Journal
MEMORY STUDIES
Volume -, Issue -, Pages -Publisher
SAGE PUBLICATIONS INC
DOI: 10.1177/17506980231204201
Keywords
algorithms; archive; collective memory; database; digital memory
Categories
Ask authors/readers for more resources
This article examines the changes in collective memory in the digital era and argues that digital memory materializes and implements theoretical claims made by Memory Studies. It discusses four major transformations in collective memory, including the new ontology of digital archives, the shift from narrative to the cultural form of the database, the reconfiguration of agency, and the shift from mnemonic objects to mnemonic assemblages.
This article examines the changes experienced by collective memory in the digital era. Contrary to the thesis that digital memory entails a new type of memory, which is radically different from the traditional conceptualization, I argue that the practice of digital memory materializes and implements the theoretical claims made by Memory Studies since the field's inception - collective memory conceived as a process, mediated and remediated by multiple media, with the participation of dynamic communities that perform rather than represent the past. In the article, I address what I propose are the following four major transformations that collective memory has undergone in the digital era: (1) the new ontology of the digital archive; (2) the shift from narrative as a privileged form of collective memory to the cultural form of the database; (3) the reconfiguration of agency, in which a distributed memory is performed by human and non-human agents in a dynamic entanglement; and (4) the shift from mnemonic objects to mnemonic assemblages, comprising persons, things, artefacts, spaces, discourses, behaviours and expressions in dynamic relatedness.
Authors
I am an author on this paper
Click your name to claim this paper and add it to your profile.
Reviews
Recommended
No Data Available