Collective memory refers to the shared pool of information held in the memories of two or more members of a group. Both the English phrase and its French equivalent appeared in various contexts in the second half of the nineteenth century. The philosopher and sociologist Maurice Halbwachs analyzed and advanced the concept in his book La mémoire collective (Paris, 1950). Collective memory can be shared, passed on and constructed by groups both small (e.g., a board of directors) and large (e.g., American culture). In many ways, collective memory parallels individual memory (e.g., better recall for pictures than for words), but also exhibits some key differences and features (e.g., cross-cueing).
Read more about Collective Memory: Performance, Features of Collective Memory, Collective Memory and Memorialization, Collective Memory in Mass Media
Famous quotes containing the words collective and/or memory:
“Anyone who is kind to man knows the fragmentariness of most men, and wants to arrange a society of power in which men fall naturally into a collective wholeness, since they cannot have an individual wholeness. In this collective wholeness they will be fulfilled. But if they make efforts at individual fulfilment, they must fail for they are by nature fragmentary.”
—D.H. (David Herbert)
“Any memory for the most part depending on chance.”
—Philip Larkin (1922–1986)