1. Cultural Memory Studies ≥ 2. Media and Cultural Memory/ Medien und kulturelle Erinnerung Edited by / Herausgegeben von Astrid Erll · Ansgar Nünning Editorial Board / Wissenschaftlicher Beirat Aleida Assmann · Mieke Bal · Marshall Brown · Vita Fortunati Udo Hebel · Claus Leggewie · Gunilla Lindberg-Wada Jürgen Reulecke · Jean Marie Schaeffer · Jürgen Schlaeger Siegfried J. Schmidt · Werner Sollors · Frederic Tygstrup Harald Welzer 8 Walter de Gruyter · Berlin · New York 3. Cultural Memory Studies An International and Interdisciplinary Handbook Edited by Astrid Erll · Ansgar Nünning in collaboration with Sara B. Young Walter de Gruyter · Berlin · New York 4. Printed on acid-free paper which falls within the guidelines of the ANSI to ensure permanence and durability. Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Cultural memory studies : an international and interdisciplinary hand- book / edited by Astrid Erll, Ansgar Nünning. p. cm. (Media and cultural memory ; 8 Medien und kultu- relle Erinnerung ; 8) Includes bibliographical references and index. ISBN 978-3-11-018860-8 (alk. paper) 1. Culture Handbooks, manuals, etc. 2. Memory Cross-cul- tural studies Handbooks, manuals, etc. I. Erll, Astrid. II. Nün- ning, Ansgar. HM621.C8534 2008 306.01 dc22 2008017708 ISSN 1613-8961 ISBN 978-3-11-018860-8 Bibliographic information published by the Deutsche Nationalbibliothek The Deutsche Nationalbibliothek lists this publication in the Deutsche Nationalbibliografie; detailed bibliographic data are available in the Internet at dnb.d-nb.de. Copyright 2008 by Walter de Gruyter GmbH & Co. KG, D-10785 BerlinAll rights reserved, including those of translation into foreign languages. No part of thisbook may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or me-chanical, including photocopy, recording or any information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publisher. Printed in Germany Cover design: Christopher Schneider, Berlin 5. Preface and AcknowledgementsCultural memory studies came into being at the beginning of the twentiethcentury, with the works of Maurice Halbwachs on mémoire collective. In thecourse of the last two decades this area of research has witnessed a verita-ble boom in various countries and disciplines. As a consequence, the studyof the relations between culture and memory has diversified into a broadrange of approaches. Today, the complex issue of cultural memory is re-markably interdisciplinary: Concepts of cultural memory circulate in his-tory, the social and political sciences, philosophy and theology, psychol-ogy, the neurosciences, and psychoanalysis, as well as in literary and mediastudies. Sometimes these concepts converge; at other times they seem toexclude one another; and all too often, researchers in one discipline seemto take no notice of the work done in neighboring disciplines. Moreover, cultural memory studies is a decidedly international field:Important concepts have been generated in France, Germany, Great Brit-ain, Italy, Canada, the United States, and the Netherlands. At the sametime, however, we have seen how nationally specific academic traditionsand language barriers have tended to impede the transfer of knowledgeabout cultural memory. The handbook project proceeds from the assumption that, more oftenthan not, the meaning and operational value of concepts of memory ingeneral and cultural memory in particular differ between diverse disci-plines, disparate academic cultures, and different historical periods. Withthe move towards greater interdisciplinarity, the exchange of such con-cepts has considerably intensified. Through constant appropriation,translation, and reassessment across various fields, concepts of culturalmemory have acquired new meanings, opening up new horizons of re-search in the humanities as well as in the social and in the natural sciences.To the extent that their meaning must, therefore, be constantly renegoti-ated, a sustained enquiry into these concepts and a survey of the latestresearch in cultural memory studies can foster a self-reflexive approach tothis burgeoning and increasingly diverse field, providing a theoretical,conceptual, and methodological backbone for any project concerned withquestions of cultural memory. The aim of this handbook is to offer the first truly integrated surveyof this interdisciplinary and international field of cultural memory studies.The concise presentation of the main concepts of cultural memory studiesis intended not only to offer readers a unique overview of current researchin the field; it is also meant to serve as a forum for bringing together ap- 6. VIproaches from areas as varied as neurosciences and literary history, thusadding further contour and depth to this emergent field of study. ***Our debts are many, and it is a great pleasure to acknowledge them. Ourthanks go, first of all, to the many individual authors who contributed toour handbook. It was a wonderful experience to collaborate on this proj-ect with researchers from numerous countries and disciplines. We aregrateful for their willingness to present their research in the admittedlyvery concise format of this handbook and also for their great patienceduring the production process. Moreover, we would like to thank HeikoHartmann and his colleagues at de Gruyter for their encouragement andassistance in establishing the series Media and Cultural Memory. Four yearsafter the appearance of its first volume, this handbook represents the at-tempt to chart the very field––international and interdisciplinary memorystudies––that this series is committed to exploring and further developing. We are also very grateful to Anna-Lena Flügel, Meike Hölscher, andJan Rupp, who helped prepare the manuscript for publication. Many arti-cles had to be translated into English, and we thank Anna-Lena Flügel forher translation from French, Stephanie Wodianka for her counsel on allthings Italian, and Sara B. Young for providing all the translations fromGerman. To Sara go our most cordial thanks: Without her, this volumewould not exist. She did an absolutely excellent job, from the criticalreading and careful editing of the articles to her well-crafted translationsand skilled guidance in the overall language and style of the volume. Wuppertal and Giessen, April 2008 Astrid Erll and Ansgar Nünning 7. Table of ContentsASTRID ERLL: Cultural Memory Studies: An Introduction ............................. 1 I. Lieux de mémoire–Sites of MemoryPIM DEN BOER: Loci memoriae—Lieux de mémoire ............................................. 19MARIO ISNENGHI: Italian luoghi della memoria.................................................... 27JACQUES LE RIDER: Mitteleuropa as a lieu de mémoire.......................................... 37UDO J. HEBEL: Sites of Memory in U.S.-American Historiesand Cultures ........................................................................................................ 47JAY WINTER: Sites of Memory and the Shadow of War................................ 61 II. Memory and Cultural HistoryALON CONFINO: Memory and the History of Mentalities ............................ 77DIETRICH HARTH: The Invention of Cultural Memory................................. 85ALEIDA ASSMANN: Canon and Archive ............................................................ 97JAN ASSMANN: Communicative and Cultural Memory................................ 109JÜRGEN REULECKE: Generation/Generationality, Generativity, andMemory.............................................................................................................. 119VITA FORTUNATI AND ELENA LAMBERTI: Cultural Memory: A EuropeanPerspective ........................................................................................................ 127 III. Social, Political, and Philosophical Memory StudiesJEAN-CHRISTOPHE MARCEL AND LAURENT MUCCHIELLI: MauriceHalbwachs’s mémoire collective ........................................................................... 141JEFFREY K. OLICK: From Collective Memory to the Sociology ofMnemonic Practices and Products................................................................ 151ANDREAS LANGENOHL: Memory in Post-Authoritarian Societies ............. 163ERIK MEYER: Memory and Politics ................................................................ 173ELENA ESPOSITO: Social Forgetting: A Systems-Theory Approach.......... 181SIEGFRIED J. SCHMIDT: Memory and Remembrance: A ConstructivistApproach........................................................................................................... 191MAUREEN JUNKER-KENNY: Memory and Forgetting in Paul Ricœur’sTheory of the Capable Self............................................................................. 203 8. VIII Table of Contents IV. Psychological Memory StudiesJÜRGEN STRAUB: Psychology, Narrative, and Cultural Memory:Past and Present ............................................................................................... 215WULF KANSTEINER AND HARALD WEILNBÖCK: Against the Concept ofCultural Trauma ............................................................................................... 229DAVID MIDDLETON AND STEVEN D. BROWN: Experience and Memory:Imaginary Futures in the Past ........................................................................ 241DAVID MANIER AND WILLIAM HIRST: A Cognitive Taxonomy ofCollective Memories ........................................................................................ 253GERALD ECHTERHOFF: Language and Memory: Social and CognitiveProcesses ........................................................................................................... 263HANS J. MARKOWITSCH: Cultural Memory and the Neurosciences............ 275HARALD WELZER: Communicative Memory................................................. 285 V. Literature and Cultural MemoryRENATE LACHMANN: Mnemonic and Intertextual Aspects of Literature . 301HERBERT GRABES: Cultural Memory and the Literary Canon.................... 311MAX SAUNDERS: Life-Writing, Cultural Memory, and Literary Studies .... 321BIRGIT NEUMANN: The Literary Representation of Memory ..................... 333ANN RIGNEY: The Dynamics of Remembrance: Texts BetweenMonumentality and Morphing ....................................................................... 345 VI. Media and Cultural MemoryJAMES E. YOUNG: The Texture of Memory: Holocaust Memorials inHistory ............................................................................................................... 357JENS RUCHATZ: The Photograph as Externalization and Trace................. 367BARBIE ZELIZER: Journalism’s Memory Work.............................................. 379ASTRID ERLL: Literature, Film, and the Mediality of Cultural Memory.... 389MARTIN ZIEROLD: Memory and Media Cultures .......................................... 399Index of Names................................................................................................ 409Index of Terms................................................................................................. 423Notes on Contributors.................................................................................... 427 9. Cultural Memory Studies: An Introduction ASTRID ERLL 1. Towards a Conceptual Foundation for Cultural Memory StudiesOver the past two decades, the relationship between culture and memoryhas emerged in many parts of the world as a key issue of interdisciplinaryresearch, involving fields as diverse as history, sociology, art, literary andmedia studies, philosophy, theology, psychology, and the neurosciences,and thus bringing together the humanities, social studies, and the naturalsciences in a unique way. The importance of the notion of cultural mem-ory is not only documented by the rapid growth, since the late 1980s, ofpublications on specific national, social, religious, or family memories, butalso by a more recent trend, namely attempts to provide overviews of thestate of the art in this emerging field and to synthesize different researchtraditions. Anthologies of theoretical texts, such as The Collective MemoryReader (Olick et al.), as well as the launch of the new journal Memory Studiestestify to the need to bring focus to this broad discussion and to considerthe theoretical and methodological standards of a promising, but also asyet incoherent and dispersed field (cf. Olick; Radstone; Erll). The presenthandbook represents the shared effort of forty-one authors, all of whomhave contributed over the past years, from a variety of disciplinary per-spectives, to the development of this nascent field, and it is part of theeffort to consolidate memory studies into a more coherent discipline. It isa first step on the road towards a conceptual foundation for the kind ofmemory studies which assumes a decidedly cultural and social perspective. “Cultural” (or, if you will, “collective,” “social”) memory is certainly amultifarious notion, a term often used in an ambiguous and vague way.Media, practices, and structures as diverse as myth, monuments, historiog-raphy, ritual, conversational remembering, configurations of culturalknowledge, and neuronal networks are nowadays subsumed under thiswide umbrella term. Because of its intricacy, cultural memory has been ahighly controversial issue ever since its very conception in MauriceHalbwachs’s studies on mémoire collective (esp. 1925, 1941, 1950). His con-temporary Marc Bloch accused Halbwachs of simply transferring conceptsfrom individual psychology to the level of the collective, and even todayscholars continue to challenge the notion of collective or cultural memory,claiming, for example, that since we have well-established concepts like“myth,” “tradition,” and “individual memory,” there is no need for a 10. 2 Astrid Erllfurther, and often misleading, addition to the existing repertoire (cf. Gediand Elam). What these criticisms overlook, of course, is that it is exactlythe umbrella quality of these relatively new usages of “memory” whichhelps us see the (sometimes functional, sometimes analogical, sometimesmetaphorical) relationships between such phenomena as ancient mythsand the personal recollection of recent experience, and which enablesdisciplines as varied as psychology, history, sociology, and literary studiesto engage in a stimulating dialogue. This handbook is based on a broad understanding of cultural memory,suggesting as a provisional definition “the interplay of present and past insocio-cultural contexts.” Such an understanding of the term allows for aninclusion of a broad spectrum of phenomena as possible objects of cul-tural memory studies––ranging from individual acts of remembering in asocial context to group memory (of family, friends, veterans, etc.) to na-tional memory with its “invented traditions,” and finally to the host oftransnational lieux de mémoire such as the Holocaust and 9/11. At the sametime, cultural memory studies is not restricted to the study of those waysof making sense of the past which are intentional and performed throughnarrative, and which go hand in hand with the construction of identities––although this very nexus (intentional remembering, narrative, identity) hascertainly yielded the lion’s share of research in memory studies so far. Thefield thus remains open for the exploration of unintentional and implicitways of cultural remembering (see Welzer, this volume) or of inherentlynon-narrative, for example visual or bodily, forms of memory. But if the range of themes and objects of memory studies is virtuallylimitless (everything is, somehow, related to memory), then what makesour new field distinct? With Alon Confino, I would argue that it is not theinfinite multitude of possible topics which characterizes cultural memorystudies, but instead its concepts: the specific ways of conceiving of themesand of approaching objects. However, despite two decades of intensiveresearch, the design of a conceptual toolbox for cultural memory studies isstill at a fledgling stage, because (to quote Confino in this volume) mem-ory studies is currently “more practiced than theorized”––and practiced, atthat, within an array of different disciplines and national academic cul-tures, with their own vocabularies, methods, and traditions. What we needis to take a survey of the concepts used in memory studies and, in doingso, cross intellectual and linguistic boundaries. Even a cursory look at the host of different terminologies which haveemerged from memory studies since Maurice Halbwachs will shed light onthe challenges faced by those who are searching for a conceptual founda-tion for the field: mémoire collective/collective memory, cadres sociaux/socialframeworks of memory, social memory, mnemosyne, ars memoriae, loci et 11. Cultural Memory Studies: An Introduction 3imagines, lieux de mémoire/sites of memory, invented traditions, myth, memo-ria, heritage, commemoration, kulturelles Gedächtnis, communicative mem-ory, generationality, postmemory. The list could go on. What this wealth of existing concepts shows, first of all, is that culturalmemory is not the object of one single discipline, but a transdisciplinaryphenomenon. There is no such thing as a privileged standpoint or ap-proach for memory research (for the systematic and historic reasons forthis, see sections 2 and 3 of this article). Cultural memory studies is a fieldto which many disciplines contribute, using their specific methodologiesand perspectives. This makes for its terminological richness, but also forits disjointedness. At the same time, it has been clear since its very incep-tion that the study of cultural memory can only be successful if it is basedon cooperation among different disciplines. Cultural memory studies istherefore not merely a multidisciplinary field, but fundamentally an inter-disciplinary project. Many exciting forms of collaboration have alreadybeen fostered. And indeed, the strongest and most striking studies in cul-tural memory are based on interdisciplinary exchange––between mediastudies and cultural history (J. Assmann; A. Assmann), history and sociol-ogy (Olick), neuroscience and social psychology (Welzer; Markowitsch),cognitive psychology and history (Manier and Hirst) or social psychologyand linguistics (Echterhoff; all this volume). An even more intensifieddialogue among disciplines will help uncover the manifold intersections ofmemory and culture. This, however, requires a very sensitive handling ofterminology and a careful discrimination of the specific disciplinary usesof certain concepts and of their literal, metaphorical, or metonymical im-plications (see section 2). 2. Establishing the Framework: Dimensions, Levels, and Modes of Cultural MemoryIf we want to establish a framework for cultural memory studies, workingon concepts is inevitable. In the following I will propose some basic defi-nitions and conceptual differentiations which may help to prevent misun-derstanding and resolve some of the controversies which have beensparked time and again within and about cultural memory studies. (a) Dimensions of Culture and Memory: Material, Social, and MentalArguably the most important and by far most frequently used key conceptof cultural memory studies is the contentious term mémoire collective(collective memory), which was brought into the discussion by MauriceHalbwachs in the 1920s. Our choice of “cultural memory” for the title of 12. 4 Astrid Erllthis handbook is due, in the first place, to the highly controversial natureof Halbwachs’s term and the many wrong associations it seems to triggerin those who are new to the field. Secondly, according to the definitiongiven above, the term “cultural memory” accentuates the connection ofmemory on the one hand and socio-cultural contexts on the other. How-ever, the term “cultural” does not designate a specific affinity to CulturalStudies as conceived and practiced by the Birmingham School (althoughthis discipline has certainly contributed to cultural memory studies). Ournotion of culture is instead more rooted in the German tradition of thestudy of cultures (Kulturwissenschaft) and in anthropology, where culture isdefined as a community’s specific way of life, led within its self-spun websof meaning (cf. Geertz). According to anthropological and semiotic theories, culture can beseen as a three-dimensional framework, comprising social (people, socialrelations, institutions), material (artifacts and media), and mental aspects(culturally defined ways of thinking, mentalities) (cf. Posner). Understoodin this way, “cultural memory” can serve as an umbrella term which com-prises “social memory” (the starting point for memory research in the so-cial sciences), “material or medial memory” (the focus of interest in literaryand media studies), and “mental or cognitive memory” (the field of expertisein psychology and the neurosciences). This neat distinction is of coursemerely a heuristic tool. In reality, all three dimensions are involved in themaking of cultural memories. Cultural memory studies is therefore char-acterized by the transcending of boundaries. Some scholars look at theinterplay of material and social phenomena (for example, memorials andthe politics of memory; see Meyer); others scrutinize the intersections ofmaterial and mental phenomena (as in the history of mentalities; see Con-fino); still others study the relation of cognitive and social phenomena (asin conversational remembering; see Middleton and Brown; all this vol-ume). (b) Levels of Memory: Individual and CollectiveIt is important to realize that the notions of “cultural” or “collective”memory proceed from an operative metaphor. The concept of “remem-bering” (a cognitive process which takes place in individual brains) ismetaphorically transferred to the level of culture. In this metaphoricalsense, scholars speak of a “nation’s memory,” a “religious community’smemory,” or even of “literature’s memory” (which, according to RenateLachmann, is its intertextuality). This crucial distinction between two as-pects of cultural memory studies is what Jeffrey K. Olick draws our atten-tion to when he maintains that “two radically different concepts of cultureare involved here, one that sees culture as a subjective category of mean- 13. Cultural Memory Studies: An Introduction 5ings contained in people’s minds versus one that sees culture as patternsof publicly available symbols objectified in society” (336). In other words,we have to differentiate between two levels on which culture and memoryintersect: the individual and the collective or, more precisely, the level ofthe cognitive on the one hand, and the levels of the social and the medialon the other. The first level of cultural memory is concerned with biological mem-ory. It draws attention to the fact that no memory is ever purely individ-ual, but always inherently shaped by collective contexts. From the peoplewe live with and from the media we use, we acquire schemata which helpus recall the past and encode new experience. Our memories are oftentriggered as well as shaped by external factors, ranging from conversationamong friends to books and to places. In short, we remember in socio-cultural contexts. With regard to this first level, “memory” is used in aliteral sense, whereas the attribute “cultural” is a metonymy, standing forthe “socio-cultural contexts and their influence on memory.” It is espe-cially within oral history, social psychology, and the neurosciences thatcultural memory is understood according to this first aspect of the term. The second level of cultural memory refers to the symbolic order, themedia, institutions, and practices by which social groups construct ashared past. “Memory,” here, is used metaphorically. Societies do notremember literally; but much of what is done to reconstruct a shared pastbears some resemblance to the processes of individual memory, such asthe selectivity and perspectivity inherent in the creation of versions of thepast according to present knowledge and needs. In cultural history and thesocial sciences, much research has been done with regard to this secondaspect of collective memory, the most influential concepts to haveemerged being Pierre Nora’s lieux de mémoire and Jan and Aleida Ass-mann’s kulturelles Gedächtnis. The two forms of cultural memory can be distinguished from eachother on an analytical level; but in practice the cognitive and the so-cial/medial continuously interact. There is no such thing as pre-culturalindividual memory; but neither is there a Collective or Cultural Memory(with capital letters) which is detached from individuals and embodiedonly in media and institutions. Just as socio-cultural contexts shape indi-vidual memories, a “memory” which is represented by media and institu-tions must be actualized by individuals, by members of a community ofremembrance, who may be conceived of as points de vue (MauriceHalbwachs) on shared notions of the past. Without such actualizations,monuments, rituals, and books are nothing but dead material, failing tohave any impact in societies. 14. 6 Astrid Erll As is always the case with metaphors, some features can be transferredwith a gain in insight, others cannot. The notion of cultural memory hasquite successfully directed our attention to the close connection that existsbetween, say, a nation’s version of its past and its version of nationalidentity. That memory and identity are closely linked on the individuallevel is a commonplace that goes back at least to John Locke, who main-tained that there is no such thing as an essential identity, but that identitieshave to be constructed and reconstructed by acts of memory, by remem-bering who one was and by setting this past Self in relation to the presentSelf. The concept of cultural memory has opened the way to studyingthese processes at a collective level. More problematic is the migration ofconcepts between the individual and social levels when it comes to traumastudies. Wulf Kansteiner and Harald Weilnböck (this volume) show the(ethical) pitfalls of attempting to conflate processes of the individual psy-che with the medial and social representation of the past. To sum up, cultural memory studies is decidedly concerned with so-cial, medial, and cognitive processes, and their ceaseless interplay. In thepresent volume, this fact is mirrored not only by the dedication of differ-ent sections to (clusters of) different disciplines (history, social sciences,psychology, literary and media studies) which have an expertise with re-gard to one specific level of cultural memory, but also by the incorpora-tion of as many approaches as possible which go beyond those bounda-ries. Readers will therefore discover numerous cross-connections betweenthe paths taken in the individual parts of this book. (c) Modes of Memory: The “How” of RememberingThe last distinction to be made in this introduction––that between differ-ent modes of remembering––is one which aims to confront anothersource of vehement dispute within and about memory studies. One ofHalbwachs’s less felicitous legacies is the opposition between history andmemory. Halbwachs conceives of the former as abstract, totalizing, and“dead,” and of the latter as particular, meaningful, and “lived.” This po-larity, itself a legacy of nineteenth-century historicism and its discontents,was taken up and popularized by Pierre Nora, who also distinguishes po-lemically between history and memory and positions his lieux de mémoire inbetween. Studies on “history vs. memory” are usually loaded with emo-tionally charged binary oppositions: good vs. bad, organic vs. artificial,living vs. dead, from below vs. from above. And while the term “culturalmemory” is already a multifarious notion, it is often even less clear what ismeant with the collective singular of “history” (cf. Koselleck): Selectiveand meaningful memory vs. the unintelligible totality of historical events?Methodologically unregulated and identity-related memory vs. scientific, 15. Cultural Memory Studies: An Introduction 7seemingly neutral and objective historiography? Authentic memory producedwithin small communities vs. ideologically charged, official images of history?Witnesses of the past vs. academic historians? The whole question of “his-tory and/or/as memory” is simply not a very fruitful approach to culturalrepresentations of the past. It is a dead end in memory studies, and alsoone of its “Achilles’ heels” (see Olick, this volume). I would suggest dissolving the useless opposition of history vs. mem-ory in favor of a notion of different modes of remembering in culture. Thisapproach proceeds from the basic insight that the past is not given, butmust instead continually be re-constructed and re-presented. Thus, ourmemories (individual and collective) of past events can vary to a greatdegree. This holds true not only for what is remembered (facts, data), butalso for how it is remembered, that is, for the quality and meaning the pastassumes. As a result, there are different modes of remembering identicalpast events. A war, for example, can be remembered as a mythic event(“the war as apocalypse”), as part of political history (the First World Waras “the great seminal catastrophe of the twentieth century”), as a traumaticexperience (“the horror of the trenches, the shells, the barrage of gunfire,”etc.), as a part of family history (“the war my great-uncle served in”), as afocus of bitter contestation (“the war which was waged by the old genera-tion, by the fascists, by men”). Myth, religious memory, political history,trauma, family remembrance, or generational memory are different modesof referring to the past. Seen in this way, history is but yet another modeof cultural memory, and historiography its specific medium. This is not atall to lessen its importance or the merits of generations of historians. Sincethe early nineteenth century, the historical method has developed into thebest-regulated and most reliable way of reconstructing the past (eventhough its specific operations have been justifiably criticized by Foucaultand others, and may be complemented by other modes). 3. Genealogies and Branches of Cultural Memory Studies: The Design of This HandbookThis handbook has a historic and systematic (or diachronic and syn-chronic) layout. Although its main focus is on current research and con-cepts of cultural memory studies, it also provides insights into the differ-ent roots of the field. Whereas a history of thought about memory andculture would have to go back to Plato, the beginnings of a modern no-tion of cultural memory can be retraced to the late nineteenth and earlytwentieth centuries (see Olick; Straub; Marcel and Mucchielli; all this vol-ume). The present field of research is built on the emergence of a “new 16. 8 Astrid Erllwave” of cultural memory studies since the 1980s (see Confino; Harth;Fortunati and Lamberti; all this volume). Maurice Halbwachs was the first to write explicitly and systematicallyabout cultural memory. If one reads through the essays of this volume,there can be little doubt that his studies of mémoire collective have emergedas the foundational texts of today’s memory studies––unequivocally ac-cepted as such no matter what discipline or country the respective re-searchers call home. Halbwachs not only coined the fundamental term“collective memory”; his legacy to cultural memory studies is at leastthreefold. Firstly, with his concept of cadres sociaux de la mémoire (socialframeworks of memory) he articulated the idea that individual memoriesare inherently shaped and will often be triggered by socio-cultural con-texts, or frameworks, thus already pointing to cultural schema theories andthe contextual approaches of psychology. Secondly, his study of familymemory and other private practices of remembering have been an impor-tant influence for oral history. And thirdly, with his research on the mem-ory of religious communities (in La topographie légendaire) he accentuatedtopographical aspects of cultural memory, thus anticipating the notion oflieux de mémoire, and he looked at communities whose memory reachesback thousands of years, thus laying the foundation for Jan and AleidaAssmann’s kulturelles Gedächtnis. However, although Halbwachs’s work is rooted in French sociology,memory studies was an international and transdisciplinary phenomenonfrom the very beginning. Around 1900, scholars from different disciplinesand countries became interested in the intersections between culture andmemory: notably Sigmund Freud, Henri Bergson, Emile Durkheim, Mau-rice Halbwachs, Aby Warburg, Arnold Zweig, Karl Mannheim, FrederickBartlett, and Walter Benjamin (see also Olick, this volume). Sometimesthose scholars critically referred to one another’s work (for exampleHalbwachs to Durkheim, or Bloch and Bartlett to Halbwachs), yet moreoften this early research remained unconnected. Early memory studies isthus a typical example of an emergent phenomenon, cropping up at dif-ferent places at roughly the same time––a process which would be re-peated in the 1980s, with the “new memory studies.” If Halbwachs is the best remembered founding father of memorystudies, then Aby Warburg is arguably the most forgotten one. The Ger-man Jewish art historian was an early and energetic ambassador of theinterdisciplinary study of culture (cf. Gombrich). He famously pointed outthat researchers should stop policing disciplinary boundaries (grenzpo-lizeiliche Befangenheit) in order to gain insight into processes of culturalmemory. Warburg––whose writings are more a quarry providing inspira-tion for subsequent scholars than the source of clear-cut theoretical con- 17. Cultural Memory Studies: An Introduction 9cepts––drew attention, moreover, to the mediality of memory. In a greatexhibition project called Mnemosyne (1924-28) he demonstrated how cer-tain “pathos formulae” (Pathosformeln, symbols encoding emotional inten-sity) migrated through different art works, periods, and countries.Whereas the sociologist Halbwachs and the psychologist Frederick Bart-lett (who popularized the notion of cultural schemata) laid the founda-tions for cultural memory studies with a view to social and cognitive lev-els, Warburg’s legacy to present-day research is to have given an exampleof how cultural memory can be approached via the level of material ob-jects. The interest that the works by Halbwachs and others had sparked in asmall community of scholars dwindled away after the Second World War.It was only in the 1980s (after the “death of history,” the narrative turn,and the anthropological turn) that “collective memory,” first slowly andthen at breathtaking speed, developed into a buzzword not only in theacademic world, but also in the political arena, the mass media, and thearts. The “new cultural memory studies” was, again, very much an emer-gent phenomenon, taking shape more or less concurrently in many disci-plines and countries. The 1980s saw the work of the French historianPierre Nora on national lieux de mémoire (see den Boer) and the publica-tions of the German group of researchers around Jan and Aleida Ass-mann, who focused on media and memory in ancient societies (seeHarth). In psychology, meanwhile, behavioral and purely cognitive para-digms had been superseded by ecological approaches to human memoryand the study of conversational and narrative remembering (see Straub;Middleton and Brown). Historical and political changes became a catalystfor the new memory studies. Forty years after the Holocaust the genera-tion that had witnessed the Shoah began to fade away. This effected amajor change in the forms of cultural remembrance. Without organic,autobiographic memories, societies are solely dependent on media (suchas monuments; see Young) to transmit experience. Issues of trauma andwitnessing were not only discussed in the context of Holocaust studies,but more and more also in gender studies and postcolonial studies (seeKansteiner and Weilnböck). More recently, major transformations inglobal politics, such as the breakdown of the communist states and otherauthoritarian regimes, have brought new memory phenomena to the fore,such as the issue of “transitional justice” (see Langenohl). More generally,the shape of contemporary media societies gives rise to the assumptionthat––today perhaps more than ever––cultural memory is dependent onmedia technologies and the circulation of media products (see Esposito;Rigney; Erll; Zelizer; Zierold; all this volume). * 18. 10 Astrid ErllIn keeping with the double focus of this handbook––on genealogies anddisciplinary branches––each of its six parts is concerned with historic andsystematic aspects of cultural memory studies. Part I is dedicated to theone concept that has arguably proved most influential within the new,international and interdisciplinary memory studies: Pierre Nora’s lieux demémoire, which he introduced in a multivolume work of the same name,featuring French “sites of memory” (1984-92). The notion of lieux de mé-moire quickly crossed national borders and was taken up in books aboutsites of memory in Italy, Germany, Canada, Central Europe, and theUnited States. The ubiquity of the term cannot belie the fact, however,that the lieu de mémoire is still one of the most inchoate and undertheorizedconcepts of cultural memory studies. On the one hand it lends itself par-ticularly well to the study of a wide array of phenomena (from “places” inthe literal sense to medial representations, rituals, and shared beliefs), butit is precisely because of its sheer limitless extension that the term hasremained conceptually amorphous, and it would be well worth initiatinganother round of scholarly scrutiny (cf. Rigney). In this volume, Pim denBoer traces the roots of the lieu metaphor back to the ancient art of mem-ory, its founding myth about Simonides of Ceos, and the method of lociand imagines (places and images) as we find it described in the rhetorics ofCicero and Quintilian. He uncovers the French specificité of Nora’s con-cept, comments on its translatability, and considers the prospects for acomparative study of lieux de mémoire. Some elements of such a compara-tive perspective on sites of memory are provided by the following articles:Mario Isnenghi gives an insight into Italian luoghi della memoria; Jacques LeRider writes about Mitteleuropa (Central Europe) as a site of memory; UdoJ. Hebel distinguishes literary, visual, performative, material, virtual, andtransnational memory sites of the United States; and Jay Winter provides acomparative view of the sites that commemorate twentieth-century wars. Part II presents memory research rooted in cultural history. AlonConfino reveals the intellectual and methodological affiliations betweenmemory studies and the history of mentalities, reaching back to the fathersof the Annales school, Lucien Febvre and Marc Bloch, and shows howPierre Nora’s lieux de mémoire emerged from this tradition. He then takes acritical look at present-day memory studies and the chances and pitfalls itoffers to historians. The next three articles form a unity in many ways, notsurprisingly, as they are written by members of the interdisciplinary, Hei-delberg-based group of scholars who have been working on culturalmemory since the 1980s. Dietrich Harth reconstructs the “invention ofcultural memory” in this research context; Jan and Aleida Assmann pre-sent some of their eminently influential concepts, among them, for exam-ple, the distinction between “cultural” and “communicative” memory and 19. Cultural Memory Studies: An Introduction 11between “canon” and “archive.” Jürgen Reulecke delineates recent ap-proaches to generational memory, which also have their source in the1920s: Karl Mannheim’s writings belong to the foundational texts of cul-tural memory studies, since memory within and between generations is asignificant form of collective remembering. With the development ofterms such as “generationality” and “generativity,” his legacy has beenupdated. Vita Fortunati and Elena Lamberti complete this second part ofthe volume not only by giving a comprehensive overview of the widearray of concepts, but also by providing an insight into the actual practiceof international and interdisciplinary cultural memory studies as carriedout within the European thematic network ACUME. Part III directs attention towards the different kinds of memory stud-ies that have emerged in philosophy and the social sciences. Here, again,the history of memory studies and its protagonist Maurice Halbwachs gettheir due: Jean-Christophe Marcel and Laurent Mucchielli provide an in-troduction to Maurice Halbwachs’s works on mémoire collective as a “uniquetype of phenomenological sociology.” Jeffrey K. Olick then delineates in agrand sweep the development from Halbwachs’s beginnings to the current“sociology of mnemonic practices and products.” The articles by AndreasLangenohl and Erik Meyer address specific social, political, and ethicalquestions which have arisen out of contemporary memory politics.Langenohl provides an overview of forms of remembrance in post-au-thoritarian societies and elaborates on the issue of transitional justice;Meyer develops a policy studies perspective on cultural memory. Thearticles by Elena Esposito and Siegfried J. Schmidt represent the contri-butions of systems theory and radical constructivism to cultural memorystudies. Esposito theorizes the powerful other side of cultural memory,namely social forgetting. This part ends with Maureen Junker-Kenny’scritical recapitulation of the philosophical and hermeneutical perspectiveon memory, forgetting, and forgiving that was introduced by Paul Ricœur. The inclusion of psychological concepts in part IV provides a bridgefrom memory studies in the humanities and the social sciences to thenatural sciences. Representatives of different disciplines (including theneurosciences; psychotherapy; and narrative, social, and cognitive psy-chology) provide insights into their work on cultural memory. An histori-cal perspective is assumed by Jürgen Straub, who traces the genealogy ofpsychological memory studies back to the late nineteenth century andcharts the history of narrative psychology, up to and including its currentstate. Wulf Kansteiner and Harald Weilnböck take a strong stand “againstthe concept of cultural trauma.” From a psychotherapy studies perspectivethey reconstruct and criticize the various uses and abuses of the conceptof trauma in cultural memory studies. David Middleton and Steven D. 20. 12 Astrid ErllBrown introduce their work on conversational remembering and stressthe important connection between experience and memory. David Manierand William Hirst outline what they call a “cognitive taxonomy of collec-tive memories,” thus showing how group memories are represented inindividual minds. Gerald Echterhoff presents new interdisciplinary re-search on the relation of language and memory, which lies at the verybasis of cultural memory. Hans J. Markowitsch provides an introductionto memory research in the neurosciences and discusses how the socialworld shapes the individual brain. Harald Welzer rounds off this part ofthe volume by presenting the key concepts of his inherently interdiscipli-nary research, which spans the field from oral history to social psychologyand to the neurosciences. Parts V and VI move on to the material and medial dimension ofcultural memory. The articles in part V represent the main concepts ofmemory found in literary studies (cf. Erll and Nünning). RenateLachmann shows how the ancient method of loci imagines is linked to liter-ary imagination and describes her influential notion of intertextuality asthe “memory of literature.” With Herbert Grabes’s article on the literarycanon, the perspective on literature and memory moves from relationsbetween texts to the level of the social systems which select and evaluateliterary works. Max Saunders’s article on “life-writing” is concerned withthose literary works which are most obviously connected to culturalmemory: letters, diaries, biographies, autobiographies, memoirs, etc. How-ever, he also shows that life-writing extends beyond these genres and thatindividual and cultural memory can indeed be found in most literary texts.Birgit Neumann provides an overview of how memory is represented inliterature, using a narratological approach to describe the forms and func-tions of a “mimesis of memory.” Ann Rigney stresses the active and vitalrole that literature plays as a medium in the production of cultural mem-ory. She understands memory as a dynamic process (rather than a staticentity), in which fictional narratives can fulfill an array of different func-tions––as “relay stations,” “stabilizers,” “catalysts,” “objects of recollec-tion,” or “calibrators.” With its focus on mediality and memory, Ann Rigney’s article alreadypoints to the last part of the volume, which is concerned with the role ofmemory in media cultures. Here more than ever disciplines converge.Scholars from literary studies, history, media studies, journalism, andcommunication studies introduce their views on a set of questions whichhas emerged as one of the most basic concerns and greatest challenges ofmemory studies: the intersections between media and cultural memory(which, of course, also give this series its title). Cultural memory hinges onthe notion of the medial, because it is only via medial externalization
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