My research has led me down a few different paths and lines of thinking. Here are some that I’ve been exploring: 

  • Circularity and truth play in repetition of sounds/chanting
  • How augmented reality and virtual reality facilitate false memory construction 
  • Projective hypothesis and how tarot and related projections can lead to narrative building around the self 

For my research, I delved into one piece (and have a folder of many more to sift through)

Invoking ‘‘collective memory’’: Mapping the emergence of a concept in archival science by Trond Jacobsen, Ricardo L. Punzalan, Margaret L. Hedstrom

There are four threads that connect how archivists reference and engage with memory in their research… 

Archives as heritage institutions and focuses on their role in symbolic foundation for collective memory: the different ways that archives create feelings of a common past and feed collective identity 

  • Archive as a tool for evidence of the past and providing readers of a sense of what once was, like old architecture, works of art, photographs, the emotions of the time, etc.
  • Archivists should work with museums, historians, and other cultural institutions
  • “Works in this vein illustrate how communities gain a sense of the past as embodied in archival collections and how repositories come to signify shared historical origins

Archives and records allow for actual creation and construction/propagation of social memory

  • Critical look at archives as the keepers, constructors, and facilitators of memory
  • Parallel with memory as feeling self evident and true but often being really ambiguous and personal
  • Problematize the notion that memory == archive, asks what else needs to fuel or partner with memory for it to “ascend” to that level
  • Archives are a partial past, like memories
  • Quotes by researchers on memory, here… 
    • Laura Millar, for example, rejects the notion that records are memories by themselves; instead, they constitute ‘‘touch-stones’’ that trigger memories and the recollection of past events, but only if they are accessed, read, and used (Millar 2006). 
    • Hedstrom uses the computer design concept of ‘‘interface’’ to describe how archivists function as intermediaries between documents and their users in ways that ‘‘enable, but also constrain, the interpretation of the past’’ (Hedstrom 2002). 
    • Robert McIntosh uses the notion of ‘‘authorship’’ to emphasize the mediating role of archivists in memory creation as they ‘‘practice a politics of memory, a determination of what will be remembered’’ (McIntosh 1998).
    • Jeanette Bastian offers ‘‘community of records’’ as a framework to understand the dynamic of archives and community memory while expanding notions of provenance and ownership of records (Bastian 2003). 
    • ‘Memory text’’ is another concept some have used to illustrate the archives and community memory dynamic. Separately, Bastian and Eric Ketelaar use the phrase ‘‘memory text’’ to emphasize the need to transcend the limits of traditional archival formats to embody cultural performance and distributed remembering (Bastian 2006; Ketelaar 2005).

Connection between archive/social memory and power (public remembrance, commemoration)

  • How close is the reflector to the work, if they are the ones creating a social memory?
  • Ethics of memory construction – constructing particular versions of the past, who does it, who gets taken seriously? Comes w/ a lot of power (David Wallace) 
  • Sites for victims of violent events to create their own spaces of reconciliation and public sharing 
  • Problematizing the archives created as a truth commission from marginalized populations around the world. 
    • Nannelli (2009), for example, acknowledges the problematic nature of records created by a commission investigating reported human rights violations in East Timor under the Indonesian regime. She reveals the complexities of relying on individual and collective testimonies drawn from memory in the politicized atmosphere of a truth commission and the constraints of its operations. Nonetheless, testimonies generated in such a process can be important to ensure that such crimes will never happen again despite the lack of material or other evidence of past atrocities. Thus, it is important to ‘‘bear in mind the context of the creation of these records, and the way in which the context shapes what the records contain and how they are read and used’’ (Nannelli 2009, p. 39).
  • Social and institutional memories in post-apartheid S. Africa being constructed in order to lead to new memory formation 

Memory as a tool for rethinking the nature of records as “evidence” but instead just “archival memory” that is as foggy as true memory is

  • Extending the temporal and spatial range of communication (Foote) 
  • Documents are not memories but surrogates of memory 
  • Over time, do records become memorials? Are records even separable from memorialization? 

This piece pairs well with APA definitions relating to memory that I found, directly copied and pasted from https://dictionary.apa.org/

constructive memory

remembering conceived as involving the use of general knowledge stored in one’s memory to construct a more complete and detailed account of an event or experience by changing or filling in various features of the memory.

reconstructive memory

the process of remembering conceived as involving the recreation of an experience or event that has been only partially stored in memory. When a memory is retrieved, the process uses general knowledge and schemas for what typically happens in order to reconstruct the experience or event.

repeated reproduction

a method for studying memory in which participants repeatedly retrieve the same memory over time. The method often shows that repeated retrieval leads to changes in memory, supporting the theory that memory should be viewed as constructive and reconstructive (see constructive memory; reconstructive memory), rather than simply reproductive. In the original 1932 study, British college students attempted to recall a particular Native American folk tale. Successive reproductions of the tale demonstrated that the students’ own cultural knowledge and expectations intruded into the recall, rationalizing and eliminating unusual elements and structuring unrelated items of the tale into a more coherent and familiar framework. Also called Bartlett technique; Bartlett tradition; successive reproduction. 

For posterity, here is my Are.na mood board. I haven’t updated it in the last several weeks since finishing my midterm proposal, and it could use a refresh.