What Is Collective Memory? Definition & History

By remembering memories that we find important and forgetting those we do not, we piece together our identity. Besides, as the saying goes: "We are our memories." Like the individual, a group of people (family, political party, nation) can also have a memory. This collective memory takes shape through monuments, symbols, and performances, and informs the group's collective identity.

Maurice Halbwachs Coined the Term Collective Memory

The term "collective memory" (original, memoire collective) was coined by the French philosopher and sociologist Maurice Halbwachs. Halbwachs first discussed the term in his work Les Cadres sociaux de la memoire (1925) and in more depth in his Memoire Collective (1950). Halbwachs, under the influence of his teacher Emile Durkheim, studied the way identities (individual, collective, or social) shape and are shaped by memories of the past. The idea is that an individual or a group can shape the past through the memories they select to preserve, but also that the identity of the individual or the group can change if a memory is altered.

Read our article about the Authorized Heritage Discourse to learn why heritage is more than monuments and ancient ruins.

Collective and Individual Memory

In a beautiful segment, Halbwachs explain how even in our personal memory we are never alone:

"In reality, we are never alone. Other men need not be physically present, since we always carry with us and in us a number of distinct persons. I arrive for the first time in London and take walks with different companions. An architect
directs my attention to the character and arrangement of city buildings. A historian tells me why a certain street, house, or other spot is historically noteworthy... Even if I were unaccompanied, I need only have read their varying descriptions of the city, been given advice on what aspects to see, or merely studied a map. Now suppose I went walking alone. Could it be said that I preserve of that tour only individual remembrances, belonging solely to me? Only in appearance did I take a walk alone. Passing before Westminster, I thought about my historian friend's comments (or, what amounts to the same thing, what I have read in history books). Crossing a bridge, I noticed the effects of perspective that
were pointed out by my painter friend (or struck me in a picture or
engraving)... Many impressions during my first visit to London-St. Paul's, Mansion House the Strand, or the Inns of Court-reminded me of Dickens' novels read in childhood, so I took my walk with Dickens. In each of these moments I cannot say that I was alone, that I reflected alone, because I had put myself in thought into this or that group, composed of myself and the architect (or, beyond him, the group for which he was merely the interpreter), the painter (or his group)..." Halbwachs 1980, 23-4

So what is the relationship between individual and collective memory? Collective memory is made of individual memories. But also the individual memory is collective.

"The collective memory, for its part, encompasses the individual
memories while remaining distinct from them. It evolves according
to its own laws, and any individual remembrances that may penetrate
are transformed within a totality having no personal consciousness." Halbwachs 1980, 51

As individuals, we all belong to multiple different groups sharing various common memories; the family, the neighborhood, the school, the university, work, a political party, a country, and an ethnic group. Our participation in these groups shapes our identity, but we also influence these groups. Like a mosaic, change enough pieces and you have a different image.

If you think about it, the politics of memory are everywhere. We spend a good bunch of our early years at school, which, among others, is tasked with passing down a society's key memories, or rather, the must-know things you need to know in order to become a member of society.

Collective Unconscious vs. Collective Memory

A common misconception is that Carl Jung's collective unconscious is the same as collective memory, but that's not the case. Jung's theory posits that there is a common unconscious shared by all humans that we can all access and binds us all together in a mystical way. However, Halbwachs' collective memory is not something that we are born with, it is something we learn, something we shape, something that can be lost. If a society chooses to forget something, it can be forgotten.

History vs. Collective Memory

Halbwachs distinguishes between history and collective memory. History is, for him, what follows the end of memory. For example, Holocaust survivors formed communities of remembrance, but as years passed and their communities began to fade away, historians jumped in to keep the memory alive. Thus, collective memory is a first, direct interaction with the past, while history is a second one, an interaction that follows memory. For Halbwachs, memory was alive, changing, debatable, while history was distant and rigid.

Today, however, the trend among academics is to perceive history as a form of collective memory that can also shape and interact with the past.

In future articles, we will explore theories that expanded on Halbwachs's, such as Nora's "lieux de mémoire" (places of memory), Assmann's "cultural memory", as well as Anthony D. Smith's ethnosymbolism.

Bibliography

• Olick Jeffrey and Joyce Robbins. 1998. ‘Social Memory Studies: From 'Collective Memory' to the Historical Sociology of Mnemonic Practices’. Annual Review of Sociology 24: 105–40.
• Halbwachs, Maurice. 1980. Collective Memory. translated by Francis Ditter and Vida Yazdi Ditter
• Jung, Carl. 1916. The Structure of the Unconscious.