Research Methods for Cultural Studies

engaging with memory 183
memories are constructed to communicate only the nature of the experiences,
excluding any value judgements or interpretations, with the maximum detail
possible. In the second phase the written memories are then deconstructed by
the group. This may involve looking for similar features between memorynarratives
in order to generate themes and identify recurring commonalities in
the form or content of the experiences. Particular discursive constructs such as
metaphors or clichés are identified which may allude to underlying meanings
of the experience and its relation to the rememberer. Highlighting notable
absences in the narrative is crucial as it may reveal those aspects of experience
that are undesirable or socially unacceptable (Crawford et al. 1992: 49–50).
This analysis illuminates the way experience is constructed according to particular
norms and conventions of (in this case) gendered experience and how
we make sense of that experience within the confines of those structures. The
final step in memory work is one of further theorisation. The written memory
and the discussion of it is connected and situated in relation to academic theory
and is used to contribute to wider discussions in a relevant area of study. This
can be performed collectively, but is most frequently in the process of writing
up the memory work on an individual basis (Onyx and Small 2001: 777).
The key advantage of this kind of memory method is that it speaks to some
of the key epistemological concerns of cultural studies more broadly. Primarily,
in common with feminist work like Haug’s, using memory as a method has permitted
a blurring of the traditional hierarchy of researcher and researched.
Where scientific positivism has polarised the expert and the layperson, with
the expert inhabiting a privileged position in the construction of knowledge,
this method centralises lived experience as an important source of knowledge
about, and agency within, the social world. As Haug suggests, this use of
memory serves as a refusal ‘to understand ourselves simply as a bundle of reactions
to all powerful structures . . . we search instead for possible indications of
how we have participated in our own past experience’ (1987: 35).
It is clear from Haug’s work that memory can be used to investigate cultural
phenomena beyond memory. In Haug’s own work, the processes of female sexualisation
are the central concern of the investigation. Aside from the intricate
level of detail it provides, using memory is particularly fruitful as it allows the
processes of sexualisation to be considered in a way that respects the historical
nature of the process under investigation. In the writing and collective discussion
of the memory, experience is made external to the rememberer and
is recontextualised. Through this process, the historical specificity of the
memory is made reflexively explicit as are the socio-cultural forces which structure
both the experience and its reconstruction.
Memory work also highlights another provision of memory as mediating the
general and the particular. Memories are at once intensely private and seemingly
unique, and inextricably shot through with the social conditions of their