PERSONAL COLLECTIONS AND COLLECTIVE MEMORY

SOME ELEMENTS OF REFLECTION

Abstract

A few months before his deportation to the camp of Buchenwald, where faleceria, the French sociologist Maurice Halbwachs intended to publish a synthesis around its main axis of reflection: the collective memory. It was necessary to specify the role of configuration of modern societies. According to Halbwachs, collective memory can only be revealed through the study of «collective archives», an aspect that, however, implicitly. I would define this term broadly, that is, documents - written, oral and also gestural - and the monuments or spaces, objects of appropriation collective by a group, a community, a nation. However, will this bond between «collective memory» and «public archives» is so clear? Will a single individual with unique experience could also not reveal aspects of memory collective?
Without resorting to such extreme cases, it is worth questioning the extent of personal, so sought by historians for their ability to reveal the sensitivities of a person and, by extension, of a group, could collaborate to obtain a a sharper understanding of the phenomena of collective memory. How it is born, invented or Does it undo the collective memory that, like tradition, is also an invention? Here are some issues we would like to discuss at this conference.