Communicative memory

Memory, in its original sense, means a cognitive process internal to each individual. Its social dimension was revealed by sociologist Marice Halbwachs in Les cadres sociaux de la mémoire, published in 1925. A student of Bergson and then Durkheim, Halbwachs was interested in how memory and society were linked. With the expression “collective memory”  he designated  the individual memory, as it is sustained by society, and the memory of society itself. Yet, as Marc Bloch highlights, “we are free to pronounce the word  ‘collective memory’,  but we should not forget that at least part of the phenomena we thus label are simply communication occurrences among individuals” (73).  This part of communication within the memorial process only finds its terminological envelop with Jan Assmann’s distinction, dating from the 1980s, between two types of collective memory: “cultural memory”  and “communicative memory”.  In the years 2000, Harald Welzer worked mainly on communicative memory, which he distinguishes from social memory – an essentially unconscious memory. His research also takes into account, as much as possible, the latest advances in neuroscience.

From the observations of these various theorists, we can define communicative memory as the whole of the representations of the past or of concerning the past, as well as the mechanisms that (re)build these representations, which are released and shared within a network of communication by individuals who witnessed this past.

Thus, communicative memory lies at an interindividual communication level; in other words, it lies essentially at the scale of a group: family, religion, social class, ethnic group, village, etc. But it can also pertain to larger communities, to national or to “social networks”, for example. Such communication, based on everyday practices, now takes place at a more global scale thanks to certain means of communication that tend to substitute direct contact, such as written or audiovisual communication broadcast via the press or the Internet. This interindividual dimension allows Aleida and Jan Assmann to delineate communicative memory to a period of three or four generations (eighty to one hundred years), thereby defining its historical framework.

Finally, because communicative memory rests on a “communicational action” (Habermas), it presupposes a language which enables a mutual understanding and supposes the speaker’s (intentional) claim to truth.

Translation: Sarah Voke

Halbwachs, Maurice, Les Cadres sociaux de la mémoire [1925], Paris: Albin Michel, 1994.

Bloch, Marc, ‘Mémoire collective, tradition et coutume. À propos d’un livre récent’, Revue de synthèse historique, XL(12), 1925, 73-83.

Assmann, Jan & Tonio Hölscher,  Kultur und Gedächtnis, Frankfurt-am-Main: Suhrkamp, 1988, 9-19.

Welzer, Harald, Das Kommunikative Gedächtnis. Eine Theorie der Erinnerung [2002], Munich: C. H. Beck, 2008.