Previous articleNext article No AccessBook ReviewsWords in Time: A Plea for Historical Re-thinking. By Francesco Benigno. Translated by David Fairservice. Abingdon: Routledge, 2017. Pp. vi+198. $165.00 (cloth); $52.95 (paper or e-book).Patrick HuttonPatrick HuttonUniversity of Vermont Search for more articles by this author PDFPDF PLUSFull Text Add to favoritesDownload CitationTrack CitationsPermissionsReprints Share onFacebookTwitterLinkedInRedditEmail SectionsMoreDetailsFiguresReferencesCited by The Journal of Modern History Volume 93, Number 4December 2021 Article DOIhttps://doi.org/10.1086/716818 Views: 40Total views on this site For permission to reuse, please contact [email protected]PDF download Crossref reports no articles citing this article.

Nostalgia has become a hot topic in contemporary scholarship in the social sciences. Long overlooked in studies in the history of social psychology, the nature and social role of nostalgia has bela...

Previous articleNext article No AccessBook ReviewsThe Vichy Past in France Today: Corruptions of Memory. By Richard J. Golsan.Lanham, MD: Lexington Books, 2017. Pp. xxviii+140. $90.00 (cloth); $85.00 (e-book).Patrick H. HuttonPatrick H. HuttonUniversity of Vermont Search for more articles by this author PDFPDF PLUSFull Text Add to favoritesDownload CitationTrack CitationsPermissionsReprints Share onFacebookTwitterLinkedInRedditEmail SectionsMoreDetailsFiguresReferencesCited by The Journal of Modern History Volume 90, Number 4December 2018 Article DOIhttps://doi.org/10.1086/700151 Views: 104Total views on this site For permission to reuse, please contact [email protected]PDF download Crossref reports no articles citing this article.

ABSTRACTPhilosopher Jeffrey Barash seeks to clarify the concept of collective memory, which has taken on wide‐ranging meanings in contemporary scholarship. Returning to the original insight of sociologist Maurice Halbwachs during the 1920s, he grounds the concept in the living social memory of the present, whose sphere is widened by its capacity to draw upon a past beyond its ken through the symbolization of its remembrance. He offers two preliminary propositions: first, there is a history to the way philosophers have contextualized collective memory through the ages; second, there is a politics in the transmission of collective memory, highly visible in the uses of memory by mass media in the contemporary age. He builds his argument around four interrelated interpretations concerning: the ever more circumscribed role attributed to collective memory in the passage from antiquity into modernity; the dependence of collective memory upon living memory; the rising power of media to mold collective memory to present purposes; and historical understanding vis‐à‐vis evocation of collective memory as oppositional ways of accessing the past. I close with commentary that places Barash's philosophical interpretation within the context of contemporary historiographical practice, with particular attention to the scholarship of French historian Pierre Nora on the French national memory, and that of German scholars Jan and Aleida Assmann on the preservation and transmission of memorable cultural legacies.

Philosopher Jeffrey Barash seeks to clarify the concept of collective memory, which has taken on wide-ranging meanings in contemporary scholarship. Returning to the original insight of sociologist Maurice Halbwachs during the 1920s, he grounds the concept in the living social memory of the present, whose sphere is widened by its capacity to draw upon a past beyond its ken through the symbolization of its remembrance. He offers two preliminary propositions: first, there is a history to the way philosophers have contextualized collective memory through the ages; second, there is a politics in the transmission of collective memory, highly visible in the uses of memory by mass media in the contemporary age. He builds his argument around four interrelated interpretations concerning: the ever more circumscribed role attributed to collective memory in the passage from antiquity into modernity; the dependence of collective memory upon living memory; the rising power of media to mold collective memory to present purposes; and historical understanding vis-a-vis evocation of collective memory as oppositional ways of accessing the past. I close with commentary that places Barash's philosophical interpretation within the context of contemporary historiographical practice, with particular attention to the scholarship of French historian Pierre Nora on the French national memory, and that of German scholars Jan and Aleida Assmann on the preservation and transmission of memorable cultural legacies.

I explain how the study of the Holocaust of European Jews has shifted since the 1980s from its realities to its remembered legacies. I review a succession of issues about Holocaust memory from the Historians' Dispute in Germany over the limits of its representation during the 1980s, to strategies of German statesmen to find a symbolic compromise in its official commemorations during the 1990s, to reflections on moral responsibility in the passing of living memory of the Holocaust into written history in our times. I close with discussion of recent work on the globalization of Holocaust remembrance as a historiographical reference in the campaign for human rights in our times.

Nearly all of the work in the historiography of collective memory has focused on issues of historical representation. Still, experience remains its existential ground, and the postmodern emphasis on the rhetoric of historical discourse has incited a reactive interest in human subjectivity. Those scholars stressing representation maintain a sober critical distance from their subject matter. Those favoring experience stress vicarious emotional identification with the historical actors of the past, as if it were possible to make them "come alive again." The latter approach has long been identified with amateur historians, history buffs, and writers of historical fiction. But since the turn of the twentieth century, some professional historians express openness toward the heuristic value of performative modes of presenting the past for drawing a wider public into an interest in history. I review recent historiographical discussion of the nature and significance of this broader understanding of the historians' enterprise.