Abstract
In order to understand how the Brazilian dictatorship became an unsettled and disputed issue, it is essential to reflect on processes and mechanisms of sense-making about the past. Therefore, this chapter discusses the foundations of the study of memory and the relationship between memory and history in attributing meaning to the practical past (Hayden White). This relational character of memory materialises itself in mnemonic practices and products (Olick and Robbins) that are observable through representations and discourses about the past. Media are fields of practice where the externalisation and objectification of such processes occur. The chapter also presents the potentialities and constraints of mnemonic practices in a digitally mediated communication context, taking the current relevance of socio-technical entanglements for the performance of mnemonic practices.
This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution to check access.
Access this chapter
Tax calculation will be finalised at checkout
Purchases are for personal use only
Notes
- 1.
For Plato, the concept of memory was tightly connected to knowledge—an idea that is extensively discussed in the dialogues of Socrates and Theaetetus. In this work, one of the metaphors used to refer to memory is that of the mind as a “block of wax” (Ricœur 2004, 13) where experienced situations, perceptions and thoughts were possibly imprinted when one wished to recall them. The Aristotelian tradition, on the other hand, emphasises the links of memory and affection, imagination and mimesis (or imitation). These concepts recognized the agency of human faculties of meaning attribution and the changes that the passing of time generates in the process of interpretation (ibid., 16–17).
- 2.
Bergson used the notion of duration (or la durée in French) to give account of the multiplicity of states that matter and its representations acquire with the passage of time. For him, the past survives continuously in the present. The present only exists because of the permanence of images formed and referring to the past. These images connect matter (facts, events, past experiences) and their representative form (remembrance, imagination) and are virtual, ready to be actualised in the present according to subjective conscious and unconscious processes. In other words, the past has a heterogeneous character and cannot be clearly separated from the moment of its actualisation, when its images are formed. It is through such movements (an articulations) that images are composed, connecting matter and their representations and giving rise to perceptions. In this sense, the duration corresponds to movements that form such images of the past, being indivisible and not corresponding necessarily to the chronological time (Bergson 1911, 12–18). These images are subjected to change, undermining the separation of past and present and, paradoxically, survive as memories, in a dynamic permanence that differs from linear notions of before, now and after (ibid.).
- 3.
In this dissertation, the term past will continue to be used as a reference to the period covered by the Brazilian dictatorship, as well as the word “present” is employed to designate the timespan in which this text was composed (2014–2020). The conceptual complexification derived from Koselleck and other philosophers of history are acknowledged and incorporated in the analyses as to illuminate the articulation of practices in the empirical analysis that frequently subvert chronological orders.
- 4.
Nora refers to “true memory” as the troubled maintenance of “spontaneous” and “ritualized” traditions (Nora 1989, 12) in modern France. In order to re-establish and create ties with the past by means of memory, societies erected monuments, set up commemorative dates, marketed cultural products (Lieux de Mémoire, or sites of memory) and built a close, interdependent and “interactive” relationship between memory and history by means of “material, symbolic, and functional” objectifications (ibid., 19). Through these objectifications, the past in the making (memory) and its (historical) analyses merge and complement each other, generating interpretations and knowledge about the past. In Nora’s words: “Even an apparently purely material site, like an archive, becomes a lieux de memoire only if the imagination invests it with a symbolic aura. A purely functional site, like a classroom manual, a testament, or a veterans' reunion belongs to the category only inasmuch as it is also the object of a ritual. And the observance of a commemorative minute of silence, an extreme example of a strictly symbolic action, serves as a concentrated appeal to memory by literally breaking a temporal continuity. Moreover, the three aspects [material, functional and symbolic] always coexist” (ibid., 19).
- 5.
This perspective guides my approach to memory in this book and therefore, Section 2.2 has been entirely dedicated to the concept of mnemonic practices.
- 6.
When referring to the idea of mnemonic labour, Margalit contends that “shared memory in a modern society travels from person to person through institutions, such as archives, and through communal mnemonic devices” (Margalit 2004, 54). Persons, archives, monuments and institutions play different and complementary roles in the process of articulation of memories at a shared, rather than common, dimension of memory.
- 7.
An interesting analysis of the presence of myths in national contexts and their impact in the formation of identities have been provided by the philosopher and political scientist Archard (1995). He also partakes the idea of the value of myths in revealing “truths” about social realities contending, however, that “they may be condemned for giving rise to unjustifiable false beliefs, for requiring the unjustified manipulation of the facts, or for sustaining unjustifiable states of affairs.” (Archard 1995, 472)
- 8.
Tulving (2007) identified at least 256 “kinds of memory” in a rather ironic review of scholarly work on the topic.
- 9.
Definition taken from the online Oxford Dictionary.
- 10.
Horkeheimer and Adorno defined this relationship between memory, alienation and reification in the statement “all reification is forgetting” (Horkheimer, Adorno, and Schmid Noerr 2002, 191). Forgetting, in this sense, people’s capacity for autonomy. See also in this regard Morgan (2014).
- 11.
In the preface of History and Class Consciousness, Lukacs makes an illuminating critique to the Hegelian tradition to equate objectification and alienation, for “Only when the objectified forms in society acquire functions that bring the essence of man into conflict with his existence, only when man's nature is subjugated, deformed and crippled can we speak of an objective societal condition of alienation and, as an inexorable consequence, of all the subjective marks of an internal alienation” (Lukács 1971, xxiv).
- 12.
Figurations is a term borrowed from Elias, who advocated for a relational approach in sociological research by arguing for an analysis of “webs of interdependence (…) characterized by power balances of many sorts” (Elias 1978, 15) that establish “chains of interdependence” between “people,” “the individual” and “society” (ibid., 131). In this sense, every act might be seen as the result of a response or inscription into a network of actions that forms the contingent reality of interwoven actors. Elias usually uses the example of “games” to demonstrate the applicability of the concept. Card or football players are not mere individuals that independently choose their moves and strategies, but rather part of teams of interdependent players, coach and staff; adversaries, considering the competition between teams or players; identities, taking into consideration that players can relate to each other depending on their positions or even preferred game style. In this sense, it is not the substantial behaviour of the player that should be analysed by sociologists, but rather the inter-relations of players involved in the game in a specific situated environment, and their materiality. This aspect is further discussed in the following section (1.2.1).
- 13.
For Plato, the concept of memory was tightly connected to knowledge—an idea that is extensively discussed in the dialogues of Socrates and Theaetetus. In this work, one of the metaphors used to refer to memory is that of the mind as a “block of wax” (Ricœur 2004, 13), where experienced situations, perceptions and thoughts were possibly imprinted when one wished to recall them. The flexibility of the wax would therefore produce representations (eikon) based on traces of those past events that are absent in the moment of recollection.
- 14.
According to Bourdieu’s notion of habitus, however, it is necessary to look beyond the mere interactional context to understand the values and meanings emerging in a given situation. In his terms: “To describe the process of objectification and orchestration in the language of interaction and mutual adjustment is to forget that the interaction itself owes its form to the objective structures which have produced the dispositions of the interacting agents and which allot them their relative positions in the interaction and elsewhere. Every confrontation between agents in fact brings together, in an interaction defined by the objective structure of the relation between the groups they belong to (e.g. a boss giving orders to a subordinate, colleagues discussing their pupils, academics taking part in a symposium), systems of dispositions (carried by ‘natural persons’) such as a linguistic competence and a cultural competence and, through these habitus, all the objective structures of which they are the product, structures which are active only when embodied in a competence acquired in the course of a particular history (with the different types of bilingualism or pronunciation, for example, stemming from different modes of acquisition) (Bourdieu 1977, 81).
- 15.
Bull and Hansen’s research project centres in the case of the European Union, where a cosmopolitan discourse reigned in order to set solidary and cohesive feelings among the members of the multinational political and economic alliance. Conservative and nationalist movements have surged and became empowered in the last few years in response to this cosmopolitan scenario, marked by multicultural migrations and economic austerity. A similar movement can also be observed in other geopolitical contexts, as in the US and Brazil, particularly after the elections of Trump (2016) under the motto “Make America Great Again” and Bolsonaro’s (2018) nostalgic and negationist discourse toward the Brazilian dictatorship.
- 16.
The concept of agonism that Mouffe (2005) articulates with political action tries to change the focus from the idea of political actors as enemies to adversaries. By being adversaries, they share different forms of symbolising the issue at stake, but still find ground for interacting.
- 17.
“A form of history which can account for the constitution of knowledge, discourses, domains of objects, etc., without having to make reference to a subject which is either transcendental in relation to the field of events or runs in its empty sameness throughout the course of history” (Foucault and Gordon 1980, 117).
- 18.
Reference to Bruno Latour and his work on science and technology studies is particularly evidenced in this agency-distributive approach. Latour is widely known for his theory about the interdependency of human and non-human actants’ agencies in what he calls “assemblages” (Latour 2005): performances and competences organised in chains of action that produce observational phenomena.
- 19.
At the same time, personal, digital-based information can have a long and sometimes undesirable lifespan. Recent struggles for the “right to be forgotten,” when individuals ask for the erasure of personal records from Google search results, for example, expose the contradiction surrounding digital media and personal memories.
- 20.
Van Djick’s ideas on connectivity and memory have been influenced by Hoskins’s concept of “memory in the connective turn” (Hoskins 2011), which stems from “the massively increased abundance, pervasiveness and accessibility of digital technologies, devices and media, sha** an ongoing recalibration of time, space (and place) and memory by people as they connect with, inhabit and constitute increasingly both dense and diffused social networks” (ibid., 272).
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Rights and permissions
Copyright information
© 2023 The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Fachmedien Wiesbaden GmbH, part of Springer Nature
About this chapter
Cite this chapter
Migowski da Silva, A.L. (2023). Memories and Media: Concepts and Practical Dimensions. In: Mnemonic Practices on Social Media. Kulturelle Figurationen: Artefakte, Praktiken, Fiktionen. Springer VS, Wiesbaden. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-658-41276-0_2
Download citation
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-658-41276-0_2
Published:
Publisher Name: Springer VS, Wiesbaden
Print ISBN: 978-3-658-41275-3
Online ISBN: 978-3-658-41276-0
eBook Packages: Social Science and Law (German Language)