Individual and Collective Memory Consolidation

Abstract

An argument that individuals and collectives form memories by analogous processes and a case study of collective retrograde amnesia. We form individual memories by a process known as consolidation: the conversion of immediate and fleeting bits of information into a stable and accessible representation of facts and events. These memories provide a version of the past that helps us navigate the present and is critical to individual identity. In this book, Thomas Anastasio, Kristen Ann Ehrenberger, Patrick Watson, and Wenyi Zhang propose that social groups form collective memories by analogous processes. Using facts and insights from neuroscience, psychology, anthropology, and history, they describe a single process of consolidation with analogous—not merely comparable—manifestations on any level, whether brain, family, or society. They propose a three-in-one model of memory consolidation, composed of a buffer, a relator, and a generalizer, all within the consolidating entity, that can explain memory consolidation phenomena on individual and collective levels. When consolidation is disrupted by traumatic injury to a brain structure known as the hippocampus, memories in the process of being consolidated are lost. In individuals, this is known as retrograde amnesia. The authors hypothesize a "social hippocampus" and argue that disruption at the collective level can result in collective retrograde amnesia. They offer the Chinese Cultural Revolution (1966–1976) as an example of trauma to the social hippocampus and present evidence for the loss of recent collective memory in mainland Chinese populations that experienced the Cultural Revolution.

The Promise of Memory: Politics of Memory and Caste Inequality in Collective Memory Consolidation

“…I acknowledge that the gap between individual and collective memory is difficult to bridge within the scope of this article. This article's treatment of the relationship between collective and individual memory comes close to the existing research of Anastasio et al (2012) who have argued that "the brain is the medium for individual memory, society is the medium for collective memory" (2012: 55).…”

“…As Anastasio et al (2012) in their book explain 'three in one' model suggested and discussed at the beginning, the memory consolidation process involves a 'buffer,' a 'relater,' and a 'generalizer' located in an entity. If insights of existing and above mentioned works on UP's identity-based mobilization of memory and discussion are to be fused in the Anastasio et al model then caste identity is the 'entity' within which buffering of collective memory takes place, whereas the role of 'relaters' is played by political parties and their affiliated organizations in deciding the relationships between buffered memories of various caste groups and stored in the 'generalizer' or simply in the community domain.…”

Reasoning about Emergence of Collective Memory

“…If we admit the existence of emergent collective memory, the major question is whether the processes of social collective memory resemble in any way the processes of individual memory or that of small groups (like families) studied extensively by psychologists. In an astonishing thesis from an interdisciplinary collaboration of neurobiology, medicine, cognitive science and anthropolgy, Anastasio at al ( [2]) assert that these two processes are in fact the same. The model we present below, taking automata as memory representations, attempts to build a 'social automaton' (roughly speaking) in this spirit, showing a correspondence of processes.…”

Bridging the gap between the social science and the social ontology of collective memory

“…Considerable work has been done on collective memory and remembering from psychological, sociological, anthropological, and historical perspectives. Psychologists have studied how basic psychological mechanisms can explain the dynamics of collective memory formation (Anastasio et al, 2012; Hirst et al, 2018; Middleton and Edwards, 1990); sociologists, many of whom have been inspired by the foundational work of Maurice Halbwachs, have explored the social aspects of individual memory as well as memory as a group-level phenomenon (Connerton, 1989; Halbwachs, 1980; Olick, 1999; Zerubavel, 1996); anthropologists have examined the transmission of memory in oral traditions and practices as well as symbols and myths (Bastide, 1978; Evans-Pritchard, 1940; Goody, 1986); and historians have reflected on the role of personal and collective memory in the construction of historical narratives and on the relationship between history and memory as modes of understanding the past (Burke, 1989; Yerushalmi, 1982; Zerubavel, 1995). Philosophy has not been as central in memory studies as have some of these other disciplines, but much philosophical work has been done on the nature of groups and group agency and this can be brought into productive contact with related issues in the social sciences.…”