. Millet ile ortak tarih, ortak tecrübe, aidiyet ve toprak arasındaki bağları pekiştiren bu kolektif alanlardan biri de meçhul asker anıtları ya da mezarlarıdır. Meçhul asker anıtları, millet olma yolunda verilen topyekûn mücadelenin öyküsünü hatırlatması nedeniyle millî imgeleri etrafında toplarlar. Meçhul askerle ilgili her tür sosyolojik ve özgül kimlik verilerinin bilinmezliği, bireylerin meçhul asker ve onun öyküsüyle dolayısıyla da millî kimliğin sosyal, siyasal, kültürel ve tarihî kodlarıyla özdeşim kurmalarını kolaylaştırır. Yakup Kadri Karaosmanoğlu’nun Milli Savaş Hikâyeleri’nde yer alan “Ses Duyan Kız” adlı hikâyede, düşman askerleriyle savaşmak için köyünden ayrılan genç bir kızın ‘millî bir efsane’ kahramanına dönüşme öyküsü anlatılır. Bu çalışmada meçhul asker imgesinin millî kimlik inşa süreçlerinde üstlendiği işlevlere değinilecek, Yakup Kadri Karaosmanoğlu’nun topyekûn savaş fikrini uyandırmak ve millî anlatı arayışlarına katkı sunmak amacıyla “Ses Duyan Kız” hikâyesinde bir ‘meçhul asker’ imgesi oluşturduğu düşüncesi tartışılacaktır.

Forgetting to Re-member: Politics of Amnesia and the Reconstruction of Memory in Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind, Everything Is Illuminated and Memento

Abstract This essay aims to discuss the ideological aspects of memory loss as a reconstruction of personal and collective memory with reference to several Hollywood movies, Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind, Memento and Everything Is Illuminated. The essay explores the construction of memory within a network of power relations and the profound influence that the reproduction of memory has on the embodiment of personal identities. The unreliability of human memory has been a major issue in philosophical debates and works of art from early Greek philosophy to cyberpunk novels. Memory studies draw on a wide range of academic fields varying from neuroscience to political science, with an emphasis on prosthetic memories, identity and body politics, displaced cultural identities, and consumer culture. Often intermingled with collective narratives, memory is an ideological artifact or rather a form of language that can be institutionally manipulated or manufactured. The mass production of personal and collective memories further deprives human beings of control over their personal histories and identity constructions. In this regard, this article elaborates the formation, reinforcement, and reconstruction of memory in contemporary culture with particular references to the inclusion of hegemony, cultural politics, and identity politics in selected movies.