Preamble Narratives and Social Memory - Universidade do Minho

Audiovisual Post-colonial Narratives: Dealing with the Past in Dundo, Colonial MemoryIsabel Macedo, Rosa Cabecinhas & Lilia Abadiawhich we merge our representations with those of other groups. In this sense, social representationsare formed and transformed within and through asymmetries, conflicts, tensionsand discontinuities (Marková, 2010).Social representations concern the contents of everyday thinking and the set ofideas which give coherence to our worldviews, religious beliefs and political ideas. Socialrepresentations allow us to classify people and objects, compare and explain behaviors andtarget them as constituents of our social environment (Moscovici, 1988, p. 214).All representations are intended to make something unknown familiar (Moscovici,1984). The author refers to two socio-cognitive mechanisms of communication whichgenerate social representations: anchorage and objectification. The first mechanism makesthe unknown familiar, bringing it to an earlier sphere of social representations, so that wecan compare and interpret it. The second mechanism, objectification, makes the unknownfamiliar by transforming representations into something concrete and perceptible.Through communication, social representations are anchored again in new socialrepresentations. These new representations are incorporated into the already known, whilesimultaneously they are transformed by the new representations that emerge from thisinteraction. Gradually, ideas that are initially strange, become familiar and are turned intopart of the collective reference frames of a society. Moscovici (1994, p. 164) states that thenotion of anchoring intends “to express the relationship between creating meaning andcommunicating”. Objectification makes the unknown familiar by turning it into somethingexplicit, which we can understand and experience. To objectify is, according to Moscovici(2001), a much more active process and requires more effort than anchorage, which occursalmost automatically every time we are confronted with new phenomena.The social representation theory focuses on society’s social and cultural thought. Itmakes us reflect on how new social cognitions or representations of reality become familiarand how old representations are transformed through communication. By studying how themedia and the public objectify and anchor “new” scientific, political and social problems wecan obtain information about how collective social thinking and meaning are constructed(Wagner & Hayes, 2005; Hoijer, 2011).This theory allows us to understand and intervene in social reality. The articulation ofthe social and cultural dimensions with history enables an interpretation of the processesand forms in which individuals and groups build and analyse their world and their lives(Jodelet, 1999). As a theory that can allow our understanding of the world around us, it isnecessary to take into account the relationship between social representations and thedominant cultural settings, as well as the dynamics of the social context in the analysis.For Sammut (2010), the difficulty in establishing positive intercultural relations has todo with the difficulties in bonding with others whose practices and worldviews we do notshare or understand. In fact, the problem of intercultural relations is a problem of conflictingworldviews – or, in other words, social representations – and the inability of individuals tosuccessfully understand the perspectives of others.The (re)construction of the past is an integral part of intergroup reconciliation processbecause, at the end of a conflict, the collective memory underlies much of the animosity,Narratives and social memory: theoretical and methodological approaches161