Ignacio Brescó

The end into the beginning: Prolepsis and the reconstruction of the collective past

Prolepsis – or the narrative manoeuver consisting of narrating or evoking a future event in advance – is a concept borrowed from literary theory that has been used in Psychology for studying the co...Prolepsis – or the narrative manoeuver consisting of narrating or evoking a future event in advance – is a concept borrowed from literary theory that has been used in Psychology for studying the contribution of culture and meaning to development. Cole applies the notion of prolepsis to upbringing insofar as parents’ imagined goals vis-à-vis their offspring guide their educational childrearing, thus channelling the child’s present towards the parents’ imagined future. This view coincides with cultural psychology in that humans are considered as future-oriented beings, constructing cultural tools that mediate the way we interpret the world and act within it. Drawing from this theoretical framework, this paper applies the notion of prolepsis to collective memory in order to examine how imagined futures are brought into the present by means of particular ways of reconstructing the past, thus mobilizing collectives towards certain political goals. Along these lines, the narrative, pragmatic and normative dimensions of collective memory are discussed. The paper concludes with some reflections on the role of politics of imagination in promoting different ways of relating past, present and future.

La construcción narrativa de los eventos del pasado: una propuesta teórica

Resumen El objetivo de este artículo es estudiar la construcción de los eventos del pasado, destacando el papel mediador de las narrativas, consideradas como artefactos culturales creadores de significado. Veremos cómo ciertos sucesos y cambios físicos pasan a constituirse en signos en el marco de una actuación semiótica, mediante la cual serían interpretados en tanto eventos significativos a la luz de una determinada narrativa temática. Desde esta perspectiva, nos centraremos en las historias nacionales, observando cómo su propia forma narrativa permite interpretar y valorar los eventos del pasado y del presente, conectándolos, además con un determinado escenario de futuro. Finalmente, concluiremos con unos breves comentarios en torno a la enseñanza de la historia, señalando la conveniencia de hacer visibles las narrativas a fin de dotar a los estudiantes de más herramientas simbólicas y, consecuentemente, de una mayor agencialidad para que puedan afrontar críticamente las historias que circulan en su contexto social.

What to Teach in History Education When the Social Pact Shakes

Rosa and Bresco review the role of history teaching in a world where the idea of state sovereignty fades away and the notion of social pact—usually conceived to be bounded within national borders—is felt shaking. If history teaching aims at preparing students for active participation in multicultural societies within an increasingly globalised world, the role of nations as the prominent historical agents for understanding current affairs needs to be revised. What skills does this new scenario demand? History of what? History of and for whom? Drawing on these questions, the authors advocate a history teaching devoted to studying the transformation of social agents and Statehood, and concerned with the rights and empowerment of citizenship, rather than centred on national narratives of the expanding and shrinking size and power of each state.

Between history and cultural psychology: Some reflections on mediation and normativity when reconstructing the past

Innis’ and Brinkmann’s papers tackle two key aspects in cultural psychology: the mediating role played by the different systems of meanings throughout history in making sense of the world, and the normative role of those systems, including psychology itself. This paper offers a reflection on these two issues. It begins by highlighting the contribution of psychology and history, as emerging disciplines in the 19th century, to the creation of a normative framework for the subject of modernity according to the needs of modern nation states. It also alludes to both disciplines’ common pursuit of a reference point in natural science in order to achieve a status that is on a par with the latter’s. It is argued that this resulted in an objectivist stance that equates the study of memory and history with an accurate reproduction of the past, thus concealing the mediated nature of past accounts. Drawing on this assumption, it is discussed how past events are constructed, thus bringing mediation and meaning-making to the fore. Special attention is paid to narratives as symbolic meaning-making tools. We will conclude by discussing usage of the past and the role that cultural psychology can play in this field.

The Presence of Grief: Research-Based Art and Arts-Based Research on Grief:

The authors involved in the creation of this text collaborate on a research project called The Culture of Grief, which explores the current conditions and implications of grief. The authors mostly employ conventional forms of qualitative inquiry, but the present text represents an attempt to reach a level of understanding not easily obtained through conventional methods. The group of authors participated as members of the audience in an avant-garde theatrical performance about grief, created by a group called CoreAct. The artists of CoreAct create their art through systematic research, in this case on grief, and we as researchers decided to study both the development of the play and its performance, and to report our impressions in fragments in a way that hopefully represents the nature of grief as an experienced phenomenon. We use Hans Ulrich Gumbrecht’s concept of presence to look for understanding beyond meaning in grief and its theatrical enactment.

Narrative form and identity in the conventionalization of memories of national histories / Forma narrativa e identidad en la convencionalización del recuerdo de historias nacionales

Abstract This paper studies the effect of narrative forms on the remembering of historical accounts. Drawing on Bartlett’s method of repeated reproduction, we analyse how two different historical versions of the Irish conflict — constructed with the same historical events but through different narrative forms — are remembered in three recall sessions by subjects with different national feelings of belonging (Spanish and Basque) and positions in relation to that conflict. The conventionalization and rationalization of memories is also analysed by examining the transformation of the material in the three sessions. Results show two different recall profiles resulting from each version of the story. While in the pro-Irish version repressive events justifying the struggle for Irish independence were more remembered, the pro-British version is reconstructed on those more institutional events that legitimize the maintenance of the United Kingdom. The bias of the narrative form on the remembering of the stories is discussed in regard to history teaching.

Context in the cultural psychology of remembering

Introduction Charles B. Stone and Lucas M. Bietti Part 1: Cognitive and Psychological Perspectives Contextualizing Traumatic Memories: The role of self-identity in the construction of autobiographical memory in posttraumatic stress disorder Adam D. Brown, Nicole A. Kouri and Julia Superka. Contextualizing Silence: A psychological approach to understanding the mnemonic consequences of selective silence in social interactions Charles B. Stone. Emotional Context, Rehearsal and Memories: The mutual contributions and possible integration of flashbulb memory and eyewitness identification research Rafaele Dumas and Olivier Luminet Part 2: Social and Cultural Perspectives Context in the Cultural Psychology of Remembering: Illustrated with a case study of conflict in national memory Ignacio Bresco and Brady Wagoner. Concepts of Social Context in Memory: Social scientific approaches Christian Gudehus. Shared Beliefs about World History and Cultural Context: A theoretical review and a collective-level analysis Dario Paez, Magdalena Bobowik, James H. Liu and Nekane Basabe. Part 3: Cognitive Linguistics and Philosophical Perspectives Contextualizing Embodied Remembering: Autobiographical narratives and multimodal communication Lucas M. Bietti. Scaffolded Joint Action as a Micro-foundation of Organizational Learning Brian R. Gordon & Georg Theiner. Scaffolding Memory: Themes, taxonomies, puzzles John Sutton. The (Social) Context of Memory William Hirst.