ABSTRACT
Framing can be an explicit procedure; to be on the safe side with strangers, we often introduce a potentially problematic story with the “it’s a good joke” tag. Frames are put to a great variety of uses; indeed, it is that elasticity of the concept that accounts for most of its heuristic value. While many of the frames are genre-related, how a “text” functions can rarely be separated from who produced it. Collective memory is a terrain especially prone to such overlaying of different frames because it is filled with reused and reusable material. Collective memory becomes activated, as it were, allowing for more direct access to its construction. Disputes, discussions, introduction of altogether new frames—these are all heuristically invaluable opportunities for students of the dynamics of collective memory. To recognize the concreteness of memory work is also to be usefully reminded of its mundane, yet analytically important qualities.
