Collective Memory
Collective memory is sometimes used in the resurrection of historic house museums – However not all historic house museums use this approach. The notion of Collective Memory originated from philosopher and sociologist Maurice Halbwachs, in ‘La memoire collective’ (‘On Collective Memory’, 1950). This extended thesis examines the role of people and place, and how collective memory is not only associated with the individual but is a shared experience. It also focused on the way individual memory is influenced by social structures, as a way of continuing socialisation by producing memory as collective experience.
- "Each aspect, each detail, of this place has a meaning intelligent only to members of the group, for each portion of its space corresponds to various and different aspects of the structure and life of their society, at least of what is stable in it."
An example of a site that utilises collective memory is the Hiroshima Peace Memorial Park in Japan. It was restored and is based on the dialectics of memory, however it also has the inclusion of joyous festivals to mask the turmoil. The ‘Hiroshima Traces’ (1999) text takes a look the importance of collective memory and how it is embedded in culture and place. Thus, collective memory does not only reside in a house or building, but it also resonates in outdoor space – particularly when a monumental event has occurred, such as war.
- "The taming of memory that can be observed in the city’s redevelopment projects reveals local mediations and manifestations of transnational as well as national structural forces."
Read more about this topic: Historic House Museums
Famous quotes containing the words collective and/or memory:
“Perhaps one reason that many working parents do not agitate for collective reform, such as more governmental or corporate child care, is that the parents fear, deep down, that to share responsibility for child rearing is to abdicate it.”
—Faye J. Crosby (20th century)
“In excited conversation we have glimpses of the universe, hints of power native to the soul, far-darting lights and shadows of an Andes landscape, such as we can hardly attain in lone meditation. Here are oracles sometimes profusely given, to which the memory goes back in barren hours.”
—Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882)