Abstract
This paper begins by addressing the so-called memory crisis, a crisis which, since the 90s, has problematized the traditional manner in which memory is studied and understood. Special attention is paid to the changing role attributed to accuracy and meaning when remembering the past. In light of this crisis, I comment on Smorti and Fioretti’s paper (2015), focusing on the point that they make regarding how autobiographical narratives affect and change autobiographical memories. Complementing that view, according to which memories are transformed when they are externalized through a communicative act by means of narratives, this paper focuses on a more narrative and situated approach to memory, shifting from mind to social settings, from accuracy to meaning. Building on that approach, I briefly discuss the notion of event as a narrative construction. Finally, drawing on Burke’s pentad model (1969), I put forward a framework for studying remembering as a situated activity. The pentad of elements are addressed as follows: 1) Agency, or the mediational means for the construction of past events; 2) Act, or remembering as a reconstructive activity; 3) Scene, or the social dynamics of remembering; 4) Agent, or subjective positionings when reconstructing the past; and 5) Purpose, or uses of the past in relation to the future.
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Notes
Here it is worth bearing in mind that before considering his materials as relevant to the study of remembering, Bartlett analyzed them as exemplars for the study of perceiving, imagining and thinking. In this regard, Bartlett’s contribution is not only about what is remembered, but also about what is first perceived to be remembered later (I would like to thank Alberto Rosa for pointing this out in the revision of this paper).
As indicated by Edwards and Middleton (1987), Bartlett was initially going to entitle his book Conventionalization, which shows how important systems of meaning and the cultural ways in which members of a certain group reconstruct the past were to that author.
In this work Wagoner (2013) comprehensively explores the concept of schema’s origins, its place within Bartlett’s work and its successive reconstructions by others after him.
This is a problem of which Smorti and Fioretti (2015) are well aware when they point out that:
“[I]t is very difficult to study autobiographical memory […] without making use of language and of narrative in particular. But if we as researchers use narrative or language it is very difficult to demonstrate what we have described is memory (or internal memory) because we have observed memory ‘in’ a narrative” (p.8).
As Brockmeier (2010) points out, the temporal status of experiences is crucial here. Different studies (e.g., Szpunar, Chan and McDermott, 2009, cited in Brockmeier 2010) show no verifiable distinction on a neurobiological level between what we perceive or experience in the present, what we anticipate in our imagination for the future, and what we remember from the past. According to Brockmeier, this distinction is attributed afterwards by us in an act of interpretation and temporal localization through which we temporalize and meaningfully link our experiences by means of narratives.
Along these lines, Brown and Reavey (2015) have analyzed how the shared use of photographs and diagrams of the wrecked trains by different survivors of the 7/7 London terrorist attacks helped to co-construct the memories of that event.
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Acknowledgments
Preparation of this chapter was supported by the Niels Bohr Professorship Centre for Cultural Psychology at Aalborg University. The author also wishes to thank Prof. Alberto Rosa for his helpful comments on the earlier draft of this paper.
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Brescó de Luna, I. From Mind to Context, from Accuracy to Meaning. Exploring the Grammar of Remembering as a Socially Situated Act. Integr. psych. behav. 50, 320–332 (2016). https://doi.org/10.1007/s12124-016-9345-7
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s12124-016-9345-7