Exordio a la memoria colectiva y el olvido social

Abstract

This is a discussion of the cultural roles that memory & forgetting play in society. The article argues that remembrance & oblivion are in constant social conflict. Thus, memory & forgetting are not exclusively individual phenomena, but are to be found in society as a whole. It was not well understood in the twentieth century that memory & forgetting are opposites of the same collective force. Indeed, societal forces guide collective memory even as language sustains it. In the opposite sense, censorship, oppression, & silence work against collective memory, resulting in social forgetfulness. Taken together, social memory & social forgetfulness can be said to provide a culture with its distinctive presences & absences. Thus, the relational stress between remembering & forgetting is one of the prime building blocks of society.