Essay On Collective Memory

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Big cities, small towns, villages and in a broad sense all human habitats are full of their inhabitants’ memories. While some of these memories are specific and unique to each individual, some have collective characteristics: memories about a common past, the common past that we all may or may not have seen or experienced but we might have heard of it, the memories of a public square that has no longer existed but my grandpa shares the memory with yours…
Like what can be found in a dictionary as a conventional definition, memory can be understood as “the the store of things learned and retained from an organism 's activity or experience as evidenced by modification of structure or behavior or by recall and recognition" . Memory is the intellectual …show more content…

He also belongs to the tradition of collective psychology, but arguably of its more optimistic division. Memory is essentially social for Halbwachs. He suggests that situating ideas and images in patterns of thought belongs to specific social groups. Interestingly he emphasizes the role of social factors by a little exaggeration: “a man who remembers alone what others do not remember resembles somebody who sees what others do not see. It is as if he suffers from hallucinations.” He rejects the claim that memory is individualistic. Fundamentally, his conception of collective memory is the contrast between collective and individual memory. He calls individual memory “personal” and “autobiographical”, and collective memory “social” and “historical” memory. While autobiographical memory is the memory of the things that the individual has been present for, historical memory –by contrast- extends the scope of these memories beyond one’s own experience. There are still things that a person “remembers”, including facts about what happened in a certain date even before one was …show more content…

In “the image of the city”, Lynch identifies a set of elements that creates the city image. Lynch’s word, imageability is a “quality in a physical object which gives it a high probability of evoking a strong image in any given observer.” This quality could be then shape, Color, or arrangement which facilities the notion of mental image. But, not all qualities necessarily create that vivid identical and powerful image Rossi has in mind. The question though is what qualities will result in image ability. The study of semiotics is one way to approach the question of mental

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