Collective and creative memory: On dynamic mnemonical meaning and habitation – a case for Somaliland

TY - CHAP

T1 - Collective and creative memory:

T2 - On dynamic mnemonical meaning and habitation – a case for Somaliland

AU - Michelsen, Anders Ib

PY - 2020

Y1 - 2020

N2 - One is tempted to argue that ‘memory’ is an almost universal precondition for human being. In everyday life, for a start, such memory encompasses an incomprehensible number of issues, from the biology of the human psyche-soma dreaming, while in sleep, to national and postnational histories implicating ethnic and social destinies. With the vagueness which may plague any form of memory, as we all know, memory is vacillating between something ‘real’ and ‘irreal’, or better, fact and imagination, irrespective of the often well-defined forms of memory pertaining to “a physical monument, commemorative symbols, rituals, story-telling or media production, including literary creating, fiction and non fiction production, oral poetry” (Call). Sociological theory has struggled with this issue of a paradoxical ‘imaginary reality”, from Emile Durkheim’s notion of “collective representations” originating in functions of a social organism, to Maurice Halbwach’s development of the idea of collective psychology into dynamic mnemonical meaning, i.e. a “collective memory” with specific topologies of time and space, and further. The thesis of the paper will be that collective memory relies on a novel type of institution which co-defines and co-organises memory: “the imaginary institution of society” (Castoriadis) by intricate relations between functions, symbolic systems and imagination. Any symbol and function in a social world – e.g. as pertaining to a nation state, “remain incomplete and finally incomprehensible” without the “source” of “the social imaginary”, Castoriadis argues. Following from that the paper will outline a draft of dynamical mnemonic memory. I. Memory – paradox: fact and imagination. II. Collective memory: dynamic mnemonical meaning. III. Creative memory: tropic expression and effervescence and – the question of art. IV. In conclusion: art and the civil sphere in the case of Somaliland.

AB - One is tempted to argue that ‘memory’ is an almost universal precondition for human being. In everyday life, for a start, such memory encompasses an incomprehensible number of issues, from the biology of the human psyche-soma dreaming, while in sleep, to national and postnational histories implicating ethnic and social destinies. With the vagueness which may plague any form of memory, as we all know, memory is vacillating between something ‘real’ and ‘irreal’, or better, fact and imagination, irrespective of the often well-defined forms of memory pertaining to “a physical monument, commemorative symbols, rituals, story-telling or media production, including literary creating, fiction and non fiction production, oral poetry” (Call). Sociological theory has struggled with this issue of a paradoxical ‘imaginary reality”, from Emile Durkheim’s notion of “collective representations” originating in functions of a social organism, to Maurice Halbwach’s development of the idea of collective psychology into dynamic mnemonical meaning, i.e. a “collective memory” with specific topologies of time and space, and further. The thesis of the paper will be that collective memory relies on a novel type of institution which co-defines and co-organises memory: “the imaginary institution of society” (Castoriadis) by intricate relations between functions, symbolic systems and imagination. Any symbol and function in a social world – e.g. as pertaining to a nation state, “remain incomplete and finally incomprehensible” without the “source” of “the social imaginary”, Castoriadis argues. Following from that the paper will outline a draft of dynamical mnemonic memory. I. Memory – paradox: fact and imagination. II. Collective memory: dynamic mnemonical meaning. III. Creative memory: tropic expression and effervescence and – the question of art. IV. In conclusion: art and the civil sphere in the case of Somaliland.

M3 - Book chapter

BT - Theorizing Somali society

A2 - Abdulkadir Osman, Farah

A2 - Eno, Mohamed

PB - Aalborg Universitetsforlag

ER -