de Saint Laurent, Constance

2018, Obradovic, Sandra, de Saint Laurent, Constance

Research on collective memory – exploring the lay representations of history – has been booming in the past decades, particularly since the collapse of the Soviet Union. In this context, the past has started to be seen as not only interesting in itself, but as especially relevant to understand the present: it weighs on it by shaping our relations with other groups and by defining who we are, to use terms common in collective memory research. The past is thus given authority over the present (and often the future), by assuming that its transformations and deformations play a determining role in the way we understand ourselves and act with others, as members of social groups. In this special issue, we propose to look, on the contrary, at how the past is transformed and mobilised for the present. That is, instead of conceiving the past as weighting on the present, we would like to explore how it is mobilised and brought to the present, as a resource to give meaning to present actions and groups as well as to imagine collective futures. The contributions to this special issue will thus focus on how history is used in the present, for what purpose and with what results. The aim of this special issue is also to offer a space to PhD students and post-doctoral fellows to develop new ideas and to promote them within the scientific community. The issue will thus be composed of two parts: a series of articles proposed by ‘junior’ researchers and a series of commentaries by ‘experts’ in the field.

2017, de Saint Laurent, Constance, Bresco de Luna, I., Awad, Sarah, Wagoner, B

From discussions in the media about this year’s 70th anniversary of the end of the Second World War to debates about the content of school history textbooks, collective memory is a topic that permeates public and scientific forums alike. What we remember and, most importantly, how we remember the past, seems fundamental for the way in which we come to understand our present and imagine our future as individual, groups, and societies (Liu & Hilton, 2005). And yet, the debate concerns not only the content of collective memory but the concept of collective memory itself, its definition, applicability, and its future (Brockmeier, 2010). Collective remembering can be broadly defined as the process by which discourses on the historical past are produced. Beyond the questions of ‘who’ does the remembering, ‘how’, and ‘for what purposes’, this broad understanding might sound like a solid starting point for this research area. However, it is not so much shared definitions that unify the field, but rather a critique of old approaches to collective memory, accused of turning it into static, reified representations about the past (Wertsch, 2002). Beyond this critique, important questions remain concerning the content of collective memory (is it a narrative, a form of meaning-making, a representation?), its functions (is it a way to define ourselves, to give meaning to the world, to imagine what may come next?), and its boundaries (does it concern only recent events, only the past of one’s social group, or does it refer to a global understanding of history?). Answers to such questions tend to vary from researcher to researcher. However, they are not always contradictory and could actually complement each other. This makes dialogue between scholars all the more important for understanding and articulating the different aspects of collective memory. In addition, there is also value in looking ‘outwards’ for inspiration, beyond the area of collective memory. Plagued by a narrow definition of memory in psychology (as recall), the field of collective memory tends to operate with a broader understanding of what remembering is. From a sociocultural perspective, to remember involves much more than memory alone (Wagoner, 2015) and engages one’s imagination and creativity in a complex act of future-making. As such, it becomes important to have an inter-disciplinary dialogue between collective memory scholars and colleagues working in related fields within social and cultural psychology. This special issue aims to bring together a small group of junior and senior researchers who share both a common interest for collective remembering and connected topics, as well as a set of theoretical assumptions about the social and cultural nature of human activity and the future-oriented nature of constructing meaning about self and world. Its primary aim is to open up a space for discussion between cultural psychologists interested in how discourses on history are used and produced and for their theoretical and practical consequences.