de Saint Laurent, Constance

2018, de Saint Laurent, Constance, Zittoun, Tania

Le sens commun dicte que nous, individus et collectifs, devrions apprendre du passé pour éviter de répéter les erreurs que nous avons pu commettre. Malheureusement, les recherches sur le sujet ont plutôt démontré le contraire : notre mémoire collective, c’est-à-dire nos représentations de l’histoire, a tendance à présenter une version de l’histoire à la fois biaisée, glorifiante, et unilatérale qui reflète nos intérêts nationaux et sociaux. Cette thèse a pour but de dépasser cette conception de la mémoire collective et d’explorer comment exactement les gens construisent, mobilisent, transforment et questionnent les représentations de l’histoire. Pour ce faire, une perspective socioculturelle est adoptée, qui considère que personnes et cultures sont interdépendantes, que le soi et l’autre sont co-constitués et que la personne est un agent qui se développe tout au long de la vie. A partir de cette approche, quatre études sont construites – trois études empiriques et une étude transversale. La première porte sur la construction de la mémoire collective dans les interactions, à travers l’analyse de débats parlementaires sur l’immigration. Dans la deuxième étude, les trajectoires de vie d’intellectuels et d’artistes qui ont remis en question des représentations historiques dominantes sont reconstituées, pour explorer comment la mémoire collective se développe au cours de la vie. Dans la troisième recherche, une expérience dialogique est utilisée, où les participants sont confrontés à divers discours sur un évènement récent (le conflit en Ukraine qui a débuté en 2015), pour analyser comment ils raisonnent sur l’histoire. Enfin, la dernière étude, transversale, analyse comment la mémoire collective est mobilisée pour imaginer le futur et représenter le monde. A partir de ces quatre études, il est conclu que les représentations historiques sont des ressources symboliques dynamiques, construites dans les interactions et tout au long de la vie, à travers l’utilisation de ressources sociales et culturelles et d’une multitude de processus psychologiques, dans le but de donner du sens au monde. Et donc que la question n’est pas tellement ce que nous apprenons du passé, mais comment nous l’apprenons. It is common wisdom that we, both as individuals and as members of societies, should learn from the past in order to avoid repeating the mistakes both us and others have made. Unfortunately, research on the topic has shown that we do quite the contrary: our collective memory, or our lay representation of the past, tends to present a rather biased, glorifying, and unilateral version of history and to reflect our national or social interests over the ones of others. The aim of this thesis is to go beyond this conception of collective memory, and to explore how exactly people construct, mobilise, transform, and challenge representations of history. To do this, I propose to adopt a sociocultural perspective, that considers culture and minds as interdependent, self and other as co-constituted, and the person as agentic and developing throughout the life-course. Based on this approach, four studies are proposed – three empirical and one transversal. In the first study, I look at how collective memory is constructed in interactions by analysing the transcripts of parliamentary debates on immigration. In the second study, I reconstruct the trajectories of intellectuals and artists who came to question hegemonic historical representations, to explore how collective memory develops over the life course. In the third study, I analyse how people reason about a recent event – the Ukrainian conflict that started in 2015 – and history through a dialogical experiment where people were confronted to diverse representations of history. Finally, in a last transversal study, I look at how collective memory is mobilised to imagine the future and represent the world. This leads me to conclude that historical representations are dynamic symbolic resources, constructed in interactions and developed throughout the life-course, through the use of social and cultural resources as well as a wide range of psychological processes, in order to give meaning to the world. And thus that the question is not what we learn from history, but how we learn from it.

2017-6-1, de Saint Laurent, Constance

How do we understand the broad history to which we belong? What meaning do we give to it and what role does it have in our lives? This paper proposes to approach collective memory from the perspective of the subject, adopting a developmental perspective to explore how people build specific relations and representations of the historical past. Building on the literature on collective remembering and on life-course studies, it conceptualises memory an as oriented, culturally mediated and dialogical action with a developmental history, embodied in ‘trajectories of remembering’. This conception is applied to the life trajectory of Alain, a 44-year-old Belgian journalist, with a particular interest in the social and intersubjective dimensions of collective remembering. From this analysis, it will be concluded that people’s relation to history is the product of the different positions they assume through time. The study of these successive experiences and their integration can thus shed new lights on how we relate to history and give it meaning.

2017, de Saint Laurent, Constance

How do we understand the broad history to which we belong? What meaning do we give to it and what role does it have in our lives? This paper proposes to approach collective memory from the perspective of the subject, adopting a developmental perspective to explore how people build specific relations and representations of the historical past. Building on the literature on collective remembering and on life-course studies, it conceptualises memory an as oriented, culturally mediated and dialogical action with a developmental history, embodied in ‘trajectories of remembering’. This conception is applied to the life trajectory of Alain, a 44-year-old Belgian journalist, with a particular interest in the social and intersubjective dimensions of collective remembering. From this analysis, it will be concluded that people's relation to history is the product of the different positions they assume through time. The study of these successive experiences and their integration can thus shed new lights on how we relate to history and give it meaning.