Remembering and Forgetting: Narrative as Cultural Memory

This paper has two objectives: one is to explore the dialectics of remembering and forgetting, an issue traditionally neglected in psychological memory research; the other is to question the widespread dichotomy of individual and social memory. To do so, a cultural-historical perspective is outlined that allows us to conceive of individual memory as an inextricable part of an overarching cultural discourse, the discourse of cultural memory. In this discourse, narrative practices are of central importance because they combine various cultural symbol systems, integrating them within one symbolic space. In order to explain and illustrate this conception of narrative, a historical memorial and work of art is examined. Three narrative orders of this artwork are distinguished—the linguistic, semiotic and performative or discursive—and discussed as particular forms of meaning construction. Together, they constitute a mnemonic system, a symbolic space of remembering and forgetting in which the time orders of past and present are continuously recombined.