At first look, memory seems one thing inert, stuck prior to now - a memory of one thing that has occurred and stopped in time. However a better look reveals that memory is dynamic and connects the three temporal dimensions: evoked at the present, it refers back to the previous, however always views the future. During their convention entitled ‘Communicative and Cultural Memory’, researchers Jan Assmann and Aleida Assmann, both professors on the University of Konstanz, addressed this dynamic character of memory. Jan spoke on the durability and symbolic features of cultural memory, emphasizing their position in the construction of identities, while Aleida prioritized contemporary historical narrative, focusing on mnemonic processes related to the formation of recent nation-states. The occasion, held on Might 15 at IEA, opened the convention cycle ‘Spaces of Remembrance’, which the researchers uttered within the nation from Might 15 to 21 as a part of the Year of Germany in Brazil.

The cycle has been a realization of the Federal College of Paraná (UFPR) and the Institute for Advanced Studies on Social and Cultural Mobility, with the help of IEA and different institutions. Jan made a distinction between two varieties of memory: the communicative one, related to the diffuse transmission of memories in everyday life via orality, and cultural memory - through which the speech was centered - referring to objectified and institutionalized reminiscences, that can be stored, transferred and reincorporated throughout generations. Cultural memory is formed by symbolic heritage embodied in texts, rites, monuments, celebrations, Memory Wave objects, sacred scriptures and different media that function mnemonic triggers to provoke meanings related to what has occurred. Additionally, it brings back the time of the legendary origins, crystallizes collective experiences of the past and might last for millennia. Subsequently it presupposes a information restricted to initiates. Communicative memory, alternatively, is limited to the recent past, evokes personal and autobiographical reminiscences, and is characterized by a short time period (80 to 110 years), from three to 4 generations.

As a consequence of its informal character, it does not require expertise on the a part of those that transmit it. Jan identified the connections between cultural memory and identification. In response to him, cultural memory is ‘the college that permits us to construct a narrative image of the previous and via this process develop a picture and an identity for ourselves’. Due to this fact, cultural memory preserves the symbolic institutionalized heritage to which individuals resort to construct their own identities and to affirm themselves as part of a bunch. This is possible as a result of the act of remembering involves normative aspects, in order that ‘if you want to belong to a MemoryWave Community, it's essential to observe the foundations of how and what to remember’, as said by the researcher. He also highlighted that, by working as a collective unifying power, cultural memory is taken into account a hazard by totalitarian regimes. For instance, he talked about the case of the Bosnian conflict, when Serbian artillery destroyed the Library of Sarajevo in an try to undermine the memory of the Bosnians and minorities in the region.

The objective, he stated, was to make culture a blank slate so that it might be doable to begin a brand new Serbian id from scratch: ‘This was the strategy of the totalitarian regime to destroy the past, as a result of if one controls the present, the past also gets below management, and if one controls the previous, the future also will get under control’. Aleida opened her conference calling attention to a characteristic phenomenon of the latest a long time: a disbelief in the concept of the long run and the emergence of the previous as elementary concern. Based on the researcher, from the 1980s, confidence in the future as a promise of higher days lost power and gave rise to the restlessness earlier than the previous: ‘the thought of progress is increasingly out of date, and the past has invaded our consciousness’. This phenomenon, she mentioned, is the impact of the interval of extreme violence of the twentieth century and new issues faced by contemporary society, such as the environmental disaster, for instance.

However she cautioned that it is not mere nostalgia or rejection of trendy times, since cultural memory is always directed to the longer term, ‘remembering forward, so to speak’. Thus, memory appears as a gadget to protect the previous in opposition to the corrosive action of time and to present subsidies for people to understand the world and know what to expect, ‘so they don't need to reinvent the wheel and start each era from scratch’, as the researcher explained. Based mostly on the concept of ‘les lieux de mémoire’ (places of memory) prepared by the French historian Pierre Nora, Aleida talked about the changes that have taken place in the development of nationwide memory in the put up- World Warfare II and submit-Berlin Wall. Pondering from the case of France - a rustic that can be defined by the triumphant character of its people -, the idea of locations of memory refers to concrete symbolic objects resembling monuments, museums and archives, linked to a self-image of heroism and Memory Wave satisfaction by the nations.