ABSTRACT
This book ends where it began, with the relationship between history and memory. In Chapter 1 I pointed out that academic history can be regarded as a form of memory, in that it provides society with the best available record of past experience. But that does not mean that no distinction should be made between history and other forms of memory. ‘Social memory’, or ‘collective memory’, refers to the stories and assumptions about the past that illustrate – or account for – key features of the society we know today. Out of the limitless stock of recoverable knowledge about the past, social memory prioritizes material that validates cultural values or political loyalties in the present, sometimes in the teeth of the available evidence about the past. Academic history, on the other hand, insists on two key principles; that the study of the past
should not simply mirror our own preoccupations, but should pay special attention to what is different and remote from our experience; and that all historical interpretation should be rigorously tested against the evidence. In short, both the standards and the social role of the discipline of history depend on its standing apart from social memory. However these distinctions do not mean that other forms of memory are of no consequence to historians. Historians today are keenly interested in two forms of memory. Collective representations of the past as they circulate in popular culture are one focus of interest. The other is the memories of individuals about their own lifetime, often solicited by the historian. Each of these strikes a different balance between authentic recall and the remodelling of memory after the event. Each in different ways demonstrates the immense cultural signicance of the remembered past.
