“Extra-Special Care”

2021 ◽  
Vol 25 (5) ◽  
pp. 617-640
Author(s):  
Gabriel Miller Colombo
Keyword(s):  
Collective Memory ◽  
Special Care ◽  
Social Imaginary ◽  
Liturgical Theology ◽  
Material World ◽  
Found Objects ◽  
The Past ◽  
The Relationship

Abstract This paper reads Wes Anderson’s 2014 film The Grand Budapest Hotel through the lens of liturgical theology. It proposes that by revivifying collective memory—both its tragedies and joys—in a rhythmic, sensory, spatial, playful, and paradoxical way, the film forms our “social imaginary” for the better. In exploring the resonances between existing Anderson scholarship and liturgical theology, the paper highlights three key facets of the film: its implication of the present through the mythical stylization of the past; the relationship between M. Gustave and Zero, who find their place together as priest and acolyte of the Grand Budapest Hotel, enacting its liturgy of service against the rising tide of barbarism; and Anderson’s formal and aesthetic vision, which curates and elevates “found” objects and spaces, recognizing them as sacramental. Rejecting metaphysical dualism, the film suggests that communion and mystery are embedded in and enlivened by the material world.

scholarly journals Museum Collections as a Reflection of Cultural Landscape: the Interpretation of Collective Memory

2018 ◽  
Vol 3 (4) ◽  
pp. 170 ◽  
Author(s):  
Oskar Habjanič ◽  
Verena Perko
Keyword(s):  
Collective Memory ◽  
Cultural Landscape ◽  
Local Community ◽  
Political Identity ◽  
Vulnerable Groups ◽  
Museum Collections ◽  
The Past ◽  
Social Tasks ◽  
The Relationship ◽  
Private Collections

The article deals with the relationship between the local community, museum collections, collective memory and the cultural landscape. The ICOM Code of Museum Ethics defines a museum collection as a cultural and natural heritage of the communities from which they have been derived. The collections, especially in regional museums, are inextricably linked to the community. The cultural landscape can be read also as a bridge between the society and natural environment. The cultural landscape is vitally connected with a national, regional, local, ethnic, religious or political identity. Furthermore, the cultural landscape is a reflection of the community's activities. Therefore, private collections are the foundation of the collective memory and empower museums for important social tasks. They offer an opportunity for multilayered interpretation of the past and give a possibility for museums to work on the inclusion of vulnerable groups. The collections could be a mediator and unique tool for recovering of the “broken” memory. In this way certain tragic past events, ignored or only bigotedly mentioned by history, can be re-evaluated.

Collective Memory

Sociology ◽  
2019 ◽  
Author(s):  
Christina Simko
Keyword(s):  
Collective Memory ◽  
The United States ◽  
Emile Durkheim ◽  
State Legitimacy ◽  
The Past ◽  
National Memory ◽  
The Social ◽  
Political Borders ◽  
Monuments And Memorials ◽  
The Relationship

Collective memory encompasses both the shared frameworks that shape and filter ostensibly “individual” or “personal” memories and representations of the past sui generis, including official texts, commemorative ceremonies, and physical symbols such as monuments and memorials. Sociological work on collective memory traces its origins to Émile Durkheim and his student, Maurice Halbwachs. In the United States, the contemporary sociology of memory coalesced in the 1980s and 1990s, after Barry Schwartz brought renewed attention to Durkheim’s focus on commemoration as well as Halbwachs’s interest in how the past is reconstructed in the present, in the service of present needs, interests, and desires. Though this line of research initially emphasized heroic pasts—particularly national commemorations that bolstered state legitimacy with reference to triumphant episodes—scholars quickly began to address the ways that collectivities grapple with “difficult pasts,” or episodes that evoke shame, regret, and/or dissensus, and that threaten to “spoil” national identity. What is the relationship between memory and forgetting, and related concepts such as silence and denial? Can the increasingly pervasive language of “trauma” help us understand the current preoccupation with difficult pasts in both scholarly literature and public culture? More recently, scholars have critiqued the field’s overwhelming focus on national memory from two angles. First, studies of micro-level memories have revived Halbwachs’s initial interest in the social frameworks that structure (seemingly) individual memories. Second, globalization facilitates connectedness and identification beyond and/or outside of national frames of reference, and thus scholars have pointed to the emergence of “cosmopolitan” memories that create community and solidarity beyond and outside formal political borders.

When a historical analogy fails: Current political events and collective memory contestation in the news

2017 ◽  
Vol 12 (2) ◽  
pp. 130-145 ◽  
Author(s):  
Francis LF Lee ◽  
Joseph Man Chan ◽  
Dennis KK Leung
Keyword(s):  
Collective Memory ◽  
Memory Studies ◽  
State Violence ◽  
Historical Events ◽  
The Past ◽  
Political Events ◽  
Historical Analogy ◽  
The Relationship

Collective memory studies have emphasized how people can utilize important historical events as analogies to make sense of current happenings. This article argues that the invocation of historical analogies may, under certain circumstances, become an occasion for people to negotiate and contest the significance of the historical events. Focusing on Hong Kong’s Umbrella Movement in 2014, this article analyzes how references to the 1989 Tiananmen Incident emerged in the news as a dominant historical analogy when the movement began, foregrounding the possibility of state violence. But when state violence did not materialize, the authorities, young protesters, and radical activists started to contest the relevance of Tiananmen. The analogy was largely abandoned by the movement’s end. The analysis illustrates the recursive character of the relationship between past and present events: after the past is invoked to aid interpretations of the present, present developments may urge people to reevaluate the past.

scholarly journals Between Individual Memory and Social Memory. What Do People in Poland Remember About 1989?

2020 ◽  
Vol 3 (1) ◽  
pp. 1
Author(s):  
Aneta Ostaszewska
Keyword(s):  
Eastern Europe ◽  
Collective Memory ◽  
Central And Eastern Europe ◽  
Social Memory ◽  
Political Transformation ◽  
The Past ◽  
Individual Memory ◽  
Collapse Of Communism ◽  
The Individual ◽  
The Relationship

30 years have passed since the events of 1989 that led to the collapse of communism in Central and Eastern Europe. In the paper the themes of social memory of political transformation in Poland in 1989 are discussed. The content of online statements collected from popular Polish news portals are analysed. When asking the question what events and experiences do Poles bring back when they think of 1989, I am interested in the relationship between the individual (biographical) memory and collective memory – the socially reconstructed knowledge of the past.

Collective Memory and Journalism

2019 ◽  
Author(s):  
Tanja Bosch
Keyword(s):  
New Media ◽  
Collective Memory ◽  
Visual Memory ◽  
Memory Studies ◽  
The Past ◽  
Memory Work ◽  
Interdisciplinary Field ◽  
Cultural Sites ◽  
The Relationship ◽  
Journalistic Practice

The relationship between the practice and field of journalism and the interdisciplinary field of memory studies is complex and multifaceted. There is a strong link between collective memory production and journalistic practice, based on the proposition that journalists produce first drafts of history by using the past in their reportage. Moreover, the practice of journalism is a key agent of memory work because it serves as one of society’s main mechanisms for recording and remembering, and in doing so helps shape collective memory. Journalism can be seen as a memory text, with journalists constructing news within cultural-interpretive frames according to the cultural environment. Journalism also plays a key role in the production of visual memory and new media, including social media. Journalism is thus a key agent of memory work, providing a space for commentary on institutional and cultural sites of memory construction.

‘A Fine Pate Full of Fine Dirt’: Hamlet Among the Atomists

2019 ◽  
pp. 132-190
Author(s):  
Christopher Crosbie
Keyword(s):  
Sixteenth Century ◽  
Early Modern ◽  
Collective Memory ◽  
The Body ◽  
Historical Time ◽  
Material World ◽  
The Past ◽  
Ways Of Thinking

This chapter situates Shakespeare’s Hamlet in a late sixteenth century atomism increasingly shorn of its atheist metaphysics and Epicurean ethics. Making available new ways of thinking about matter as theoretically compatible with theistic ideas, early modern atomism provides a set of ontological assumptions that governs the playworld and shapes the course of Hamlet’s revenge. Paying special attention to two strands of atomist thought – namely, the body as particularized and the functions of perception, memory, and time as material imprints – this chapter reads Hamlet’s understanding of the dissolvable body and his attempt to remold the court's collective memory, the most proximate record of historical time, as of a piece. Hamlet's revenge, consonant with his prior ways of conceptualizing embodied existence, functions as a kind of material accretion to the past. In his brooding and revenge, Hamlet seeks comfort, then, in the prospect of a reassuringly enduring materiality but a comfort that remains theoretical and contingent. The most intense poignancy of his tragic demise emerges from Hamlet’s surprisingly persistent refusal to abandon the tantalizing, if elusive, consolations proffered by the material world itself.

scholarly journals Memories of cinemagoing and film experience: An introduction

2017 ◽  
Vol 10 (1) ◽  
pp. 3-16 ◽  
Author(s):  
Annette Kuhn ◽  
Daniel Biltereyst ◽  
Philippe Meers
Keyword(s):  
Collective Memory ◽  
Film Studies ◽  
Memory Studies ◽  
Special Issue ◽  
Methodological Issues ◽  
The Past ◽  
Historical Film ◽  
Film Experience ◽  
Future Work ◽  
The Relationship

Over the past two decades, the relationship between cinema and memory has been the object of increasing academic attention, with growing interest in film and cinema as repositories for representing, shaping, (re)creating or indexing forms of individual and collective memory. This Special Issue on memory and the experience of cinemagoing centres on the perspective of cinema users and audiences, focusing on memories of films, cinema and cinemagoing from three continents and over five decades of the twentieth century. This introduction considers the relationship between memory studies and film studies, sets out an overview of the origins of, and recent and current shifts and trends within, research and scholarship at the interface between historical film audiences, the cinemagoing experience and memory; and presents the articles and reviews which follow within this frame. It considers some of the methodological issues raised by research in these areas and concludes by looking at some of the challenges facing future work in the field.

scholarly journals Between truth and memory: images in Lithuanian historical documentaries in post-communist transformation period

2015 ◽  
Vol 7 (2) ◽  
pp. 85-101
Author(s):  
Rūta Šermukšnytė
Keyword(s):  
Critical Thinking ◽  
National Identity ◽  
Collective Memory ◽  
National Narrative ◽  
The Past ◽  
Historical Images ◽  
Historical Films ◽  
The Relationship ◽  
Made In ◽  
Transformation Period

The goal of this paper is to reveal how and why the circulation of the same historical images takes place; whose values and, simultaneously, memory are conveyed through these images; what is the relationship between the audiovisual representation of the past and collective memory? The article states that manifestations of the visual stereotypes of Lithuania history in post-communist transformation period (1988–2004) are mainly based on certain cinematic tendencies. Historical films that are considered to be an adaptation of the national narrative cinematography have been predominant since 1988. This kind of narration is characterized by validation of history as a national value, formation of national identity and its stabilization rather than diversification and correction of the collective memory or the development of critical thinking. The current documentary material that is based on the understanding of history as a myth of the nation’s history is not aimed at creating a new visual and verbal narration about the realities of the past, but rather at recognizing what has been said and made in the previous works.

scholarly journals Pamięć zbiorowa i dziennikarstwo newsowe

2021 ◽  
Vol 13(49) (1) ◽  
pp. 167-181
Author(s):  
Dariusz Wadowski
Keyword(s):  
Collective Memory ◽  
Basic Principles ◽  
The Past ◽  
Memory Content ◽  
Information Materials ◽  
The Relationship

The main goal of the article is to analyze the relationship between news journalism and collective memory. Based on the basic principles of news journalism, the specifics of the forms in which references to the past appear in media information materials are shown. Typification, premeditation and remediation were indicated as the most significant processes determining the ways of the presence of memory content in news. The main types of references to the past within news journalism were also discussed.

Memory sites: Visiting experiences in Santiago de Chile

2017 ◽  
Vol 11 (4) ◽  
pp. 455-468 ◽  
Author(s):  
Isabel Piper-Shafir ◽  
Marisela Montenegro ◽  
Roberto Fernández ◽  
Mauricio Sepúlveda
Keyword(s):  
Human Rights ◽  
Collective Memory ◽  
Human Rights Abuses ◽  
The Public ◽  
The Past ◽  
Santiago De Chile ◽  
Abstract Knowledge ◽  
Social Discourses ◽  
Historical Accounts ◽  
The Relationship

Studies on Chilean memory sites have focused on the spaces created to remember the human rights abuses carried out during the dictatorship. However, the ways in which people experience and appropriate these readings of the past have received scarce attention. In this article, we explore how individuals who were not victims of human rights abuses experience two memory sites in Santiago, Chile: Villa Grimaldi and Londres 38. Following the premise that memory emerges as a product of semiotic and material assembling materialized in the interaction between sites and visitors, we analyze the relationship between the memory sites’ suggested readings of the past and the experiences of the public. We argue that this experience allows visitors to connect past atrocities with broader social discourses circulating in Chile in the form of abstract knowledge. This requires visitors to assume a position in relation to different historical accounts, allowing specific reconfigurations of collective memory to emerge.

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