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Memories of the intellectual past should in their theoretical and cognitive obsolescence be
forgotten, so implied Sir Frederick Charles Bartlett (1886-1969) in 1932 with the publishing of
his ground breaking work entitled Remembering: A Study in Experimental and Social
Psychology. In Remembering he proposed a theory of memory that is still applicable, linking
memory directly to perception, stating that memory is as creative and susceptible to error as our
processes of perception.
Keep in mind that our processes of perception are determined by our processes of cognition
and cognition is determined first by ones bio-brain system architecture and secondly by ones
acculturation in a tradition in memory and cognition that either affirms or negates our biobrain
systems inherent potential.
John F. Kihlstrom in his paper entitled: “Memory, Autobiography, History,” quotes Bartlett,
Maurice Halbwachs (1877-1945) and Eviatar Zerubavel whose book Social Mindscapes was
published in 1997. Each speaks to the formative influence of acculturation and socialization in
all that comprises memory. Bartlett wrote that:
Social organization gives a persistent framework into which all detailed recall
must fit, and it very powerfully influences both the manner and the matter of
recall.
He also wrote that:
Remembering is an act of communications, of information sharing and selfexpression,
as well as an act of information retrieval. Accordingly our memories
of the past are shaped by the interpersonal context in which they are encoded,
stored and retrieved.
Halbwachs in (1925) argued that:
The individual calls recollections to mind relying on the framework of social
memory . . . there are surely many facts and many details . . ., that the
individual would forget if others did not keep their memory alive for him. But,
on the other hand society can live only if there is sufficient unity of outlooks
among the individuals and groups comprising it. . . . This is why society tends
to erase from its memory all that might separate individuals, or that might
distance groups from each other.It is also why society, in each period,
rearranges its recollections in such a way as to adjust them to the variable
conditions of its equilibrium.
I would argue that Halbwachs overlooks those in society that empower themselves by
perpetuating such xenophobic-xenotropic divisions as race, class, ethnicity and religion within
the larger society.
Many today argue with Halbwachs that memory is a micro-macro-social-construction, that the
concerns of the present shape the past and therefore our memory. In Social Mindscapes
Halbwachs points out that it is others that help us as much to forget as to remember,
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