- Democratise the governance of the running of Europeana by embedding elections of representatives at each level of governance,
- Give a much bigger role to the Europeana Network as the democratic, working base of Europeana by changing from 6 network officers into a Members’ Council of 50 elected representatives and delivering direct representation in the Governing Board,
- Maintain a Governing Board of 15 who are able to react decisively and effectively within required time limits,
- Ensure the Governing Board is transparent and more directly accountable to the broader membership,
- Have a mix of stakeholders and expertise in the Governing Board with very clear role definitions in order to fulfill Europeana Strategy 2020.
Thursday, 14 August 2014
The New Europeana Network
Changes to the structure of Europeana have seen the re-launch of the Europeana Network, which is aiming to make the project more democratic and representative. The recommendations to go some way toward achieving this are as follows:
Wednesday, 13 August 2014
Anamnesis to Amnesia: The Trajectory of Memory
In philosophy, anamnesis is a concept in Plato's epistemological and psychological theory that he develops in his dialogues Meno and Phaedo, and alludes to in his Phaedrus. It is the idea that humans possess knowledge from past incarnations and that learning consists of rediscovering that knowledge within us. The concept is framed thus: knowledge is actually in the soul from eternity, but each time the soul is incarnated its knowledge is forgotten in the trauma of birth. What one perceives to be learning, then, is actually the recovery of what one has forgotten (once it has been brought back it is true belief, to be turned into genuine knowledge by understanding).
Other philosophers have since drawn from Plato in developing their own accounts of these ancient philosophical dialogues; foremost among them, Jacques Derrida in 'Plato's Pharmacy'. In that essay, he uses the notion of the pharmakon (remedy OR poison), to which Socrates compares the written texts of the Phaedrus, as that which produces a flickering and disorienting play in conceptual/ philosophical oppositions: remedy/ poison, good/ bad, true/ false, positive/ negative, interior/ exterior. Socrates in the Phaedrus tries to counteract the pharmakon of 'writing' with his most effective medicine - the living word of knowledge (see also Paul Ricoeur in Memory, History Forgetting, pp. 144-5). According to Derrida, the pharmakon of writing itself cannot be reduced to the series of oppositional concepts that it precedes and produces. As an alternative to static oppositions, he proposes dynamic compositions: the process called differance. He writes:
'Memory is finite by nature. Plato recognizes this by attributing life to it. As in the case of all living organisms, he assigns it, as we have seen, certain limits. A limitless memory would in any event be not memory but infinite self-presence. Memory always therefore already needs signs in order to recall the nonpresent, with which it is necessarily in relation. The movement of dialectics bears witness to this. Memory is thus contaminated by its first substitute: hypomnēsis. But what Plato dreams of is a memory with no sign. That is, with no supplement [another word for trace]. A mnēmē with no hypomnēsis, no pharmakon' (p. 439).
In a similar, vein but in relation to the concept of the Archive (see 'Archive Fever'), Derrida observes:
'As the death drive is also, according to the most striking words of Freud himself, an aggression and a destruction (Destruktion) drive, it not only incites forgetfulness, amnesia, the annihilation of memory, as mneme or anamnesis, but also commands the radical effacement, in truth the eradication, of that which can never be reduced to mneme or to anamnesis, that is, the archive, consignation, the documentary or monumental apparatus as hypomnema, mnemotechnical supplement or representative, auxiliary or memorandum, because the archive, if this word or this figure can be stabilized so as to take on a signification, will never be either memory or anamnesis as spontaneous, alive and internal experience. On the contrary: the archive takes place at the place of originary and structural breakdown of the said memory. There is no archive without a place of consignation, without a technique of repetition, and without a certain exteriority. No archive without outside. Let us never forget this Greek distinction between mneme or anamnesis on the one hand, and hypomnema on the other. The archive is hypomnesic. And let us note in passing a decisive paradox to which we will not have the time to return, but which undoubtedly conditions the whole of these remarks: if there is no archive without consignation in an external place which assures the possibility of memorization, of repetition, of reproduction, or of reimpression, then we must also remember that repetition itself, the logic of repetition, indeed the repetition compulsion, remains, according to Freud, indissociable from the death drive. And thus from destruction. Consequence: right on what permits and conditions archivization, we will never find anything other than what exposes to destruction, in truth what menaces with destruction introducing, a priori, forgetfulness and the archiviolithic into the heart of the monument. Into the 'by heart' itself. The archive always works, and a priori, against itself'.
In his essay 'Anamnesis and Hypomnesis: Plato as the First Thinker of the Proletarianisation', Bernard Stiegler develops Derrida's insights regardng anamnesis and hypomnesis, although his terminology is different. Where Derrida discusses the pharmakon nature of writing in the broad sense (encompassing technicity), Stiegler uses the term 'technics'. Extracts from the essay include:
'For all that it is clear that what Socrates describes in Phaedrus, to wit that the exteriorisation of memory is a loss of memory and of knowledge, is experienced today in our daily lives, in all the aspects of our existences, and, more and more often, in the feeling of our powerlessness, if not of our impotence – at the exact moment when the extraordinary mnesic power of digital networks make us all the more sensible to the immensity of human memory, which seems to have become infinitely reactivatable and accessible.This seeming paradox means that the question of hypomnesis is a political question, and the stakes of a combat: a combat for a politics of memory, and more precisely, for the constitution of sustainable hypomnesic milieux. The exteriorisation of memory and of knowledge, once it has reached the hyperindustrial stage, is at once that which furthers their limitless impact, and that which can implement their control – control by the cognitive and cultural industries of these control societies' [...]
'Human archaeology and paleontology offer a way of responding to the Platonic opposition of anamnesis and hypomnesis, with a theory of memory posing that technicity is constitutive of life as ex-sistence, that is, as desire and as knowledge' [...]
'Unlike the literal synthesis, where the writer and the reader coded and decoded the orthothetic recording, and where every reader was potentially a writer, which constituted a set-up of hypomnesis and anamnesis, with analog equipment, machines do the coding and decoding, and this is what allows for industrialisation, that is, for the separation of producers and consumers' [...]
'Techno-logical forms of knowledge, objectified in the form of equipment and apparatuses, also and especially engender a loss of knowledge at the very moment one begins speaking of ‘knowledge societies’ and ‘knowledge industries'.
This last quote shares affinities with Ricoeur's recognition that, 'what is peculiar to a history of memory is the history of the modes of its transmission' (see Transfer). With regard to the digital medium, much of the recent commentary around knowledge and memory is framed in terms of cultural amnesia. Less the interplay between anamnesis and hypomnesis, the interest is in the advent of a new accelerated temporality that amounts to a loss of memory. Some of these views are summarised below (see also Wolfgang Ernst):
'Using Google is a self-absorbing action, rather than an outward and reflexive process. It is not a search of the World Wide Web, but construction of an Individual Narrow Portal. It is addictively riveting to see how an identity is constructed through Google' (Tara Brabazon, xix-xx).
'What Amazon and many other companies began to do in the late 1990s was build up a giant world of the past on their computer servers. A historical universe that is constantly mined to find new ways of giving back to you today what you liked yesterday - with variations. Interestingly, one of the first people to criticise these kind of 'ecommender systems' for their unintended effect on society was Patti Maes who had invented RINGO. She said that the inevitable effect is to narrow and simplify your experience - leading people to get stuck in a static, ever-narrowing version of themselves (Adam Curtis).
'The technical-industrial transformation of a world (that) forces upon its inhabitants ever briefer intervals of time in which to gather new experiences and adapt to changes induced at an ever-increasing pace' (Koselleck, p.3).
'The museum fetish (itself) transcends exchange value. It seems to carry with it something like an anamnestic dimension, a kind of memory value. The more mumified an object is, the more intense its ability to yield experience, a sense of the authentic. No matter how fragile or dim the relation between museum object and the reality it documents may be [...], as object it carries a register of reality which even the live television broadcast cannot match' (Huyssen, p. 33).
'The gaze at the museal object may provide a sense of its opaque and impenetrable materiality as well as an anamnestic space within which the the transitoriness and differentiality of human cultures can be grasped. Via the activity of memory, set in motion and nurtured by the contemporary museum in its broadest and most amorphous sense, the museal gaze expands over the ever shrinking space of the (real) present in a culture of amnesia, planned obsolescence and ever more synchronic and timeless information flows, the hyperspace of the coming age of information highways' (Huyssen, p. 34).
Other philosophers have since drawn from Plato in developing their own accounts of these ancient philosophical dialogues; foremost among them, Jacques Derrida in 'Plato's Pharmacy'. In that essay, he uses the notion of the pharmakon (remedy OR poison), to which Socrates compares the written texts of the Phaedrus, as that which produces a flickering and disorienting play in conceptual/ philosophical oppositions: remedy/ poison, good/ bad, true/ false, positive/ negative, interior/ exterior. Socrates in the Phaedrus tries to counteract the pharmakon of 'writing' with his most effective medicine - the living word of knowledge (see also Paul Ricoeur in Memory, History Forgetting, pp. 144-5). According to Derrida, the pharmakon of writing itself cannot be reduced to the series of oppositional concepts that it precedes and produces. As an alternative to static oppositions, he proposes dynamic compositions: the process called differance. He writes:
'Memory is finite by nature. Plato recognizes this by attributing life to it. As in the case of all living organisms, he assigns it, as we have seen, certain limits. A limitless memory would in any event be not memory but infinite self-presence. Memory always therefore already needs signs in order to recall the nonpresent, with which it is necessarily in relation. The movement of dialectics bears witness to this. Memory is thus contaminated by its first substitute: hypomnēsis. But what Plato dreams of is a memory with no sign. That is, with no supplement [another word for trace]. A mnēmē with no hypomnēsis, no pharmakon' (p. 439).
In a similar, vein but in relation to the concept of the Archive (see 'Archive Fever'), Derrida observes:
'As the death drive is also, according to the most striking words of Freud himself, an aggression and a destruction (Destruktion) drive, it not only incites forgetfulness, amnesia, the annihilation of memory, as mneme or anamnesis, but also commands the radical effacement, in truth the eradication, of that which can never be reduced to mneme or to anamnesis, that is, the archive, consignation, the documentary or monumental apparatus as hypomnema, mnemotechnical supplement or representative, auxiliary or memorandum, because the archive, if this word or this figure can be stabilized so as to take on a signification, will never be either memory or anamnesis as spontaneous, alive and internal experience. On the contrary: the archive takes place at the place of originary and structural breakdown of the said memory. There is no archive without a place of consignation, without a technique of repetition, and without a certain exteriority. No archive without outside. Let us never forget this Greek distinction between mneme or anamnesis on the one hand, and hypomnema on the other. The archive is hypomnesic. And let us note in passing a decisive paradox to which we will not have the time to return, but which undoubtedly conditions the whole of these remarks: if there is no archive without consignation in an external place which assures the possibility of memorization, of repetition, of reproduction, or of reimpression, then we must also remember that repetition itself, the logic of repetition, indeed the repetition compulsion, remains, according to Freud, indissociable from the death drive. And thus from destruction. Consequence: right on what permits and conditions archivization, we will never find anything other than what exposes to destruction, in truth what menaces with destruction introducing, a priori, forgetfulness and the archiviolithic into the heart of the monument. Into the 'by heart' itself. The archive always works, and a priori, against itself'.
In his essay 'Anamnesis and Hypomnesis: Plato as the First Thinker of the Proletarianisation', Bernard Stiegler develops Derrida's insights regardng anamnesis and hypomnesis, although his terminology is different. Where Derrida discusses the pharmakon nature of writing in the broad sense (encompassing technicity), Stiegler uses the term 'technics'. Extracts from the essay include:
'For all that it is clear that what Socrates describes in Phaedrus, to wit that the exteriorisation of memory is a loss of memory and of knowledge, is experienced today in our daily lives, in all the aspects of our existences, and, more and more often, in the feeling of our powerlessness, if not of our impotence – at the exact moment when the extraordinary mnesic power of digital networks make us all the more sensible to the immensity of human memory, which seems to have become infinitely reactivatable and accessible.This seeming paradox means that the question of hypomnesis is a political question, and the stakes of a combat: a combat for a politics of memory, and more precisely, for the constitution of sustainable hypomnesic milieux. The exteriorisation of memory and of knowledge, once it has reached the hyperindustrial stage, is at once that which furthers their limitless impact, and that which can implement their control – control by the cognitive and cultural industries of these control societies' [...]
'Human archaeology and paleontology offer a way of responding to the Platonic opposition of anamnesis and hypomnesis, with a theory of memory posing that technicity is constitutive of life as ex-sistence, that is, as desire and as knowledge' [...]
'Unlike the literal synthesis, where the writer and the reader coded and decoded the orthothetic recording, and where every reader was potentially a writer, which constituted a set-up of hypomnesis and anamnesis, with analog equipment, machines do the coding and decoding, and this is what allows for industrialisation, that is, for the separation of producers and consumers' [...]
'Techno-logical forms of knowledge, objectified in the form of equipment and apparatuses, also and especially engender a loss of knowledge at the very moment one begins speaking of ‘knowledge societies’ and ‘knowledge industries'.
This last quote shares affinities with Ricoeur's recognition that, 'what is peculiar to a history of memory is the history of the modes of its transmission' (see Transfer). With regard to the digital medium, much of the recent commentary around knowledge and memory is framed in terms of cultural amnesia. Less the interplay between anamnesis and hypomnesis, the interest is in the advent of a new accelerated temporality that amounts to a loss of memory. Some of these views are summarised below (see also Wolfgang Ernst):
'Using Google is a self-absorbing action, rather than an outward and reflexive process. It is not a search of the World Wide Web, but construction of an Individual Narrow Portal. It is addictively riveting to see how an identity is constructed through Google' (Tara Brabazon, xix-xx).
'What Amazon and many other companies began to do in the late 1990s was build up a giant world of the past on their computer servers. A historical universe that is constantly mined to find new ways of giving back to you today what you liked yesterday - with variations. Interestingly, one of the first people to criticise these kind of 'ecommender systems' for their unintended effect on society was Patti Maes who had invented RINGO. She said that the inevitable effect is to narrow and simplify your experience - leading people to get stuck in a static, ever-narrowing version of themselves (Adam Curtis).
'The technical-industrial transformation of a world (that) forces upon its inhabitants ever briefer intervals of time in which to gather new experiences and adapt to changes induced at an ever-increasing pace' (Koselleck, p.3).
'The museum fetish (itself) transcends exchange value. It seems to carry with it something like an anamnestic dimension, a kind of memory value. The more mumified an object is, the more intense its ability to yield experience, a sense of the authentic. No matter how fragile or dim the relation between museum object and the reality it documents may be [...], as object it carries a register of reality which even the live television broadcast cannot match' (Huyssen, p. 33).
'The gaze at the museal object may provide a sense of its opaque and impenetrable materiality as well as an anamnestic space within which the the transitoriness and differentiality of human cultures can be grasped. Via the activity of memory, set in motion and nurtured by the contemporary museum in its broadest and most amorphous sense, the museal gaze expands over the ever shrinking space of the (real) present in a culture of amnesia, planned obsolescence and ever more synchronic and timeless information flows, the hyperspace of the coming age of information highways' (Huyssen, p. 34).
Tuesday, 12 August 2014
Foucault and the Self
In the last part of his career, Foucault became interested in technologies of the self and the hupomnemata (a Greco-Roman form of writing, popular during the
first two centuries of the empire) as 'a matter of constituting oneself as a subject of rational action through the appropriation, the unification, and the subjectivation of a fragmentary and selected already-said'. Bernard Stiegler refers to this concept in his essay 'Anamnesis and Hypomnesis: Plato as the First Thinker of the Proletarianisation'. In an essay
called 'Self Writing' from 1983, Foucault writes:
'Hupomnemata, in the technical sense, could be account books, public registers, or individual notebooks serving as memory aids. Their use as books of life, as guides for conduct, seems to have become a common thing for a whole cultivated public. One wrote down quotes in them, extracts from books, examples, and actions that one had witnessed or read about, reflections or reasonings that one had heard or that had come to mind. They constituted a material record of things read, heard, or thought, thus offering them up as a kind of accumulated treasure for subsequent rereading and meditation. They also formed a raw material for the drafting of more systematic treatises, in which one presented arguments and means for struggling against some weakness (such as anger, envy, gossip, flattery) or for overcoming some difficult circumstance (a grief, an exile, ruin, disgrace)' [...]
'However personal they may be, these hupomnemata ought not to be understood as intimate journals or as those accounts of spiritual experience (temptations, struggles, downfalls, and victories) that will be found in later Christian literature. They do not constitute a “narrative of oneself”; they do not have the aim of bringing to the light of day the arcana conscientiae, the oral or written confession of which has a purificatory value. The movement they seek to bring about is the reverse of that: the intent is not to pursue the unspeakable, nor to reveal the hidden, nor to say the unsaid, but on the contrary to capture the already-said, to collect what one has managed to hear or read, and for a purpose that is nothing less than the shaping of the self.
The hupomnemata need to be resituated in the context of a tension that was very pronounced at the time. Inside a culture strongly stamped by traditionality, by the recognized value of the already-said, by the recurrence of discourse, by “citational” practice under the seal of antiquity and authority, there developed an ethic quite explicitly oriented by concern for the self toward objectives defined as: withdrawing into oneself getting in touch with oneself, living with oneself, relying on oneself, benefiting from and enjoying oneself. Such is the aim of the hupomnernata: to make one's recollection of the fragmentary logos, transmitted through teaching, listening, or reading, a means of establishing a relationship of oneself with oneself, a relationship as adequate and accomplished as possible. For us, there is something paradoxical in all this: how could one be brought together with oneself with the help of a timeless discourse accepted almost everywhere? In actual fact, if the writing of hupomnemata can contribute to the formation of the self through these scattered logoi, this is for three main reasons: the limiting effects of the coupling of writing with reading, the regular practice of the disparate that determines choices, and the appropriation which that practice brings about'.
This relates to Foucault's project, Technologies of the Self, in which he provides the context for his interest in the self. His focus (as 'Self Writing' demonstrates) is in the development of the hermeneutics of the self in two different contexts which are historically contiguous: (1) Greco-Roman philosophy in the first two centuries A.D. of the early Roman Empire and (2) Christian spirituality and the monastic principles developed in the fourth and fifth centuries of the late Roman Empire. He describes the trajectory of his thought as follows:
'My objective for more than twenty-five years has been to sketch out a history of the different ways in our culture that humans develop knowledge about themselves: economics, biology, psychiatry, medicine, and penology. The main point is not to accept this knowledge at face value but to analyze these so-called sciences as very specific "truth games" related to specific techniques that human beings use to understand themselves.
As a context, we must understand that there are four major types of these "technologies," each a matrix of practical reason: (I) technologies of production, which permit us to produce, transform, or manipulate things; (2) technologies of sign systems, which permit us to use signs, meanings, symbols, or signification; (3) technologies of power, which determine the conduct of individuals and submit them to certain ends or domination, an objectivizing of the subject; (4) technologies of the self, which permit individuals to effect by their own means or with the help of others a certain number of operations on their own bodies and souls, thoughts, conduct, and way of being, so as to transform I themselves in order to attain a certain state of happiness, purity, wisdom, perfection, or immortality.
These four types of technologies hardly ever function separately, although each one of them is associated with a certain I type of domination. Each implies certain modes of training and modification of individuals, not only in the obvious sense of acquiring certain skills but also in the sense of acquiring certain attitudes. I wanted to show both their specific nature and their constant interaction. For instance, one sees the relation between manipulating things and domination in Karl Marx's Capital, where every technique of production requires modification of individual conduct not only skills but also attitudes.
Usually the first two technologies are used in the study of the sciences and linguistics. It is the last two, the technologies of domination and self, which have most kept my attention. I have attempted a history of the organization of knowledge with respect to both domination and the self. For example, I studied madness not in terms of the criteria of formal sciences but to show how a type of management of individuals inside and outside of asylums was made possible by this strange discourse. This contact between the technologies of domination of others and those of the self I call governmentality.
Perhaps I've insisted too much in the technology of domination and power. I am more and more interested in the interaction between oneself and others and in the technologies of individual domination, the history of how an individual acts upon himself, in the technology of self'.
Foucault begins his discussion of technologies of the self with reference to a set of practices in late antiquity, "to take care of yourself", "the concern with self", "know yourself". He concludes that:
'There has been an inversion between the hierarchy of the two principles of antiquity, "Take care of yourself" and "Know thyself". In Greco-Roman culture knowledge of oneself appeared as the consequence of taking care of yourself. In the modern world, knowledge of oneself constitutes the fundamental principle'.
In an interview, when asked about his interest in technologies of the self, Foucault replied:
Humanism may not be universal but may be quite relative to a certain situation. What we call humanism has been used by Marxists, liberals, Nazis, Catholics. This does not mean that we have to get rid of what we call human rights or freedom, but that we can't say that freedom or human rights has to be limited at certain frontiers. For instance, if you asked eighty years ago if feminine virtue was part of universal humanism, everyone would have answered yes. What I am afraid of about humanism is that it presents a certain form of our ethics as a universal model for any kind of freedom. I think that there are more secrets, more possible freedoms, and more inventions in our future than we can imagine in humanism as it is dogmatically represented on every side of the political rainbow: the Left, the Center, the Right (think of utopia (ontology), the re-education of desire but also Foucault's critique of utopianism).
'Hupomnemata, in the technical sense, could be account books, public registers, or individual notebooks serving as memory aids. Their use as books of life, as guides for conduct, seems to have become a common thing for a whole cultivated public. One wrote down quotes in them, extracts from books, examples, and actions that one had witnessed or read about, reflections or reasonings that one had heard or that had come to mind. They constituted a material record of things read, heard, or thought, thus offering them up as a kind of accumulated treasure for subsequent rereading and meditation. They also formed a raw material for the drafting of more systematic treatises, in which one presented arguments and means for struggling against some weakness (such as anger, envy, gossip, flattery) or for overcoming some difficult circumstance (a grief, an exile, ruin, disgrace)' [...]
'However personal they may be, these hupomnemata ought not to be understood as intimate journals or as those accounts of spiritual experience (temptations, struggles, downfalls, and victories) that will be found in later Christian literature. They do not constitute a “narrative of oneself”; they do not have the aim of bringing to the light of day the arcana conscientiae, the oral or written confession of which has a purificatory value. The movement they seek to bring about is the reverse of that: the intent is not to pursue the unspeakable, nor to reveal the hidden, nor to say the unsaid, but on the contrary to capture the already-said, to collect what one has managed to hear or read, and for a purpose that is nothing less than the shaping of the self.
The hupomnemata need to be resituated in the context of a tension that was very pronounced at the time. Inside a culture strongly stamped by traditionality, by the recognized value of the already-said, by the recurrence of discourse, by “citational” practice under the seal of antiquity and authority, there developed an ethic quite explicitly oriented by concern for the self toward objectives defined as: withdrawing into oneself getting in touch with oneself, living with oneself, relying on oneself, benefiting from and enjoying oneself. Such is the aim of the hupomnernata: to make one's recollection of the fragmentary logos, transmitted through teaching, listening, or reading, a means of establishing a relationship of oneself with oneself, a relationship as adequate and accomplished as possible. For us, there is something paradoxical in all this: how could one be brought together with oneself with the help of a timeless discourse accepted almost everywhere? In actual fact, if the writing of hupomnemata can contribute to the formation of the self through these scattered logoi, this is for three main reasons: the limiting effects of the coupling of writing with reading, the regular practice of the disparate that determines choices, and the appropriation which that practice brings about'.
This relates to Foucault's project, Technologies of the Self, in which he provides the context for his interest in the self. His focus (as 'Self Writing' demonstrates) is in the development of the hermeneutics of the self in two different contexts which are historically contiguous: (1) Greco-Roman philosophy in the first two centuries A.D. of the early Roman Empire and (2) Christian spirituality and the monastic principles developed in the fourth and fifth centuries of the late Roman Empire. He describes the trajectory of his thought as follows:
'My objective for more than twenty-five years has been to sketch out a history of the different ways in our culture that humans develop knowledge about themselves: economics, biology, psychiatry, medicine, and penology. The main point is not to accept this knowledge at face value but to analyze these so-called sciences as very specific "truth games" related to specific techniques that human beings use to understand themselves.
As a context, we must understand that there are four major types of these "technologies," each a matrix of practical reason: (I) technologies of production, which permit us to produce, transform, or manipulate things; (2) technologies of sign systems, which permit us to use signs, meanings, symbols, or signification; (3) technologies of power, which determine the conduct of individuals and submit them to certain ends or domination, an objectivizing of the subject; (4) technologies of the self, which permit individuals to effect by their own means or with the help of others a certain number of operations on their own bodies and souls, thoughts, conduct, and way of being, so as to transform I themselves in order to attain a certain state of happiness, purity, wisdom, perfection, or immortality.
These four types of technologies hardly ever function separately, although each one of them is associated with a certain I type of domination. Each implies certain modes of training and modification of individuals, not only in the obvious sense of acquiring certain skills but also in the sense of acquiring certain attitudes. I wanted to show both their specific nature and their constant interaction. For instance, one sees the relation between manipulating things and domination in Karl Marx's Capital, where every technique of production requires modification of individual conduct not only skills but also attitudes.
Usually the first two technologies are used in the study of the sciences and linguistics. It is the last two, the technologies of domination and self, which have most kept my attention. I have attempted a history of the organization of knowledge with respect to both domination and the self. For example, I studied madness not in terms of the criteria of formal sciences but to show how a type of management of individuals inside and outside of asylums was made possible by this strange discourse. This contact between the technologies of domination of others and those of the self I call governmentality.
Perhaps I've insisted too much in the technology of domination and power. I am more and more interested in the interaction between oneself and others and in the technologies of individual domination, the history of how an individual acts upon himself, in the technology of self'.
Foucault begins his discussion of technologies of the self with reference to a set of practices in late antiquity, "to take care of yourself", "the concern with self", "know yourself". He concludes that:
'There has been an inversion between the hierarchy of the two principles of antiquity, "Take care of yourself" and "Know thyself". In Greco-Roman culture knowledge of oneself appeared as the consequence of taking care of yourself. In the modern world, knowledge of oneself constitutes the fundamental principle'.
In an interview, when asked about his interest in technologies of the self, Foucault replied:
Humanism may not be universal but may be quite relative to a certain situation. What we call humanism has been used by Marxists, liberals, Nazis, Catholics. This does not mean that we have to get rid of what we call human rights or freedom, but that we can't say that freedom or human rights has to be limited at certain frontiers. For instance, if you asked eighty years ago if feminine virtue was part of universal humanism, everyone would have answered yes. What I am afraid of about humanism is that it presents a certain form of our ethics as a universal model for any kind of freedom. I think that there are more secrets, more possible freedoms, and more inventions in our future than we can imagine in humanism as it is dogmatically represented on every side of the political rainbow: the Left, the Center, the Right (think of utopia (ontology), the re-education of desire but also Foucault's critique of utopianism).
Saturday, 9 August 2014
Open Utopia
What has been described as the 'cultural logic of timelessness' by Lisa Gitelman refers to the real-time effects of web pages, even those that have been archived by sites such as the Wayback Machine. Projects are increasingly taking advantage of the 'continuous present' of the web to allow for the creation of open source texts, crowdsourced data collection and user generated resources. One such project is the William Blake Archive. Another, which is particularly interesting for my purposes, is called Open Utopia, initiated by Stephen Duncombe.
According to Duncombe, the ethos behind the project is to provide 'a complete English-language translation of Utopia that honors the primary precept of Utopia itself- that is, that all property is common property'. This digital edition of Utopia is open: open to read, open to copying and open to modification. Ways of accessing the text include an online edition, a downloadable version, an annotatable and 'social' text available for visitors to comment on and share with others, a reading of Utopia on audio files and a section for user-generated galleries of Utopia-themed art and videos. Finally, for people interested in creating their own plan of an alternative society, there's Wikitopia, a wiki to allow for collaboration with others in drafting a new Utopia.
The complete ancestry of the Open Utopia can be found under 'Sources'. Some reference to this project will be included in the conclusion of my thesis. Another useful reference point is the Bad Influences PhD project by Emma Pooka, which is investigating the nature of narrative time in blog fiction.
According to Duncombe, the ethos behind the project is to provide 'a complete English-language translation of Utopia that honors the primary precept of Utopia itself- that is, that all property is common property'. This digital edition of Utopia is open: open to read, open to copying and open to modification. Ways of accessing the text include an online edition, a downloadable version, an annotatable and 'social' text available for visitors to comment on and share with others, a reading of Utopia on audio files and a section for user-generated galleries of Utopia-themed art and videos. Finally, for people interested in creating their own plan of an alternative society, there's Wikitopia, a wiki to allow for collaboration with others in drafting a new Utopia.
The complete ancestry of the Open Utopia can be found under 'Sources'. Some reference to this project will be included in the conclusion of my thesis. Another useful reference point is the Bad Influences PhD project by Emma Pooka, which is investigating the nature of narrative time in blog fiction.
Council for European Studies: Research Networks
As part of its mission to strengthen interdisciplinary European Studies, the Council for European Studies hosts and supports a range of research networks. These networks (proposed and organized by scholars affiliated with the Council and its member institutions) work to promote European Studies and strengthen ties across disciplines, generations and national borders. A full list of research networks currently supported by the Council for European Studies appears below.
More info can be found here: http://councilforeuropeanstudies.org/research/research-networks
More info can be found here: http://councilforeuropeanstudies.org/research/research-networks
Friday, 8 August 2014
The UK and Norway Research Councils Collaborate
The Economic and Social Research Council (ESRC) and the Arts and Humanities Research Council (AHRC) have signed a reciprocal International Co-Investigator agreement with The Research Council of Norway (RCN), allowing Norwegian academics to apply for up for 30 per cent of a total project cost to fund their involvement in ESRC investments. The agreement also allows UK academics to apply for an unlimited portion of funding of an RCN project.
More info can be found here: http://www.ahrc.ac.uk/News-and-Events/News/Pages/The-UK-and-Norway-collaborate-to-support-international-research-excellence.aspx
More info can be found here: http://www.ahrc.ac.uk/News-and-Events/News/Pages/The-UK-and-Norway-collaborate-to-support-international-research-excellence.aspx
Saturday, 2 August 2014
Communication of Memory and Heritage
Former Information Society & Media Commissioner Viviane Reding's quote that 'information technologies can enable you to tap into Europe’s collective memory with a click of your mouse' (see Key Memory Figures in the Cultural Heritage-Digitisation Context post) has been commented on in an 2009 article by Zinaida Manžuch:
''Information technologies can enable you to tap into Europe’s collective memory with a click of your mouse', as stated by the Information Society & Media Commissioner Viviane Redding in her speech. Later on, in the European Commission communication on the progress of digitisation, accessibility and digital preservation of cultural heritage in Europe the metaphor 'collective memory with a click of your mouse' transformed into 'Europe’s cultural heritage at the click of a mouse'' (pp. 1-2).
The second article mentioned here refers to a report released in 2008 about the progress on the digitisation and online accessibility of cultural material and digital preservation across the EU. Some commentators have been critical of this simple equation of access to cultural heritage with digitisation projects. José van Dijck writes about the implications in the case of platforms like Flickr:
'The euphoric claim that cultural heritage is emerging ‘at the click of a mouse’ erroneously suggests that information is ‘out there’ waiting to be collected, and that sites such as Flickr Commons magically turn all uploaded data into knowledge about the past. Such claims ignore the fact that individual uploads only acquire meaning and impact through the connective work of human contributors, networked technologies and institutional protocols (e.g. selection mechanisms) – which are in turn already prefigured by the institution’s and project’s modus operandi for defining what cultural heritage actually is' (p. 11).
Manžuch's article, which is about the communication of memory, considers similar issues but juxtaposes the connotations of memory with cultural heritage in her examination of digitisation projects, suggesting that:
'Cultural heritage may be approached a mnemonic device that connects us to the past. When there are no living witnesses to tell the story of the past, events or experiences transform into remote symbols and rituals that become a part of the identity and history of a particular community. These stories of the past are mediated by cultural heritage.
Cultural heritage is a part of the past selected in accordance with contemporary needs of societies. It is loaded with constantly shifting symbolic meanings. The meanings of heritage are different from memory per se, in that they are explicit: they may be disseminated and comprehended by any person. Memory always means “being” or “belonging”, while heritage may also mean “knowing about”, which is open for rational cognition' (pp. 2-3).
In another essay, called 'Archives, Libraries and Museums as Communicators of Memory in the European Union Projects', Manžuch outlines discusses theories of social memory (influenced by the work of Jan Assmann and Maurice Halbwachs), before undertaking a content analysis of European Union project descriptions to determine perceptions of how memory is communicated in archives, libraries and museums:
'Since the 1990s issues of memory institutions and heritage communication have become particularly visible in European Union programmes (Manžuch and Knoll 2005), which are the major instruments for the implementation of European Union strategic objectives. Significant co-ordination efforts and financial resources have been allocated to finding effective heritage communication solutions. However, despite a significant experience embedded in European Union projects dedicated to memory institutions and cultural heritage, there have not been any attempts to reflect on these institutions as communicators of memory. Although concepts of memory and heritage are currently in fashion, the issues of how memory is communicated are not discussed and the terms are mainly used metaphorically. Given the number of current European Union projects in the field, the critical evaluation of the nature of memory communication in archives, libraries and museums in these initiatives is crucial for evaluating the progress of current activities and projects. Therefore, the main objective of this paper is to identify approaches to memory communication in such institutions developed in these European Union projects.'
Again, she draws distinctions between cultural heritage and collective memory, implying that the two can sometimes be conflated in the language of EU projects:
'Unlike memory, heritage is always explicit (it is manifested in certain ways: both tangible, such as monuments and manuscripts, and intangible, such as songs and legends) and open to our cognition [...]'
'Only common life context, values and experiences enable the transformation of heritage into memory. In other cases, heritage may be valued for particular features, used in education, which have nothing in common with memory. Therefore, interpretations of heritage symbolic meanings also allow archives, libraries and museums to communicate knowledge about the past without any reference to the collective memory of communities [...]'
The results of Manžuch's study reveal (in her own terms) that the definitive features of archives, libraries and museums are collections and information management processes. She concludes that meeting the social needs of present communities and developing meaningful stories of the past are not primary aims in the projects under examination. Here are some of her findings described in more detail:
'(The) results have some features in common with the research conducted by Marija Dalbello (Dalbello 2004). She observed that particular concepts of heritage and memory developed by memory institutions pre-conditioned the strategies for constructing stories of the past. She also argued that in digital library initiatives narrative construction was closely related to collection structures. Likewise, these research results revealed that all narrative structures were object or document oriented. The scope of both information and cultural projects was defined by cultural heritage types, adopted by memory institutions for efficient management of growing collections of diverse resources. However, such classifications were fruitless and even harmful for communicating images of the past because they destroyed symbolic links between objects by introducing artificial arrangements [...]'
'Cultural heritage communication was interpreted either as virtual aggregation of cultural heritage objects for access in information projects or as cognition of the past in cultural projects. It had no relation to memory and could not be considered as memory communication, except in few cases in cultural projects where links between contemporary social issues, life of communities and past events were made [...]'
'The results of empirical research allow us to draw the conclusion that European Union projects demonstrated a narrow approach to communication of memory in archives, libraries and museums. The roles of these institutions were identified with the collection, accessibility and preservation of heritage. Their social roles in the communication of memory and the solution of social and cultural issues faced by the European community were not highlighted [...]'
The 2004 study by Marija Dalbello, mentioned by Manžuch, investigates the institutional shaping of cultural memory and its subsequent communication using digital library projects listed by ARL (Association of Research Libraries) as case studies. It has some relevant insights with regard to digital library development. Methodologically, Dalbello describes her approach as follows:
'Borrowing from Anthony Giddens and Christopher Pierson and an application of Giddens’s ideas in the study of institutional change, it is possible to theorize digital library development in terms of structuration theory. In the emerging area of institutional operation, such as digital library development, the movement toward homogenization is driven by dominant paradigms, as hypothesized by Paul DiMaggio and Walter Powell in their work on organizational theory and organizational diversity' (p. 266).
'By sounding these developments against a theoretical framework, this article demonstrates that this development is not merely a mass of microlevel activity,but one in which human agency and social structure are related, and in which the repetition of the acts of individual agents reproduces the structure. Therefore, while observing institutional change through an empirical study, using a middle-range theory of structuration, this study also looks at digital libraries as emerging environments for creation of cultural texts and cultural selection, thus engaging also a macrosocial theory of the dynamics of cultural change. On that level, collection building is a form of knowledge creation and interpretation of textual tradition and reflects the transformation of the library as memory institution in the context of modernity; it operates increasingly in representational fields, simulacra rather than physical documents' (p. 267).
In relation to the shaping of cultural memory, the emphasis is on how the the presentation of digital (library) content contributes to knowledge production, and the link between historical narratives and the representation of cultural memory:
'The classic literature on social memory and cultural heritage recognizes the agency of institutions and technologies of reproduction in shaping cultural memory. It also demonstrates the dynamic nature of cultural change in which institutional memory processes are characterized by invention within constraints of legitimacy defined by present concerns of social groups. The shaping of cultural memory corresponds to the emergence of shared narratives from an array of possible historical interpretations. Loci of memory, key events, key texts, or artifacts then become symbolic points of reference for group identities. Digital libraries represent textual environments in which the formation of the emergent memory narratives as collections of representations of memory objects and information arranged according to historiographic principles occurs. In studying digital libraries from a macrosocial theory point of view, we need to take into account the frame-works for analysis provided in the literature on the study of cultural memory and identity and history as cultural invention. In the first wave of digital library development, one primarily finds digitized libraries that provide continuity for existing collections. Thus, they are involved in interpreting the past through historical representation' (p. 267)
'Studying how digital libraries are involved in the production of knowledge is crucial to our understanding of how memory institutions are currently shaping this record in the digital environment. The implications for that understanding are far-reaching because the traditional role of memory institutions in shaping a society’s view of its own identity, of its heritage and its past, has been at the center of the arguments concerning those institutions’ legitimacy. With the changing technology, the institutions are also undergoing transformation in terms of rethinking their collections, users, and access' (p. 267).
Dalbello distinguishes three main organisational contexts within the digital library projects under consideration:
Maintaining continuity: Antiquarian traditionalism - The strong representation of universities (with special collections, rare books, and archives) as homes for emerging digital libraries has an important implication for their current development. This is particularly obvious when we examine more closely what is being digitized. Traditionally, these collections are focused on preserving archival integrity (of provenance), and they are traditional in their approach to collection development. Emerging digital libraries are often an extension of these institutions’ initial purposes (p. 273).
A distributed library: Integration and collaboration - Unlike archival and special collections in the universities, the Library of Congress demonstrates new approaches to collection development. The projects not only integrate materials from different collections at this institution, but some of them are developed in partnership with public libraries and universities, thus creating new uses for the existing resources (p. 274).
The living library: Tapping into community memory - Public libraries, for ex-ample, the New Orleans Public Library, are promising new types of digital libraries because they show a trend of linking digital libraries to communities, thus reestablishing a democratic purpose of the library as tradition-ally conceived in U.S. society.
The study concludes that emerging digital collections are not presenting sustained historical narratives in their presentation of material. All these studies are similar in the concerns they raise about the lack of narrative development within digitised collections. While Dalbello's article is now over 10 years old, this sentiment persists, and was expressed in a recent interview I conducted with Nick Poole (Chair of the Europeana Network) thus:
'From my experience working with digital projects, we are in the process of making an important transition. It was summed up to me by a colleague from Google as 'the next challenge is not mass-digitisation or mass-preservation, but mass-curation of the sheer volume of cultural content'. Most of the next generation of digital cultural channels are focussing much less on aggregating large bodies of undifferentiated content and much more on creating highly targeted niche experiences structured around cultural themes' (see also Key Figures post).
''Information technologies can enable you to tap into Europe’s collective memory with a click of your mouse', as stated by the Information Society & Media Commissioner Viviane Redding in her speech. Later on, in the European Commission communication on the progress of digitisation, accessibility and digital preservation of cultural heritage in Europe the metaphor 'collective memory with a click of your mouse' transformed into 'Europe’s cultural heritage at the click of a mouse'' (pp. 1-2).
The second article mentioned here refers to a report released in 2008 about the progress on the digitisation and online accessibility of cultural material and digital preservation across the EU. Some commentators have been critical of this simple equation of access to cultural heritage with digitisation projects. José van Dijck writes about the implications in the case of platforms like Flickr:
'The euphoric claim that cultural heritage is emerging ‘at the click of a mouse’ erroneously suggests that information is ‘out there’ waiting to be collected, and that sites such as Flickr Commons magically turn all uploaded data into knowledge about the past. Such claims ignore the fact that individual uploads only acquire meaning and impact through the connective work of human contributors, networked technologies and institutional protocols (e.g. selection mechanisms) – which are in turn already prefigured by the institution’s and project’s modus operandi for defining what cultural heritage actually is' (p. 11).
Manžuch's article, which is about the communication of memory, considers similar issues but juxtaposes the connotations of memory with cultural heritage in her examination of digitisation projects, suggesting that:
'Cultural heritage may be approached a mnemonic device that connects us to the past. When there are no living witnesses to tell the story of the past, events or experiences transform into remote symbols and rituals that become a part of the identity and history of a particular community. These stories of the past are mediated by cultural heritage.
Cultural heritage is a part of the past selected in accordance with contemporary needs of societies. It is loaded with constantly shifting symbolic meanings. The meanings of heritage are different from memory per se, in that they are explicit: they may be disseminated and comprehended by any person. Memory always means “being” or “belonging”, while heritage may also mean “knowing about”, which is open for rational cognition' (pp. 2-3).
In another essay, called 'Archives, Libraries and Museums as Communicators of Memory in the European Union Projects', Manžuch outlines discusses theories of social memory (influenced by the work of Jan Assmann and Maurice Halbwachs), before undertaking a content analysis of European Union project descriptions to determine perceptions of how memory is communicated in archives, libraries and museums:
'Since the 1990s issues of memory institutions and heritage communication have become particularly visible in European Union programmes (Manžuch and Knoll 2005), which are the major instruments for the implementation of European Union strategic objectives. Significant co-ordination efforts and financial resources have been allocated to finding effective heritage communication solutions. However, despite a significant experience embedded in European Union projects dedicated to memory institutions and cultural heritage, there have not been any attempts to reflect on these institutions as communicators of memory. Although concepts of memory and heritage are currently in fashion, the issues of how memory is communicated are not discussed and the terms are mainly used metaphorically. Given the number of current European Union projects in the field, the critical evaluation of the nature of memory communication in archives, libraries and museums in these initiatives is crucial for evaluating the progress of current activities and projects. Therefore, the main objective of this paper is to identify approaches to memory communication in such institutions developed in these European Union projects.'
Again, she draws distinctions between cultural heritage and collective memory, implying that the two can sometimes be conflated in the language of EU projects:
'Unlike memory, heritage is always explicit (it is manifested in certain ways: both tangible, such as monuments and manuscripts, and intangible, such as songs and legends) and open to our cognition [...]'
'Only common life context, values and experiences enable the transformation of heritage into memory. In other cases, heritage may be valued for particular features, used in education, which have nothing in common with memory. Therefore, interpretations of heritage symbolic meanings also allow archives, libraries and museums to communicate knowledge about the past without any reference to the collective memory of communities [...]'
The results of Manžuch's study reveal (in her own terms) that the definitive features of archives, libraries and museums are collections and information management processes. She concludes that meeting the social needs of present communities and developing meaningful stories of the past are not primary aims in the projects under examination. Here are some of her findings described in more detail:
'(The) results have some features in common with the research conducted by Marija Dalbello (Dalbello 2004). She observed that particular concepts of heritage and memory developed by memory institutions pre-conditioned the strategies for constructing stories of the past. She also argued that in digital library initiatives narrative construction was closely related to collection structures. Likewise, these research results revealed that all narrative structures were object or document oriented. The scope of both information and cultural projects was defined by cultural heritage types, adopted by memory institutions for efficient management of growing collections of diverse resources. However, such classifications were fruitless and even harmful for communicating images of the past because they destroyed symbolic links between objects by introducing artificial arrangements [...]'
'Cultural heritage communication was interpreted either as virtual aggregation of cultural heritage objects for access in information projects or as cognition of the past in cultural projects. It had no relation to memory and could not be considered as memory communication, except in few cases in cultural projects where links between contemporary social issues, life of communities and past events were made [...]'
'The results of empirical research allow us to draw the conclusion that European Union projects demonstrated a narrow approach to communication of memory in archives, libraries and museums. The roles of these institutions were identified with the collection, accessibility and preservation of heritage. Their social roles in the communication of memory and the solution of social and cultural issues faced by the European community were not highlighted [...]'
The 2004 study by Marija Dalbello, mentioned by Manžuch, investigates the institutional shaping of cultural memory and its subsequent communication using digital library projects listed by ARL (Association of Research Libraries) as case studies. It has some relevant insights with regard to digital library development. Methodologically, Dalbello describes her approach as follows:
'Borrowing from Anthony Giddens and Christopher Pierson and an application of Giddens’s ideas in the study of institutional change, it is possible to theorize digital library development in terms of structuration theory. In the emerging area of institutional operation, such as digital library development, the movement toward homogenization is driven by dominant paradigms, as hypothesized by Paul DiMaggio and Walter Powell in their work on organizational theory and organizational diversity' (p. 266).
'By sounding these developments against a theoretical framework, this article demonstrates that this development is not merely a mass of microlevel activity,but one in which human agency and social structure are related, and in which the repetition of the acts of individual agents reproduces the structure. Therefore, while observing institutional change through an empirical study, using a middle-range theory of structuration, this study also looks at digital libraries as emerging environments for creation of cultural texts and cultural selection, thus engaging also a macrosocial theory of the dynamics of cultural change. On that level, collection building is a form of knowledge creation and interpretation of textual tradition and reflects the transformation of the library as memory institution in the context of modernity; it operates increasingly in representational fields, simulacra rather than physical documents' (p. 267).
In relation to the shaping of cultural memory, the emphasis is on how the the presentation of digital (library) content contributes to knowledge production, and the link between historical narratives and the representation of cultural memory:
'The classic literature on social memory and cultural heritage recognizes the agency of institutions and technologies of reproduction in shaping cultural memory. It also demonstrates the dynamic nature of cultural change in which institutional memory processes are characterized by invention within constraints of legitimacy defined by present concerns of social groups. The shaping of cultural memory corresponds to the emergence of shared narratives from an array of possible historical interpretations. Loci of memory, key events, key texts, or artifacts then become symbolic points of reference for group identities. Digital libraries represent textual environments in which the formation of the emergent memory narratives as collections of representations of memory objects and information arranged according to historiographic principles occurs. In studying digital libraries from a macrosocial theory point of view, we need to take into account the frame-works for analysis provided in the literature on the study of cultural memory and identity and history as cultural invention. In the first wave of digital library development, one primarily finds digitized libraries that provide continuity for existing collections. Thus, they are involved in interpreting the past through historical representation' (p. 267)
'Studying how digital libraries are involved in the production of knowledge is crucial to our understanding of how memory institutions are currently shaping this record in the digital environment. The implications for that understanding are far-reaching because the traditional role of memory institutions in shaping a society’s view of its own identity, of its heritage and its past, has been at the center of the arguments concerning those institutions’ legitimacy. With the changing technology, the institutions are also undergoing transformation in terms of rethinking their collections, users, and access' (p. 267).
Dalbello distinguishes three main organisational contexts within the digital library projects under consideration:
Maintaining continuity: Antiquarian traditionalism - The strong representation of universities (with special collections, rare books, and archives) as homes for emerging digital libraries has an important implication for their current development. This is particularly obvious when we examine more closely what is being digitized. Traditionally, these collections are focused on preserving archival integrity (of provenance), and they are traditional in their approach to collection development. Emerging digital libraries are often an extension of these institutions’ initial purposes (p. 273).
A distributed library: Integration and collaboration - Unlike archival and special collections in the universities, the Library of Congress demonstrates new approaches to collection development. The projects not only integrate materials from different collections at this institution, but some of them are developed in partnership with public libraries and universities, thus creating new uses for the existing resources (p. 274).
The living library: Tapping into community memory - Public libraries, for ex-ample, the New Orleans Public Library, are promising new types of digital libraries because they show a trend of linking digital libraries to communities, thus reestablishing a democratic purpose of the library as tradition-ally conceived in U.S. society.
The study concludes that emerging digital collections are not presenting sustained historical narratives in their presentation of material. All these studies are similar in the concerns they raise about the lack of narrative development within digitised collections. While Dalbello's article is now over 10 years old, this sentiment persists, and was expressed in a recent interview I conducted with Nick Poole (Chair of the Europeana Network) thus:
'From my experience working with digital projects, we are in the process of making an important transition. It was summed up to me by a colleague from Google as 'the next challenge is not mass-digitisation or mass-preservation, but mass-curation of the sheer volume of cultural content'. Most of the next generation of digital cultural channels are focussing much less on aggregating large bodies of undifferentiated content and much more on creating highly targeted niche experiences structured around cultural themes' (see also Key Figures post).
Finally, to put into context some of the theoretical frameworks mentioned here, below is a summary of Jan Assmann's distinctions between communicative and cultural memory:
'The term 'communicative memory' was introduced in order to delineate the difference between Halbwachs's concept of 'collective memory' and our understanding of 'cultural memory' (Jan and Aleida Assmann). Cultural memory is a form of collective memory in the sense that it is shared by a number of people and that it conveys to these people a collective, that is, cultural identity. Halbwachs, however the inventor of the term 'collective memory', was careful to keep his concept of collective memory apart from the realm of traditions, transmissions, and transferences which we propose to subsume under the term 'cultural memory'. We preserve Halbwachs's distinction by breaking up his concept of collective memory into 'communicative' and 'cultural memory', but we insist on including the cultural sphere, which he excluded, in the study of memory' (p. 110) [...]
'Cultural memory is a kind of institution. It is exteriorized, objectified, and stored away in symbolic forms that, unlike the sounds of words, or the sight of gestures, are stable and situation-transcendent' (pp. 110-11) [...]
'Communicative memory is non-institutional; it is not supported by any institutions of learning, transmission and interpretation [...] It lives in everyday interaction and communication and, for this very reason, has only a limited time depth which normally reaches no further back than eighty years' (p. 111) [...]
'The term 'communicative memory' was introduced in order to delineate the difference between Halbwachs's concept of 'collective memory' and our understanding of 'cultural memory' (Jan and Aleida Assmann). Cultural memory is a form of collective memory in the sense that it is shared by a number of people and that it conveys to these people a collective, that is, cultural identity. Halbwachs, however the inventor of the term 'collective memory', was careful to keep his concept of collective memory apart from the realm of traditions, transmissions, and transferences which we propose to subsume under the term 'cultural memory'. We preserve Halbwachs's distinction by breaking up his concept of collective memory into 'communicative' and 'cultural memory', but we insist on including the cultural sphere, which he excluded, in the study of memory' (p. 110) [...]
'Cultural memory is a kind of institution. It is exteriorized, objectified, and stored away in symbolic forms that, unlike the sounds of words, or the sight of gestures, are stable and situation-transcendent' (pp. 110-11) [...]
'Communicative memory is non-institutional; it is not supported by any institutions of learning, transmission and interpretation [...] It lives in everyday interaction and communication and, for this very reason, has only a limited time depth which normally reaches no further back than eighty years' (p. 111) [...]
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