At first glance, memory seems one thing inert, stuck prior to now - a memory of something that has occurred and stopped in time. But a better look reveals that memory is dynamic and connects the three temporal dimensions: evoked at the current, it refers to the past, however always views the future. Throughout their conference entitled ‘Communicative and Cultural Memory’, researchers Jan Assmann and Aleida Assmann, both professors on the College of Konstanz, addressed this dynamic character of memory. Jan spoke on the durability and symbolic elements of cultural memory, emphasizing their role in the construction of identities, whereas Aleida prioritized contemporary historical narrative, specializing in mnemonic processes related to the formation of recent nation-states. The event, held on Could 15 at IEA, opened the convention cycle ‘Spaces of Remembrance’, which the researchers uttered within the nation from Might 15 to 21 as a part of the Year of Germany in Brazil.

The cycle has been a realization of the Federal University of Paraná (UFPR) and the Institute for Advanced Research on Social and Cultural Mobility, with the support of IEA and other establishments. Jan made a distinction between two types of memory: the communicative one, related to the diffuse transmission of memories in everyday life by orality, and cultural memory - by which the speech was focused - referring to objectified and institutionalized recollections, that may be stored, transferred and reincorporated all through generations. Cultural memory is formed by symbolic heritage embodied in texts, rites, monuments, celebrations, objects, sacred scriptures and different media that function mnemonic triggers to initiate meanings related to what has occurred. Additionally, it brings again the time of the mythical origins, crystallizes collective experiences of the previous and may final for millennia. Therefore it presupposes a knowledge restricted to initiates. Communicative memory, on the other hand, is proscribed to the current previous, evokes private and autobiographical recollections, and is characterized by a short time period (eighty to one hundred ten years), from three to 4 generations.

Due to its informal character, it doesn't require expertise on the a part of those that transmit it. Jan identified the connections between cultural memory and identification. Based on him, cultural memory is ‘the school that enables us to construct a narrative picture of the previous and via this course of develop an image and an identity for ourselves’. Therefore, cultural memory preserves the symbolic institutionalized heritage to which people resort to build their own identities and to affirm themselves as part of a group. This is possible as a result of the act of remembering involves normative points, so that ‘if you need to belong to a community, you will need to follow the foundations of how and what to remember’, as said by the researcher. He additionally highlighted that, by working as a collective unifying drive, cultural memory is considered a hazard by totalitarian regimes. For example, he mentioned the case of the Bosnian conflict, when Serbian artillery destroyed the Library of Sarajevo in an try and undermine the memory of the Bosnians and minorities in the region.

The objective, he mentioned, was to make tradition a clean slate so that it may very well be attainable to begin a new Serbian identification from scratch: ‘This was the technique of the totalitarian regime to destroy the past, as a result of if one controls the present, the previous additionally gets beneath management, and if one controls the past, the future additionally will get beneath control’. Aleida opened her convention calling consideration to a characteristic phenomenon of the latest many years: a disbelief in the idea of the future and the emergence of the past as elementary concern. Based on the researcher, from the 1980s, confidence sooner or later as a promise of higher days misplaced energy and gave rise to the restlessness earlier than the previous: ‘the thought of progress is increasingly obsolete, and the previous has invaded our consciousness’. This phenomenon, she mentioned, is the effect of the period of extreme violence of the twentieth century and new problems faced by contemporary society, such because the environmental disaster, for example.

However she cautioned that it is not mere nostalgia or rejection of fashionable occasions, since cultural memory is always directed to the long run, ‘remembering forward, so to speak’. Thus, memory seems as a system to protect the past towards the corrosive motion of time and to offer subsidies for individuals to grasp the world and know what to count on, ‘so they do not have to reinvent the wheel and begin each generation from scratch’, as the researcher explained. Based on the concept of ‘les lieux de mémoire’ (places of memory) prepared by the French historian Pierre Nora, Aleida talked about the changes which have taken place in the development of national Memory Wave Method within the post- World Struggle II and submit-Berlin Wall. Considering from the case of France - a rustic that could be outlined by the triumphant character of its individuals -, the idea of places of memory refers to concrete symbolic objects akin to monuments, museums and archives, linked to a self-image of heroism and satisfaction by the nations.