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Collective Memory Memories of national
traumatic events are collective phenomena.
With the passing of time the details of specific events fade as they
taken from the forefront of our mind and placed into the mainstream of our
memory. To quote from Arthur Neal
“in the telling and retelling the stories of our past, the events in question
become stereotyped and selectively distorted as they become embedded in our
collective memory.” The event is
gradually filtered and details are forgotten. The significance of the collective memory lies in the event’s
meaning not in the accuracy of the memory. One of the major reasons
that collective memory will fade is that successive generations will not
attach the same meaning and significance to the event as the generations that
were in their formative stages at the time.
Most people between ten and thirty now will attach more meaning to
this event than anyone who will come later or has lived before. Those over thirty and those not born yet have their own events
that will hold the focus of their generational collective memories. This is not to say that they will not or
do not care about what happened on September 11th but it will not
be for them as it is for us. And
since it does not play such a vital role in their lives the memory will
gradually deteriorate. The event will
be remembered, but the details and causes will blur. This fundamental
difference in memory structures is demonstrated by philosophy of Henri
Berson. He believed that there were
two types of memory, intentional and spontaneous. Intentional memory consisted of encoding and retrieval; it was
an intentional, deliberate discontinuous, quantitative act, such as
memorizing a poem or a history lesson.
Intentional memory in this
case may be memorizing the sequence of events of the eleventh or how many
people died. Quantitative
information. This information can be
acquired by anyone. Spontaneous memory is
impromptu; it is formed as a byproduct, it is qualitative. You may remember a sound or a feeling from
the day, or something someone said, this would be in the back of your mind
behind a veil of intentional memory. The intentional memories
fade with time as more relevant ones replace them, but the spontaneous
memories will be in the background waiting for a trigger for the rest of your
life. You may hear an
airplane-flying overhead and it might trigger the video of the raw footage of
the first plane hitting the World Trade Center. People who were alive and
in the United States will share both types of memories, people who come after
can only create intentional memories.
The spontaneous memories make up part of our collective memory and is
something we only we can possess. This is easily
demonstrated by asking questions of a separated generation about historical
events. For example World War II,
people who lived through the war could tell you in great emotional detail
about the events and progression of the war, it had a personal tie for their
generation. On what day was Pearl
Harbor bombed? What was the time span of WW II? What year to what year? Does anyone know the dates? How many people died from the US? From other countries? In total?
On the other hand many of us who were not alive during WW II could
discuss the causes and effects of the war.
Collective memory’s significance lies in the meaning more than in the
details. We have had history texts, classes and even movies to explain the basics. The history classes explain the who and why but do not contain the original emotion of the event. Movies and television attempt to pass on the emotion of the event, but fill in the spaces with other irrelevant information further blurring history to fit their plot line. Our memory of an event will grow more distorted through theatrical reproduction of it. As soon as the event is dramatized it begins to lose meaning, to borrow from a previous group, the raw footage obviously carries more meaning and immediacy. Those who experienced the footage and coverage first hand will always place greater significance on an event. The events of September 11th will always be with us, but it will fade from the forefront of
our minds. It will be more vivid and
important to us than any successive generation. Archiving is one way in which we can preserve the memory,
saving as many artifacts as possible whether by traditional collecting or
digitally archiving information online.
This will afford people an opportunity to revisit the event and
maintain its presence in our collective memories, seeing it as we saw it,
real, as it happened on the eleventh and the following days. |