"Nora begins with a basic distinction: between memory and history. He suggests that we
have arrived at a juncture at which history - cold, distant, critical - is taking the place of, and
hence largely eradicating, collective memory."
Memory - Traditional, peasant, lived, vibrant, collective
History - Modern, cold, distilled, belongs to no one and everyone
"Nora argues that the form of memory prompted by and reflected in lieux de memoire is fundamentally different from ''traditional memory''. It is ''modem memory'', memory "seized by history." Where traditional memory is unmediated, unconscious, and passed down through unspoken traditions, modem memory has been transformed by history: it is deliberate, voluntary, and, most importantly, always indirect - mediated by self-consciousness and awareness of the distance of the past."
"Modern Memory is archival: Here Nora brings in the preoccupation with conservation and preservation. Archives, museums, data banks, oral history projects, even photo albums exemplify "modem memory'', since they have "become the deliberate and calculated secretion of lost memory. [They] add to life...a prothesis-memory .... Even as traditional memory disappears, we feel obliged. .. to collect remains, testimonies, documents, images, speeches, any visible signs of what has been. .. " (13) That is, we hold on to pieces of the past because we think they will enable us to remember or re-encounter that which we know to be irretrievably lost We have forgotten how to remember, so we keep everything. The things we keep become lieux de memoire.
have arrived at a juncture at which history - cold, distant, critical - is taking the place of, and
hence largely eradicating, collective memory."
Memory - Traditional, peasant, lived, vibrant, collective
History - Modern, cold, distilled, belongs to no one and everyone
"Nora argues that the form of memory prompted by and reflected in lieux de memoire is fundamentally different from ''traditional memory''. It is ''modem memory'', memory "seized by history." Where traditional memory is unmediated, unconscious, and passed down through unspoken traditions, modem memory has been transformed by history: it is deliberate, voluntary, and, most importantly, always indirect - mediated by self-consciousness and awareness of the distance of the past."
"Modern Memory is archival: Here Nora brings in the preoccupation with conservation and preservation. Archives, museums, data banks, oral history projects, even photo albums exemplify "modem memory'', since they have "become the deliberate and calculated secretion of lost memory. [They] add to life...a prothesis-memory .... Even as traditional memory disappears, we feel obliged. .. to collect remains, testimonies, documents, images, speeches, any visible signs of what has been. .. " (13) That is, we hold on to pieces of the past because we think they will enable us to remember or re-encounter that which we know to be irretrievably lost We have forgotten how to remember, so we keep everything. The things we keep become lieux de memoire.
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