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

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. peerReviewed publishedVersion

本研究致力于探讨记忆的若干社会文化维度，聚焦于将叙事作为建构过往事件与赋予意义的中介性工具（维果茨基，1978）。肯尼斯·伯克（Kenneth Burke）1969年所著《动机语法（Grammar of Motives）》提出的五大要素，被用作考察过往（尤其是历史）重构过程的分析框架，具体为：1）阐释与重构行为；2）处于特定社会位置的行动者；3）通过叙事手段展开；4）服务于特定目的；5）在具体的社会与时空场景中开展。该研究路径的反思性特征，为将记忆视作一系列持续行动语境下的一类行为提供了理论基础，由此记忆可对行动发挥指引作用，因而不可避免地带有道德维度。这对于历史教学这类社会记忆形态及其对个体身份认同的影响而言，尤为重要。本文为经同行评议的正式出版版本。