Constance de Saint-Laurent

Collective memory and social sciences in the post-truth era:

The past has never been as relevant for the present as it is in today’s Post-truth world. Not just because many of our political leaders are promising to bring us back to a past that never existed – the Great America of Trump, the Lost Empire of Farage or the French Resistance of Le Pen – but because it seems more and more likely that they are bringing us back to the past as it actually happened – a past where populism successfully brought nationalist leaders to power. In this context, it seems particularly crucial to understand how we relate to our history, how we learn from it and the consequences it may have for the world we live in. These are the questions this special issue explores by adopting a cultural psychological perspective on collective memory – the lay representations of history – and proposing both theoretical and empirical contributions. In this editorial, we will try to first make the case for the political and social importance of collective memory. Second, we will argue why theoretical discussions – not just empirical research – are necessary to tackle these issues. Third, we will discuss the role we believe, cultural psychology should play in the current context and the dangers of turning it into a field disconnected from social and political realities. Finally, we will present the contents of this issue and how we hope it tackles some of the problems raised in this editorial.

Personal trajectories, collective memories: Remembering and the life-course

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 peoples 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.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 peoples 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 rel...

Memory Acts: A Theory for the Study of Collective Memory in Everyday Life

History abounds in everyday life: It is in the discourse of the politician who makes a patriotic use of World War II, in the epic movie of medieval inspiration, in the latest museum opening in town, or in the magnet on your fridge that makes a humoristic use of advertisement posters from the 1950s. What tools can help us understand how history is used in these contexts, and with what purposes? And, more importantly perhaps, how to understand the effects these uses have on us? To answer these questions, this article proposes a framework to study the uses of collective memory in everyday life. After a short review of the history of collective memory, the concept of memory act is outlined, based on three theoretical traditions: Jamess pragmatism, Austins speech acts, and Meads social acts. They are used to argue that everyday uses of collective memory are better understood as intersubjective and discursive acts that are part of larger activities. Finally, some of the consequences of this theory are discussed.History abounds in everyday life: It is in the discourse of the politician who makes a patriotic use of World War II, in the epic movie of medieval inspiration, in the latest museum opening in town, or in the magnet on your fridge that makes a humoristic use of advertisement posters from the 1950s. What tools can help us understand how history is used in these contexts, and with what purposes? And, more importantly perhaps, how to understand the effects these uses have on us? To answer these questions, this article proposes a framework to study the uses of collective memory in everyday life. After a short review of the history of collective memory, the concept of memory act is outlined, based on three theoretical traditions: Jamess pragmatism, Austins speech acts, and Meads social acts. They are used to argue that everyday uses of collective memory are better understood as intersubjective and discursive acts that are part of larger activities. Finally, some of the consequences of this theory are discussed.

Thinking Through Time: From Collective Memories to Collective Futures

This chapter explores the links between collective memory and the imagination of collective futures. Drawing on works on imagination and autobiographical memory, it first discusses the role of past experiences in imagining the future. It then highlights the consequences of this perspective for collective memories and collective futures, arguing that the former provides the basis for the latter. Three case studies are presented, each illustrating a different type of relation between collective memory and imagination. This will lead me to the conclusion that representations of the world are characterised by “temporal heteroglossia”, the simultaneous presence of multiple periods of time, and that they mediate the relation between collective memory and imagination, allowing us to “think through time”.

Staying on Topic: Doing Research Between Improvisation and Systematisation

Doing scientific research is, in theory, a systematic and well-organised enterprise. In reality, however, things often go astray: field works get cancelled, interviews get side-tracked and participants drop out. The investigation of human lives, as it turns out, cannot do away with the messiness of human lives. In such cases, researchers must adapt to the new situation and yet stay on topic: in one word, they need to improvise. How, then, does research remain scientific? What matters is what is done afterwards; how hunches and surprises are turned into systematic investigations, analyses and interpretations. This argument will be illustrated with the story of an ‘impromptu’ fieldwork and its unpredictable consequences; or, rather, how staying on topic requires one to systematically stray away from it.

Trajectories of Resistance and Historical Reflections

Collective memory, the one-sided and subjective vision the group holds of its own past, plays a central role in defining who we believe we are and what the world is supposed to be. As such, being able to challenge what is said of the past offers the possibility to imagine futures and build identities outside of what is commonly accepted in society, thus providing roots for resistance. This paper proposes to reconstruct the trajectories of two intellectuals and artists interviewed in Brussels to understand what may have led them to question traditional narratives of the past, and in some cases to actively resist them. It concludes that the encounter with several tools, such as historical books or the discovery of others’ alternative narratives, may foster resistance; they not only encourage individuals to question specific historical discourses, but participate in the construction of a “meta-memory”: a general representation of historical discourses.

Introduction: What May the Future Hold?

In this introduction, the book editors discuss the importance of imagining the future in everyday and political life, as well as how it has been treated in social sciences. They conclude by outlining the sections of the book and presenting the different chapters.

Uses of the Past: History as a Resource for the Present

Collective memory has become an increasingly important topic in social and human sciences over the past thirty years. Beyond the interest for how we understand history, collective memory research has explored how the past has been used to defend certain understandings of the world (for instance nationalist ideologies), political actions (as in the case of intractable conflicts), or collective identities (particularly when they are seen as reflecting the historical ‘essence’ of a national group). That is, how the history is used as a resource for the present. However, theoretical conceptualisations have more directly focused on how collective memory is produced, and less so on how it is mobilised for the present. In this paper, we propose to review the main conceptualisation of collective memory in psychology – as social thinking, as social identity, and as sense-making – and how they more or less implicitly understand the relations between past and present. In a final section, we argue that representations of history have mainly been seen, in collective memory research, as a source of meaning for the present or as a way to position oneself in the current social field. In conclusion, we propose a third way of understanding the relations between past and present, considering collective memory to be both transformative of the present and prospective for the future.

(No) Empathy for the Monkey? Book Review of “The Cultural Origins of Human Cognition”

Europes Journal of Psychology, 2015, Vol. 11(2), 363–368, doi:10.5964/ejop.v11i2.990 Published (VoR): 2015-05-29. *Corresponding author at: Institut de Psychologie et Education, Faculté de Lettres et Sciences Humaines, Espace Louis-Agassiz 1, 2000 Neuchâtel, Switzerland. E-mail: constance.desaintlaurent@unine.ch This is an open access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0), which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.