The Importance Of Cultural Memory

Memory is a communication and social interaction. Maurice Halbwachs study states that memory depends on socialization and communication and it can be analyzed as a function of social life (A., Eril, & Nunning, 2010). “Memory enables us to live in groups and communities, and living in groups and communities enables us to build memory” (Eril, A., & Nunning, 2010, p. 110).

Cultural memory can be transferred from one situation to another and transmitted from one generation to another. Memory has an impact on how we live what we do and how we remember past events. Memory is transmitted by a culture in their historical, social and political context. Cultural memory’s power lies in the conscious decision to choose specific memories, and those

Literature is a cultural memory and not only a recording device but also a body of commemorative actions that include the knowledge stored by culture. Writing is a function of memory and a modern way of explaining texts that are designed to produce cultural memory. Literature’s role in culture is connected with the past culture, and it evolves with a technique of remembering. Cultural memory and the role of literature serves as an aid that helps to improve and sharpen the established cultural knowledge so that it can be passed down to generation to generation so that each generation can draw from the knowledge of its content. Literary representation of historical events helps create our sense of cultural identity for example how we remember past events and determines what we do and how we will live. According to Rodriguez, & Fortier (2007), “literature in the human science should be defined provisionally as discourse with a clear sequential order that connects events in a meaningful way for a definite audience and thus offer insights about the world and/or people’s experience of it”

Memory is a knowledge that’s always confounded, and it struggles with what has to be included with unlimited space. If memory is the DNA of society, we should ask ourselves how is this memory being transmitted if it is not being transmitted through genes? Memory is something that is acquired within a group; humans have the possibility of storing memory and experiences driving them to express those memories and experiences with others. Cultural memory is dynamic it is not just the amount of knowledge acquired it is something that is being contested all the time and has to be revised in the process of transmission. The process of transmission has to be appropriated by new generations and possibly rejected. Cultural memory needs stable institutions and foundations, or otherwise, it could not become a fixed cultural identity. A paradigm of cultural memory is tradition, Rodriquez & Fortier (2007), defines tradition as a “way of responding to reality, including feelings, memories, images, ideas, attitudes, and interpersonal relationships” (p.9). Tradition is a carrier of memory, in other words, it carries personal, communal experiences, myths, and stories. Cultural memory is also contained in images and recorded and transmitted through stories, myths, and oral traditions. Oral tradition is a concept of communicative memory such as everyday memory