Memory, History and Narrative: Shifts of Meaning when (Re)constructing the Past

Abstract

This paper is devoted to the examination of some socio-cultural dimensions of memory, focusing on narratives as a meditational tool (Vygotsky, 1978) for the construction of past events and attribution of meaning. The five elements of Kenneth Burke’s Grammar of Motives (1969) are taken as a framework for the examination of reconstructions of the past and particularly of histories, namely: 1) the interpretative and reconstructive action of 2) a positioned agent operating 3) through narrative means 4) addressed to particular purposes 5) within a concrete social and temporal scenery. The reflexive character of such approach opens the ground for considering remembering as one kind of act performed within the context of a set of on-going actions, so that remembrances play a directive role for action and so have an unavoidable moral dimension. This is particularly relevant for some kinds of social memory such as history teaching and their effects upon identity.

Keywords

• history
• memory
• mediation
• narratives
• events