MEMORYLANDS Heritage and identity in Europe today Sharon Macdonald I) Routledge jjj^^ Taylor & Rands Croup LONDON AND NEW YORK First published 2013 by Routledge 2 Park Square, Milton Park, Abingdon, Oxon OX14 4RN Simultanci msly published in the USA and Canada by Roijtkdge 711 Third Avenue, New York, NY 10017 Routledge is an imprint of the Taylor & Francis Group, an informa business © 2013 Sharon Macdonald Tin- right of Sharon Macdonald to be identified as author of this work has been issevted by her in accordance with sections 77 and 78 nľ the Copyright. Designs and Patents Act \ WK Ml rights reserved. No part of this book may be reprinted or reproduced or utilised in any form or hy any electronic, mechanical, or other means, now known or hereafter invented, including phot. n.Aipviiui .sud recording, or in any information storage or retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publishers. Trademark notieť: Product or corporate names may be trademarks or registered trademarks, and are used only for identification and explanation without intent to infringe. Bntish Library Cataloguing in Publication Data Acaialoguc record tor this book is available from the British Library Library efCmigrtst t 'atalqgtng in PubHtttaoit Data A catalog record for this book has heen requested ISBN: 97H-0-415-45333-2 (hbk) ISBN: 978-0-4] 5-15.134-9 (pbk) ISBN: 97K-0-203-55333-6 (ebkj Typeset in Bembo by HWA Text and Data Management, London CONTENTS List of figures viii Acknowledgements x Prologue xii 1 The European memory complex: introduction 1 2 Making histories: Europe, traditions and other present pasts 27 3 Telling the past: the multitemporal challenge 52 4 Feeling the past: embodiment, place and nostalgia 79 5 Selling the past: commodification, authenticity and heritage 109 6 Musealisation: everyday life, temporality and old things 137 7 Transcultural heritage: reconfiguring identities and the public sphere 162 8 Cosmopolitan memory: Holocaust commemoration and national identity 188 9 The future of memory-and forgetting-in Europe 216 Notes 236 References 254 Index 289 xiv Prologue history, into being part of the collective, and then expelled and turned into an onlooker rather than participant. Or perhaps - reflecting upon her blurred reflection and that of those around her in the shiny wall of the monument —she becomes a participant in a new form of memory practice, gazing not just onto the past but onto her own act of commemoration. Then there is the question of place. The location of the monument - in Felvoiiul:isi Square - is undoubtedly historically resonant. It was here that a statue of Stalin, on an enormous pedestal, was toppled in the uprising on 23 October 1956, leaving only his boots still standing. (In an interesting translocation, a replica of those boots is now displayed in that curious meta-inonumeut to the end of Socialism, the Budapest Statue Park of Communist Sculpture.) in addition, the Square also housed a statue of Lenin and a giant cross. Yet, Gyorgy argues, there is no longer any trace of these, so rendering them 'inaccessible to all those who only have a vague notion of the events or not even that' (2008: 130)- Rather than acting Willi what he calls 'the spirit of place' to enhance traces that could act as spurs to recollection, the monument takes an abstract and predominantly 'literary narrative' form that fails to engage with its own location and activate public memory in a more emplaced and meaningful fashion. Yet. despite these "failures', this new, abstract monument has become a site tor that widespread, popular - traditional but also increasing- memorial practice of laying flowers. As we see in the cover image, these more fleeting and small-scale forms of remembrance are abundant. They are instances of numerous, and diverse, commemorative practices and contemporary marking of the past that also populate Europe's memorylands. 1 THE EUROPEAN MEMORY COMPLEX Introduction The imperative of our epoch is ... to keep everything, to preserve every indicator of memory. Pierre Nora1 Memory has become a major preoccupation - in Europe and beyond - in the twentieth century and into the twenty-first. Long memories have been implicated in justifications for conflicts and calls for apologies for past wrongs. Alongside widespread public agonising over 'cultural amnesia' - fears that we are losing our foothold in the past, that 'eye-witnesses' of key events are disappearing, and that inter-generational memory transition is on the wane - there has been a corresponding efflorescence of public (and much private) memory work. Europe has become a memoryland - obsessed with the disappearance of collective memory and its preservation. Europe's land- and city-scapes have filled up with the products of collective memory work - heritage sites, memorials, museums, plaques and art installations designed to remind us of histories that might otherwise be lost. More and more people live or work in or visit sites of memory; and increasing numbers are engaged in quests to save or recuperate fading or near-forgotten pasts. Local history societies, re-enactment groups and volunteer-run heritage projects flourish. Books of reminiscences and sepia photos of localities and community cram the shelves of libraries and bookstores. So too, do books about our fixation with remembering and the past. This book is, inevitably, an addition to the memory mountain; or, more specifically, to that part of it concerned with trying to understand the memory preoccupation itself. Its particular contribution is anthropological, and more specifically still it provides a perspective from anthropological research on 2 The European memory complex Europe. Central to an anthropological perspective is the attempt to understand assumptions made by people when they organise their worlds in the ways that they do. What is taken tor granted when people feel compelled to act in certain ways? What assumptions inform senses ol what is important? How are feelings bound up with particular as well as with more shared experiences? Arc there alternative ways of seeing, doing and feeling - perhaps to be found among peoples in other parts of the world or in the less examined parts of Europe itself - that can unsettle our assumption that things must be done or felt in the ways that are more widespread or habitual? Tins book was written out of a conviction that anthropological research on Europe contains much that can probe and unsettle ways in which memory, and especially the ongoing memory and heritage boom, are typically addressed and theorised. In part this stemmed from realising that my own research on a variety of topics in various parts of Europe threw up unexpected similarities or convergences. Investigating these further was another spur to write this book. So too was a degree of frustration that although there is so much excellent ethnographic research done on Europe, studies arc less often brought together and synthesised than they might be - and I include my own here. As such, anthropological research often contributes less to wider debates than it could -or, in my view, should. In part, this is probably due to anthropologists' emphasis on the importance of context and the local, and insistence on recognising complexity, which makes us more wary of the kinds of generalisations that other disciplines are more ready to make. While this is in itself admirable, it can sometimes mean that ethnographers do not realise some of the broader implications of their work or what it shares with that of others. It also makes it hard lor those from other disciplines to relate ethnographic research to their own; and this is compounded by the fact that ethnographic texts often require more careful and time-consuming reading. How to recognise the complexities and specificities that ethnographic research typically highlights and at the same time to identify broader patterns is the challenge. This book is the result of daring to take up this gauntlet. In doing so. then, it attempts to meet two aspirations that might be seen as contradictory or at least as in tension - but that I regard as crucial to our improved understanding of Europe as a memoryland - or set of memorylands. The indeterminacy of the singular or plural here is indicative of what is at issue. On the one hand, my aim in this book is to identify patterns in ways of approaching and experiencing the past that are widely shared across Europe. My argument is that there is a distinctive - though not exclusive or all-encompassing - complex of ways of doing and experiencing the past within Europe. Tliis is not some kind of static template - a cultural blueprint or the like. Rather, it is a repertoire of (sometimes contradictor)') tendencies and developments. The European menioryland. I contend, i- characterised rhoir< l-v Certain >-\,.n.yL, tinderwa). and also by particular tensions and ambivalences, than by enduring memorial forms. This is not to say that there are no relatively longstanding patterns within The European memory complex 3 Europe - there are. But they are not necessarily die most significant in the lives 0f European peoples, Rather than give them analytical priority just on account 0f their ancestry and age, my concern is to explore how they play out in relation t() other parts ol the memory complex. On the other hand, I seek to show that there are also significant variations vvithin Europe. This diversity is not only of the kind that is so often used as part of depictions of European plurality. In other words, it is not just about the 'multicultural colour' or local flavours' provided by, say, heritage foodstuffs or different forms that memorial practices might take. It also concerns less evident but potentially ramifying matters such as whether significance is attached to collective remembering at all. whether longer or shorter time periods 3ie activated in local commemorative life or how personal and collective memories are brought together. This diversity is why the plural 'memorylands' is appropriate. Some of this diversity exists at fairly micro, localised - perhaps village or street -- levels; but in other cases it carves up Europe along lines relating to particular histories, such as certain patterns of nostalgia in post-Socialist countries or attempts to devise 'transcultural heritage' in cities which have experienced post-colonial immigration - though even here there are more localised variations. Recognising diversity is important for a number of reasons, not least for allowing the empirical to inform analytical understanding. Variations can act as a foil to help to highlight more common practices and assumptions, and can irritate our theorising to lead it in new. less predictable, directions. Alternatives may be brought to light when they come into conflict with majority patterns or when misunderstandings rooted in difference ensue; and, as such, recognising them - and finding better means of doing so - can also provide a basis for improved understanding of conflicts and misunderstandings. Moreover, awareness of 'cultural alternatives' can not only unsettle assumptions but can also open up new possibilities by highlighting other routes - other ways of doing memory, heritage and identity - that we might choose to take. The memory phenomenon The more specific focus of this book is what has variously been called 'memory fever', 'memory mania', an 'obsession with memory', 'the memory craze', a 'remembrance epidemic', 'commemorative fever', 'the memory crisis', 'the memory industry', 'the memory boom', and a time of 'archive fever' and 'commemorative excess'.2 Aspects of it have also been characterised as a 'heritage industry', 'heritage craze' or 'heritage crusade'.3 These terms have been coined to characterise an increase in public attention to the past, especially its commemoration and preservation. While prefigured earlier in various ways, this increase is usually dated as gathering pace from the 1970s and escalating further towards the end of the twentieth century and into the twenty-first.4 It includes phenomena such as those sketched in the first paragraph of this book above, and ..... -ww^mi* niaiiuiy 1 ' ' i i 11 M * ' ' others including the creation of new civic rituals to commemorate (sometimes long-) past events, arguments over which histories should lie aired in the public sphere and how. popular genealogy, the creation of heritage products, such as traditional foods and the broadcasting nf numerous different television programmes about the past ranging from series about archaeology, with names such as Tinif Taint, to historical dramas. One notable dimension of this historical turn is that place distinctiveness increasingly seems to be marked by public reference to the past, and -sometimes and seemingly more often - to multiple pasts. Places are publicly imbued with time-depth through reference to historical narratives, and their historical content legitimated through institutions such as exhibitions, local history books and memorial plaques. This might be described as 'historical themiug' - representing places through sets of public memories in order to configure what are assumed will be identifiably individuated 'lands'. Ironically, rather than differentiating, this theming risks creating an apparent sameness of place - a set of familiar contours shaping a continuous land even as we cross boundaries — through its promulgation of similar strategies or techniques of historical marking. 'Memoryland' might easily be the name of a theme-park, or section of one; and 'place marketing' and 'image-management' are certainly involved in producing historicised village-, town- and cityscapes across Europe. But this is not the whole story and we need to probe further in order ro understand why this form of thematisation occurs at all, and in order to perceive the various motives for both pursuing and challenging it. We also need to probe further if we are to perceive differences within the various ways of performing history and memory, as well as to hear the numerous voices that can be involved, and thus acknowledge the need to speak of 'memorylands' in the plural. Many of the terms that have been coined to characterise the increased public attention to the past draw on the language of pathology ("mania', 'epidemic', 'fever', obsession', 'craze') or employ other terms that carry negative connotations ('crusade', 'industry7'). This is expressive of an anxious perspective that many commentators adopt; and it is further entrenched through dualisms that pit the apparently disturbing developments against what is regarded as an organic or authentic relationship with the past - sometimes described as 'tradition', or 'social memory' - which, furthermore, is widely believed to be under threat. Here. I seek neither to straightforwardly accept nor dismiss this perspective. It is, in my view, itself thoroughly and constitutively part of that which it seeks to describe. In other words, the concern expressed about the 'memory mania' and its correlated preoccupation with questions of authenticity and loss are part of the ways in which the past is 'done' in Europe today. My choice of the term 'memory phenomenon' (cf. Kansteiner 2002: 183), then, is intended as less affectively loaded and also as a means of encompassing not only the expansion of public preoccupation with the past but also popular and academic debates and concerns about it. The European memory complex 5 fhe memory complex jf the memory phenomenon is the notable increase in attention to the past - and attention to that attention - that has been underway since the second half of the twentieth century, the memory complex is the wider whole of which it is part. y^Jthough I use the term memory complex, it should be seen as shorthand for something like 'the memory-heritage-identity complex' for these are all tightly interwoven. In choosing to use the term 'complex' I have been influenced by its meanings in a number of disciplines, as well as its etymology and allusion to complexity theory. Its general meaning is of an entity 'consisting of parts united or combined' (Oxford Etymological Dictionary). Its etymology also carries connotations that are apposite for my use here. Derived from the Latin cotnplextis, past participle of complectere, meaning 'encompass, embrace, comprehend, comprise', it is also 'sometimes analysed as ... woven' (Concise Oxford English Dictionary). A complex, in the sense that I want to develop it here, comprises different elements, woven more or less loosely together. It also has a propulsion towards further encompassment partly through offering what becomes an increasingly taken-for-granted form of comprehending and experiencing. The ways in which the term 'complex' is used in various disciplines can help, by analogy, to explain this further. A chemical complex is a substance that is 'formed by a combination of compounds' (COED); 'the formation of complexes', says the Encyclopaedia Britannica, 'has a strong effect on the behaviour of solutions'.-"' In Mathematics, complex numbers are made up of real and imaginary parts, the latter being used to help solve mathematical problems that cannot be solved with real numbers alone; and in Linguistics a complex sentence is one including subordinate clauses. What I want to draw out from these is the idea of the complex as consisting of non-exhaustive patterned combinations and relationships; and of complexes themselves gaining autonomous meanings, effects and possibilities for 'going on'. I do not, however, want to adopt the popular psychological connotation of a 'complex' as being a pathological psychic-emotional condition, though in Carl Jung's introduction of the term into psychology, he did not regard a complex as necessarily negative (Jung 1971/1921). His understanding of a complex as a meshing of parts and tendencies that add up to some pattern to which we might put a name, and that we can identify with particular effects, does capture the sense of complex that I am striving for here. In addition, Jung's emphasis on the mix of the cognitive, affective and physical, and his argument about the relevance of history and myth, resonates with what I regard as necessary to include in an understanding of the memory complex, though I do not position my perspective within, or draw on other aspects of, his wider theorising. Assemblage and complexity My use of the notion of 'complex' is similar to that of 'assemblage' as it has come to be used in recent years in some social and cultural theorising.6 Both 6 The European memory complex designate some kind of 'entity' made up of constituent inter-related parts that then has effects (assemblage theory often refers to 'potentials' or 'capacities') of its own. As with assemblage, I also want to stress that a complex is not an abstraction, though it may contain abstractions. Rather, it is made up, variously, of constituent practices, affects and materialisations. The memory complex can be seen, therefore, as an assemblage of practices, affects and physical things, which includes such parts as memorial services, nostalgia and historical artefacts. Moreover, assemblage theory insists that we be wary of taking particular objects or categories for granted and that to do this we should investigate specific instances - so, for example, we should examine particular shops and markets rather than simply 'the market', or particular museums and heritage sites rather than 'heritage' as a generalised category. By doing so, we can recognise the potential variety of forms that a wider term might designate. In addition, we can apprehend the particular mix of human and non-human, conceptual and physical, elements that are involved in constituting a particular assemblage/ complex; and we can also identify the processes that contribute to, say, making certain notions or ways of doing things durable or making them capable of extending beyond their locality of origin. This characterisation fits the approach of this book well, in that it gathers its material from specific instances and gives attention to a wide range of elements, including the materialisation of memory in heritage. Little of the research that I report here, however, has been conceived explicitly within an assemblage perspective. The studies on which I draw are nevertheless often amenable to consideration in relation to assemblage ideas because, as Bruno Latour, one of the architects of an assemblage approach, acknowledges, anthropological research is frequently conducted with just such an emphasis on looking at what actually goes on and interrogating what is taken-for-granted, and thus refrains as far as possible from imputing 'external' (or he says, 'magical') categories (2005: 68). Indeed, this is why much anthropological theorising proceeds by questioning existing theoretical positions by unsettling their assumptions through in-depth ethnographic examples. This methodological prudence of assemblage and much anthropological theorising extends also to its imputations of agency and causality. Again, there is an emphasis on empirical investigation coupled with a rejection of assumptions of linear causality or singular agents: instead, the stress is on the complex and particular coming together of a mix of agents (human and non-human), and on unpredictable - though not unpatterned and random - effects. The point that complexity should not be seen as random or chaotic is important and is one reason for the fact that assemblage theory and complexity theory (which is referenced to many of the same authors and shares many of the same ideas)7 have produced an extensive vocabulary ot terms to try to identify and characterise processes and patterns. The natural sciences have provided particular inspiration here, complexity and assemblage theorising variously employing terms such as 'feedback', 'circulation', 'density', 'principles J,. The European memory complex 7 0f association', 'attractors; 'emergent properties' and the like. While these can be thought-provoking and illuminating in specific analyses - and I employ some [iclow - I do hot seek to use them in any extensive way here. This is primarily because the production ot these more general characterisations and distinctions js not n ly ambition. Rather, lam interested in exploring the specific constellation of the memory phenomenon in Europe and the memory complex of which it is part. This requires, in my view, attention also to meso-level theorising, which can often illuminate particular formations and processes better than can a jump straight to broad ontological claims. In addition, my analysis gives more emphasis to human meaning-making, linguistic connotations and the like than is typically given the case in assemblage theory, though it docs not necessarily rule these out.8 In the chapters that follow, then, I only occasionally draw directly on the language of assemblage. This includes using the term 'assemblage' for specific constellations within the peculiar agglomeration of elements concerned with memory that is the overall focus of my investigation, and that I dub the memory complex. Nevertheless, there are other ways in which much of the research discussed here resonates with assemblage theory, including an emphasis on materiality, as discussed further below. Methodology Although I give particular attention to research carried out by anthropologists, I put this into dialogue with theorising from many disciplines and I do not exclude empirical work carried out within other disciplinary approaches where it bears upon the discussion at hand. This is especially so in Chapter 3, which is concerned with method and includes discussion of the relationship between anthropological and historical research. Personally, I am inclined towards methodological pluralism and believe that bringing together research conducted within different disciplinary approaches can be analytically powerful, though it needs careful coordination and attention to methodological issues. Here, however, I particularly want to show what anthropological approaches can contribute to European memory debates and so for the most part my case studies are of research conducted by anthropologists of Europe. Doing so will, I hope, also be of value for future multi-disciplinary research. My use of the term 'anthropology' needs some clarification here as not all of those who I discuss as 'anthropologists' would necessarily use this term themselves. Across Europe, as well as beyond it, there is some inconsistency in the ways in which 'anthropology' and related terms, such as 'ethnology' and 'ethnography', are used. Here, I do not include biological or physical anthropology; rather, my compass is what in the British tradition is usually called social anthropology and in North America is referred to as cultural anthropology. Although non-European societies were the main focus of these disciplines historically, this is no longer so. This is also the case in many but not all continental European traditions, in which there is often a distinction made 8 The European memory complex between 'anthropology' as referring to work, outside Europe and ethnology to refer to that undertaken within, or sometimes more specifically still, the home nation-state. In Germany, for example, a distinction is institutionalised between Völkerkunde, focusing on peoples outside Europe, and Volkskunde, looking at those within. Today the names have sometimes changed, with Sozial Anthropologie sometimes being used in place of Völkerkunde, and Ethnologie, or sometimes more specifically, 'European Ethnology' {Europäische Ethnologie), on research within Europe, though there is increasing overlap, represented in a greater use of the term 'cultural anthropology'.9 As in many other continental European countries, German ethnology had and often still has a strong overlap with folklore, sometimes being indistinguishable from it. In using the term 'anthropology', then, I do so in catholic fashion, to include what might elsewhere be called 'ethnology' or equivalents in various languages. This does not mean, however, that I cover all of the various forms of'anthropology' being conducted within Europe, and for the most part I do not include the more folkloric work. Rather, I make my arguments through selected examples of research that, while it may go under various labels, mostly adopts approaches consonant with those I outline in the rest of this section. The research included here puts an emphasis on qualitative methods conducted within a Verstehen approach that aims to grasp participants' perspectives and experiences - an approach that goes beyond recording of voices and cultural collecting, typical of folklore .is classically conceived.1" It generally involves a Commitment to considering social and cultural phenomena as 'total' or'totalities' in a sense used by one of the founders of French ethnology. Marcel Mauss (1872-1950)." Although there is debate about his use of this term, one of the main ways in which he used it was to emphasise how what might initially appear as different aspects ot social life or human experience might be interrelated. So. a social phenomenon - such as the gift or sacrifice - might cut across categories such as the economy or religion, and thus could not be properly understood if their analysis was restricted to these. Ethnology was valuable in his view precisely because it allowed for attention to the concrete and complexity that he saw as lacking in the reductionisin and abstraction of the new discipline of sociology being propounded by Dürkheim, his uncle (I lan 2007). Significantly, his view of the importance of'totality' in this sense was informed by his study of diverse cultures, predominantly non-European, which also made him aware of the limitations of analysis that restricted itself to Western categories, as well as of the challenge to dominant assumptions that such studies could provide. Although Mauss' own research was conducted second-hand, through examining studies undertaken by others, other anthropologists have developed methods that allow for an ethnological grasping of 'totality' and potentially also for challenging of analytical categories. These methods are usually called ethnographic and typically involve some kind of in-depth and fairly small-scale study, often over a lengthy time period. Although participant-observation is sometimes regarded as synonymous with The European memory complex 9 Ethnography, anthropologists may employ a wide range of specific methods, such ,,s oral histories, semi-structured interviews, spatial mapping, photography, film-rriaking and other visual and sensory methodologies, as well as textual analysis, „d sometimes also surveys (e.g. of households). Rather than the application |f.a particular methodological toolkit, what characterises the anthropological j^proaeh is a commitment to trying to see and experience life-worlds from the point of view of those who live them and within the context of which they are jjjpt. This goes beyond simply recording 'native voices' but entails a rigorous commitment to trying to grasp the patterns of relations of which utterances, practices, feelings and so forth, are part; and what they may be linked with. This frequently involves or leads to retlexivity about categories of analysis and forms of knowledge production - including the role of scholarship itself The emphasis on the small-scale deserves note here too. This allows for attention to detail that can potentially disrupt more generalising accounts. In addition, it may also open up the opportunity to hear 'quiet voices' or see perspectives or recognise feelings that are easily overlooked, either because they are held by people with little access to forms of expression that reach a wide public or because the forms that the expression takes are not usually recognised by the academy. A smaller scale of research also allows for direct interaction by the researcher, an approach in which their person and own history may become part of the study, as we will see in some examples below. Furthermore, a smaller scale can make it easier to see the connections between aspects of life or the multi-dimensionality of practices in a way consonant with Mauss' notion of totality. This does not mean, however, that research need only look at 'small' topics or for connections between what has been directly examined within the specific empirical study. Here, the notion of 'totality' potentially causes problems if it is understood as indicating a bounded self-integrated system, as Durkheim theorised in his functional understanding of 'society'. While many anthropological studies up until about the 1960s, and in some cases since, have been undertaken in a functionalist framework, which in European anthropological research often meant that the village was taken as the functioning unit and 'natural' object of study, since then researchers have increasingly rejected this model and sought ways of exploring connect ions at ross and beyond boundaries, and finding ways to bring insights from their micro-perspectives to 'speak out'.11 To do so they have often developed new approaches, as we will see in later chapters, while still retaining a commitment to concrete study of specific worlds, events or phenomena. As Regina Bendix argues in a discussion of the distinctive perspective offered by cultural anthropology on the 'big' topic of 'global heritage', for example, 'only such micro approaches, in fact, can properly reveal the local specillcity of a global heritage regime' (2009: 255). Only such approaches can show what notions such as 'global heritage regime" might mean and how they might work in practice. The global is, after all, inevitably imagined and realised in particular, local, worlds - 'worlds' which might equally be UNESCO meetings or remote villages.14 10 The European memory complex The European memory complex 11 The problem with memory Although I have so far cast the topic of this book in terms of memory -memory-lands, the memory phenomenon and the memory complex - I want in this section to add some reservations, warnings and clarifications about its use. I then provide a brief introduction to some of the many classifications of types of memory and remembering that scholars have employed, and also look at some other possible ways of framing the analysis. A major problem with memory as a category of analysis is its very ubiquity and capaciousness, ^ which is itself part of the memory phenomenon that this book explores. The fact that 'memory' can refer to a mental function or faculty (the act of remembering or ability to do so), and also to content (what is remembered) renders it widely applicable. This partly accounts for why it is used in numerous disciplines and areas of popular culture, ranging from concerns over false-memory syndrome to the technical capacity of digital storage, from neurological studies of everyday mnemonic capabilities to social investigation of collective remembering. While this book mainly addresses the last of these, it is important to note thai these different concerns are not disconnected but may feed into, shape and sustain one another. Loss of cultural memory, for example, may be likened to Alzheimer's; forms of organising digital storage may be configured through cultural forms such as the filing cabinet (documents, files). The analogy between individual or personal recollection and social or cultural is pervasive and informs understanding of both - and, as such, needs itself to be given analytical attention. Making such analogies is not itself new. individual memory almost always being conceptualised through cultural forms. In medieval Europe, for example, memory was often conceptualised as parchment, and, thus, as a medium capable of bearing imprints of experience or as a hive of bees or forest or - when properly trained -a library, thesaurus or storage room."' Prevalent metaphors may change - today computers are more likely analogies than parchment - and this plays into how memory is understood, undertaken and even researched.17 Some analogies, for example, more readily support attempts to train the memory, or they regard it as springing surprises as cobwebs are swept from its dark recesses or as environmental stimuli spark involuntary firing of neural connections. Not only does the cultural provide metaphors for individual memory, however, there is also, according to Pierre Nora, 'an exact chronological coincidence' between a 'preoccupation with the individual psychology of remembering' and the rise of concern about the loss of social memory (I W>: 15). He dates this to the end of the nineteenth century, and associates it especially with 'the disintegration of the rural world' (1989: 15). What we see with the vanishing of the pre-modern, he writes, is that 'memory appeared ... at the core of psychological personality, with Freud; at the heart of literary autobiography, with Proust' (1989: 15). 'We owe to Freud and to Proust', he adds, 'those two intimate and yet universal sites of memory, the primal scene and the celebrated petite tnadeleine' (1989: 15). Since then, he argues, preoccupation with memory has only increased, escalating in the twentieth-century modem proliferation of what he calls liaixdc .Mrtioirt - 'sites of memory' - and further still in what he sees as a late twentieth-century postmodern acceleration. The traffic between theories of individual and of collective'' remembering has likewise burgeoned, with psychological ideas designed to understand individual memory increasingly being applied to collective or social memory. Individual and collective Psychological and psychoanalytic concepts devised for individual memory that have been used in relation to collective or social memory, include 'trauma', 'the unconscious', 'repression', 'flash-bulb memories', 'semantic memory' and 'episodic remembering'. In popular accounts this use is generally seamless, with little apparent consideration of whether such terms might be appropriate, and this is sometimes the case too in academic work, though there is also careful and illuminating use (as we will see in subsequent chapters). The potential problem, however, is that the social and individual become conflated and it is assumed that collectives work in the same way that individual psychology is theorised as doing, e.g. that nations have an unconscious and that they may suffer psychological trauma from the effects of repressing memories.18 Used loosely, such notions naturalise processes and leave exploration of what might actually be going on untouched. Furthermore, the individualised psychological model treats 'memory [as] a distinct phenomenon that can be studied in relative isolation from other mental functions' (Wertsch 2009: 122). Memory thus becomes understood as involving various relatively autonomous known processes rather than through its specific workings and possible connections of a Maussian 'total' kind. As Michael Lambekargues, this also takes for granted a model of autonomous individuals as vessels of memory. Drawing on Mauss' notion of personnage -a role-related and intersubjectively constituted notion of personhood - and his ethnographic research on spirit possession in Madagascar to highlight alternatives to this model, he argues that in 'Western discourse' memory has been made a 'romanticized object' (2003: 210). By the latter - a term that he borrows from Hannah Arendt - he means a form of naturalisation, that turns a supposed quality ('Jewishness' is her example) into a 'thing', then taken for granted as, variously, explanation, property of subjects and object of investigation. This then, in turn, supports the assumption of autonomous individuals. As he notes, similar processes occur at collective level, the elision between individual and collective memory reinforcing an individuation of collectives through attribution of shared memory. In discussions of personal identity, memory is almost always a key theme, often being regarded as a kind of glue, holding identity together over time. As such, memory - as a body of recollection - can itself become an indicator of identity. This is a notion that works powerfully m the social domain and informs the centrality of memory 12 The European memory complex and heritage debates in the politics of recognition and identity. Implicated here too is the conceptualisation of memory as a possession - as something that we 'have' rather than 'do' (Lambek 1996); and this is reflected in the persistence of metaphors of memory as a treasure house, museum or archive. This in turn helps substantiate the notion of identities as individuated and 'possessive', a model that political theorist C.B. MacPherson (1962) argues had become an assumption amongst seventeenth-century English liberals and is 'not abandoned yet' (1962: 4). He describes this 'possessive individualism' as entailing a 'conception of the individual as essentially the proprietor of his own person or capacities ... as an owner of himself' (1962: 3). This was notably and influentially articulated by John Locke, in his 'forensic' conception of'the person', in which primacy was given to memory - 'consciousness of the past' -as an indicator of personal identity.19 This same conception infuses that of the nation-state, which flowered within Western Europe in the eighteenth century and has spread across much of the world since.20 Nations are thus conceptualised as possessive individuals, with heritage acting as the materialised rendition of their memory as property. In a self-supporting reverse move, 'having' -possessing - a distinctive heritage, memory and culture helps to instantiate and substantiate the nation (or other collective) 'as a living individual' (Handler 1988: 41). These cultural assumptions are interrelated and mutually reinforcing parts in Europe's memory complex.21 None of this means avoiding examining the relationship between individual and collective remembering. It is, rather, a call for attention to the movement and implications of models and terms, including those used in analysis. In order to avoid some of the problems with 'memory', Jay Winter and Emmanuel Sivan (1999; see also Winter 2009) suggest employing the term 'remembrance' as a means of putting emphasis onto processes and practices of remembering and to avoid reifying 'memory' as an object. Framing research as 'remembrance', they contend, allows for investigation of the articulation of individual and collective remembering, rather than assuming a 'collective' memory that is necessarily shared by individuals. Anthropological approaches are especially well suited to accomplishing this, they argue, as they give attention to the differential roles and agency of different participants as well as to cultural forms (e.g. rituals or monuments) of remembrance. Theirs is a thoughtful proposition that works well for the explicit forms of commemoration with which they are concerned. It does not, however, capture the full range of practices and processes that are involved in the memory phenomenon and memory complex. While these all entail reference to the past in some form, they are not necessarily forms of remembrance in the sense of either commemorating or actively remembering a particular past. Indeed, some engagements with 'the past' may entail very little 'remembering' or even memory content at all. This is one reason why I have suggested 'past presencing' as a possibly preferable alternative means of framing investigation (Macdonald 2012). Not only does this allow for consideration of a broader range The European memory complex 13 0{ phenomena, without assuming ehher intentional recollection, or pre-given [Ocesses or known actors, it also avoids some of the problematic distinctions gf which memory is part-especially that between history and memory. I return to it below, after consideration of various other distinctions and terms. 1 should note, however, that despite the shortcomings of'memory', I continue to use it in this book because the phenomenon with which I am concerned is usually framed in this way, as is so much relevant debate. Memory and history In popular and also academic discourse, especially that of historians, memory is often defined through a distinction with history.22 Like 'memory', the English word 'history' is ambiguous, referring both to the past - what happened - as well as to accounts of that past and study of it. This ambiguity supports a popular vision of historical scholarship as an objective enterprise of establishing the facts of what happened; and also of the past as a body of factual evidence. Memory, when opposed to this vision of history, is regarded as subjective and fallible, based on individual recollections rather than proper evidence verified through expert institutional practices and persons. While this opposition is prevalent in Europe today, it is increasingly - as part of the memory phenomenon - accompanied, and sometimes supplanted, by a reversed evaluation. This sees established history become suspect as the product of elites, who are said to mystify their interests under the misleading banner of value-free facts. Memory, meanwhile, is elevated to a status of greater 'honesty', and seen as relatively unmediated and transparent in its very subjectivity.23 Pierre Nora's classic work, which operates at one level as an insightful discussion of the memory phenomenon, has also been a significant player in a reversed evaluation - and moralisation - of history and memory. He writes, for example, of the difference between real memory - social and unviolated ... and history, which is how our hopelessly forgetful modern societies, propelled by change, organize the past ... Memory is life... History, on the other hand, is the reconstruction, always problematic and incomplete, of what is no longer. (1989: 8) Memory here is romanticised as an organic part of life, and therefore 'real', and history vilified as a sterile and doomed attempt to capture a past that has been lost. This is part of a relentless discourse that seeks to identify and even rescue authentic forms of life, and that is more usefully seen as part of the memory phenomenon that he discusses rather than analysis of it. Drawing and maintaining a clear-cut distinction between history and memory can cause as many analytical problems as it solves, as many commentators have 14 The European memory complex pointed out.24 In particular, it tends to direct attention to questions of veracity ■ which provides the truer account of the past? While this is a legitimate question, it cannot be answered in general terms and requires clarification of what is meant by 'truth' (e.g. recounted with personal integrity, accuracy with relation to other known facts).23 Moreover, in research practice, the line between history and memory may be blurred. For example, an historical account might draw on individual reminiscences, and remembered events may find ample substantiation in other contemporary sources - or even be recalled with reference to them (e.g. discussion of individual experience of war following a television documentary or getting out the official album of the Queen's coronation during individual reminiscence). The more important issue is the specific contexts, motives and frameworks of production of the various accounts and their forms of veracity. Also significant from an anthropological perspective - as we will see in later chapters - is how the terms themselves are variously defined and deployed in their use, and the evaluations that they are given. Memory terminologies and alternatives Because of the looseness of terms such as 'memory' and 'history', there has been a proliferation of related terms created either to better frame the field of study or to make distinctions between kinds of processes or practices. It is not my intention to discuss this in detail but I offer a brief commentary here on some of the terms most commonly in use, and others that I regard as particularly helpful. Others are introduced as they arise in specific discussions later in the book. The European memory complex 15 |n 111 v own use here 1 likewise use 'social memory' and 'collective memory' to refer CO accounts or representations of the past that make some kind of claim to being shared rather than assuming that 'collective' means necessarily held by all- Another attractive alternative, however, is James E. Young's 'collected memory' (1993), employed in Ins study of memorials in order to theorise these SS sites around which diverse nicm&nes may accumulate. Rather than directing attention to what is shared by participants in memory practices, a collected memory approach leaves open the question of whether those engaging in a practice necessarily attribute it with the same meanings. 'Social memory' and 'cultural memory' are sometimes deployed interchangeably. It is useful for analysis, however, to use 'cultural memory' more specifically to indicate memory whose primary form of transmission is through cultural media, such as texts, film and television, and museums and exhibitions, rather than through direct person-to-person transmission. Although the dividing line may blur here too - visiting a museum, for example, is also a social practice involving person-to-person contact - it is helpful in that it directs analytical concern to questions of how memory is mediated and the implications of this for matters such as its durability over time or capacity to 'travel' across space. Materialised into cultural forms, the resources for cultural memory may remain even when direct transmission of social memory - or what Jan Assmann (2008) calls 'communicative memory' - no longer occurs. In some research the term 'social memory' is reserved for this direct communicative memory but more usually it includes both communicative and cultural memory as defined here, and this is the sense in which it is used in this book. Collective, social, cultural... memory The terms 'collective memory' and 'social memory' are used to differentiate from personal or individual memory and to refer instead to memories that are held by social groups and/or forms of remembering that are held in some kind of common. They are usually referenced to French sociologist Maurice Halbwachs (1877-1945), whose work in this field was posthumously published as La Memoire Collective (1950).2(> His concern was to emphasise the importance of social groups in creating frameworks for remembering - for example, the role of the family in transmitting memory - and also the significance of shared memory for creating senses of collective solidarity. Halbwachs has been criticised for taking for granted the existence of stable social entities as the producers of memory, and for overstating the determining role of the collective memory so produced for individual remembering.27 Most of those using the terms subsequently, however, do not adopt Halbwachs' position wholesale; and much productive work has been undertaken under these rubrics on questions such as how creating shared memories might be part of creating social entities (e.g. the nation), rather than the other way around, or investigating the various positions that individuals might adopt in relation to collective commemoration. Historical consciousness and past presencing In order to avoid some of the problems of the history/memory distinction and to put emphasis firmly onto questions of how the past is conceptualised and represented, some researchers choose to frame their investigation in terms of 'historical consciousness', as we will see in later chapters. This draws attention to questions about matters such as the 'narrative structures' or 'temporal orientations' through which the past is apprehended.28 Although work of this kind does not always assume that people will be aware of the forms that their historical thinking takes, the term 'historical consciousness' can be confusing in that it implies active awareness. Moreover, this is how it is used by some theorists. In Gadamer's classical discussion, for example, he is concerned to specify the development of a reflexive - historically conscious - relationship to history.M Rather differently, it is also often used in discussions of history education, sometimes in laments over the lack of historical knowledge ('historical awareness') of particular social groups (see Chapter 2). Another shortcoming of the term - and of most though not all research undertaken under its rubric -is that it directs attention to cognitive process rather than to more embodied modes of engaging with the past. io me turopean memory complex In suggesting 'past presencing' as ,i w.i\ i