Collective Memory and the Historical Past

Jeffrey Andrew Barash is professor emeritus of philosophy at the University of Amiens in France. He is the author or editor of many books, including Martin Heidegger and the Problem of Historical Meaning and The Social Construction of Reality: The Legacy of Ernst Cassirer, the latter published by the University of Chicago Press.

• IntroductionThe Sources of MemoryPart 1   Symbolic Embodiment, Imagination, and the “Place” of Collective Memory1          Is Collective Memory a Figment of the Imagination? The Scope of Memory in the Public Sphere2          Analyzing Collective Memory 3          Thresholds of Personal Identity and Public Experience Excursus          Critical Reflections: The Contemporary Theories of Ricœur, Edelman, and NoraPart 2   Time, Collective Memory, and the Historical Past4          Temporal Articulations 5          Virtual Experience, the Mass Media, and the Configuration of the Public Sphere 6          The Contextualized Past: Collective Memory and Historical Understanding Conclusion      The Province of Collective Memory and Its Theoretical Promise NotesBibliography Index

"His study is admirable for the way he relates the story of philosophers’ thinking about memory to today's crisis about its relationship to history. There are several informative studies that explain the workings of digital‐age memory. But Barash's study is distinctive for his insight into the politics of its technologies from a humanist perspective. His review of the historical role of collective memory as living memory is welcome at a time in which such memory, so widely referenced in academic discourse, is in fact contracting in the face of technologies of communication that are remodeling contemporary culture. His analysis might be read as an apostrophe to our society at large concerning the way publicity‐driven values of media are fast crowding out the living memory that serves as collective memory's core."