Sources are essential when investigating events of the past. However, narrative texts are forces to be reckoned with, in constructing our own memories pertaining to history. We can be trained to analyze every last drop of a source if we are so driven, but the moment it starts to pull at our heartstrings, we may not be so bold. Instead, we often treat narrative texts as binoculars into the past, guiding our educational journey. Doubts of credibility or accuracy are given backseat status, as these sources tap into our empathetic human nature. We automatically put ourselves directly into the story, in the perspective of the protagonist as determined by the source, and consequently any future opinion of this event will be affected (whether tainted, or rose-tinted) by recollection of this identification of sorts. This becomes problematic when popular narrative texts threaten the reader’s accurate perception of historical events, taking the form of inaccuracy in the classroom, or even a type of denial (rather than mourning, of commemorations).
There are several key terms that need stating, which have been used in the dialogue of constructing memory of prior events, the first and most important being collective memory. While it is a more contextually-understood term, its meaning can be broken down into “collective,” from a particular group of people, and “memory,” recall or recollection often by means of reinterpreting data. According to James Wertsch, who is primarily a professor of anthropology and has published Voices of Collective Remembering, this is something that is “multivoiced” (6), of shared experiences whose remembrance carefully selects for certain information to accommodate different generations or contexts. Art...
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...tbooks and visual media are the approved measure of history, which leaves less room in the business for historians and revisionists to impose the more accurate history against these.
Works Cited
Wertsch, James V. Voices of Collective Remembering. Cambridge University Press, 2002. Print.
Puk, Tom. “Epistemological Implications of Training Social Studies Teachers: Just Who Was
Christopher Columbus?” The Social Studies. 85:5 (Sep 1994): 228-233.
Neal, Arthur G. National Trauma and Collective Memory: Extraordinary Events in the American
Experience. M.E. Sharpe, 2005. Print.
Grunfeld, Uriel Jeremiah. Representing the Holocaust on film: "Schindler's List" and the
pedagogy of popular memory. Diss. The Pennsylvania State University (1997). Dissertations & Theses: Full Text, ProQuest. Web. 3 Feb 2010.
Schindler’s List. Dir. Steven Spielberg. Universal, 2004. DVD.
Often, when a story is told, it follows the events of the protagonist. It is told in a way that justifies the reasons and emotions behind the protagonist actions and reactions. While listening to the story being cited, one tends to forget about the other side of the story, about the antagonist motivations, about all the reasons that justify the antagonist actions.
Sociologist James W. Loewen names the process through which boys are encouraged to dream of going to war “heroification.” Heroification works because our educational media and the media in general turn flesh-and-blood individuals into pious, perfect heroes without conflicts, suffering, or complications. According to Loewen, this process implies that the purpose of teaching history is to disguise the truth because people don’t want complicated icons. Instead, the purpose of teaching history as stated by Richard Gross, former president of the National Council for the Social Studies, is to “develop in the young such traits as character, morals, ethics, and good citizenship.” To do this, the media and education create mythological figures out of men, turning them into symbols of these desired traits. As a result, the complex, often painful realities of real people become muffled “under a blanket of nostalgic adulation.” Toby and his friends, for example, watch war documentaries and fantasize about becoming soldiers. Yet, they seem painfully oblivious to the disturbing realities of the men they want to emulate. In this way, This Boy’s Life reflects the heroification process at work through a young boy’s obsession and adulation of the war hero.
In ‘unreliable narration’ the narrator’s account is at odds with the implied reader's surmises about the story’s real intentions. The story und...
Repressed memories is a topic that has been an ongoing dispute among some, however ac...
...These specifics recalled consist of things which, under normal conditions, we probably would not have ever remembered. The number of detailed facts retained about a particular situation is usually commensurate to the intensity of involvement or proximity to the action in question; therefore, it can be reasonably concluded that while these memories are not always perfectly engrained into our minds, interesting arguments exist which support the possibility of substantial and long-term recall of these matters.
Lebow, Richard Ned. "The Future of Memory." American Academy of Political and Social 617 (2008): 25-41. JSTOR. Web. 21 Apr. 2014.
How does memory affect the way in which history is viewed? Memory is based on a series of decisions on what is worth remembering and what should be forgotten. It is a process of suppressing history that is unbearable or difficult, yet it is also about reflecting on what is misunderstood. Memory is formed through several influencing factors and elements; Memory can be formed by the study of pop culture and icons, which often propose a reexamination of difficult and repressed memories. Memory is also influenced through exclusions and biases. These can be racially or politically motivated, but they could also derive from personal or cultural trauma. Recorded history such as textbooks, novels,
A contrived narrative that reconstructs the past in the light of the present and the subjectivities of the author, that is the essence of history. History as learned by the modern student is the author’s manipulated, subjective reconstruction of the past. Thomas King demonstrates in his book how historical authors are able to manipulate the past using various techniques to construct a certain atmosphere in the reader’s mind. He says, “I tried to recreate an oral storytelling voice… In the Christian story, I tried to maintain a sense of rhetorical distance and decorum… These strategies colour the stories and suggest values that may be neither inherent nor warranted.” By drawing out certain points, glossing over others, and using different language,
Collective memory is commonly defined as “shared individual memories” but in the source Collective Memory from a Psychological Perspective, it is better defined as “publicly available symbols maintained by society” (Coman et al.). The article went on to explain how collective memory differs from an individual memory in the sense that “an individual restructures the world” so that one can better remember, whereas in collective memory, the memory is restructured by society. In this case, the photograph from atop Mount Suribachi is most definitely a symbol that has been passed on from person to person, family to family, newspaper to newspaper since the day it was taken. It was printed in papers all over country, used as a means of gathering funds
Remembrance is an integral part of our everyday lives. Both pleasant and unpleasant memories shape who we are as human beings. The definition of memory is two fold 1. “the faculty by which the mind stores and remembers information” and 2. “Something remembered from the past; a recollection” (Google Definition). The life of memory has three stages in which it is created. An event occurs in ones life it becomes encoded and stored in the brain. Following the encoding, the brain then has full access to retrieve the memory in a response to any current activity or thought. Memories are unique to each person. There are three main types of memories that are studied. An individual memory is one that is formed by his or her personal experiences. An institutional
Collective memory is the remembered history of a community; the way groups form memories out of a shared past to create a common identity. Collective memory is the structures that underlie all myths and histories without any distinction between them. The past that is fixed and internalized is myth, whether it is fact or fiction (Assmann 2011: 59). Therefore the memory of a group is a construction, or reconstruction, of the past. Collective memory can be expressed through a variety of different medias, e.g. festivals, rituals, symbols, memorial places, museums, as well as oral and written narratives, like myths, prophecies, law material, biographies and perceived historical accounts (Lewis 1975: 13). Each memory is specifically designed to recall events in the history of the collective. The past remembered is not necessarily a historically accurate past, but it is based on stories recognized to be the past as it has been remembe...
By investigating the emotional resonances of historical narratives, the Gothic novel questions how we as readers might arrive at a particular version of history. If the Gothic novel locates authentic historical representation in the archive, however, the act of interpreting the archive is almost never fully realized; interpretation in the Gothic novel is always a partial, interrupted, obscure process. This tendency indicate...
The first issue that needs to be addressed however is what exactly is memory? “ Without memory we would be servants of the moment, with nothing but our innate reflexes to help us deal with the world. There would be no language, no art, no science, no culture. Civilization itself is the distillation of human memory” (Blakemore 1988). The simple interpretation of Blakemore’s theory on what memory is that a person’s memory is at least one of the most important things in their life and without it civilization itself could not exist.
Memory is the tool we use to learn and think. We all use memory in our everyday lives. Memory is the mental faculty of retaining and recalling past experiences. We all reassure ourselves that our memories are accurate and precise. Many people believe that they would be able to remember anything from the event and the different features of the situation. Yet, people don’t realize the fact that the more you think about a situation the more likely the story will change. Our memories are not a camcorder or a camera. Our memory tends to be very selective and reconstructive.
It has been demonstrated that memory is a constructed process. So, we can add new information to past memories every time that we retrieve it in a new context. Every time that people talk about past events’ memories, they most of the time forgets details or give wrong descriptions about things that happened. Moreover, in some cases, people can also describe things that never happened. Therefore, it is very easy to change others memories. It is amazing to know that our memory can be influenced by others in a positive and in a negative direction.