This section highlights the interrelationship between memory, identity and narrative. The aim is to understand the interrelationship between the discourses of memory and identity and to synthesize both concepts in order to explain how they are constructed and articulated in order to create, transform and reproduce each other. After examining the relationship between the two concepts, I explore the role of the narratives in the combination of identity and memory to form a connected whole. Thus ‘memory in relation to identity’ is considered as it is constructed in narratives; as Anderson notes (1991: 204), “identity, which because it cannot be ‘remembered’, must be narrated”.
Stories related to identity are examined as both ontological and public narratives.
This focus provides a fuller account of the construction and articulation of memory in relation to identity in cultural and social contexts. Narrative memory is categorized as ontological and public here not for the purpose of locating a fixed polar division of memory, but to provide a better understanding of the communicative aspect of memory.
At the end of this section, ‘memory in relation to identity’ is explored as a discursive and narrative action and as a political practice that is constantly articulated and constructed in historical and social contexts.
Identity that is a construction (Laclau 1994:1) is closely interrelated with memory discourse. There is a mutual relationship between identity and memory, as they partially fix each other: identity depends on memory (Davis and Starn 1989:4) and without memory, it is not possible to locate a coherent identity. In the meantime, identity fixes memory to verify itself; since without a ‘stable’ memory, it is impossible to locate a coherent identity. However, the fixity of both memory and identity is partial, temporal and open to new articulations as we are constantly reinterpreting and renegotiating our memories and identities (Fentress & Wickham 1992; Middleton & Edwards 1986, 1987, 1990). According to Lowenthal (1985:199), “[t]he frequency with which we update and interpret our memory weakens coherent temporal identity”. Thus one cannot talk about fixed and stable memories and identities, because complete structures and closures of discourses are unrealizable; they change and are re-interpreted and re-explained through articulations (Berger 1963, Bhabba 1990, Laclau & Mouffe 1985, Middleton & Edwards 1990).
However, the impossibility of an ultimate fixity of memory and identity implies that there have to be partial fixities; otherwise the very flow of differences would be impossible. Even in order to differ, to subvert meaning, there has to be a meaning”
(Howarth, Norval and Stravrakakis 2000: 21, Laclau 1990). Hence, without partial closure and fixity, it is not possible to address the nature of discourses relating to memory and identity.
‘Memory in relation to identity’ can only exist through narratives that are shaped by certain discourses. As Somers and Gibson (1994:58-59) suggest, “it is through narrativity that we come to know, understand, and make sense of the social world, and it is through narratives and narrativity that we constitute our social identities”. Without narratives, it is not possible to locate ‘memory in relation to identity’. When we listen to a narrative story, memory is always there (Fentress and Wickham 1992) and it constructs and is constructed by the narrative: the relationship between narrative and ‘memory in relation to identity’ is mutually constitutive.
In order to grasp the complex functioning of memory, it is useful to examine the identity as it is constructed through ontological and public narratives. Ontological narratives provide a useful insight into autobiographical memories that are mainly related to the narratives of the subject. ‘Autobiographical memory is the memory for information related to the self’ (Brewer 1986:26): these memories are acquired through a complex interrelationship between ontological and public narratives. On the other hand, public
narratives are attached to cultural and institutional formations larger than the single social individual like society, nation and family (Roberts 2001, Calhoun 1994). In this sense, while ontological narratives appear to be ‘interior’ because they are related to the narratives of the subject, public narratives seem to be ‘exterior’ because they are connected to cultural and institutional frameworks. However, as Laclau and Mouffe suggest (1985:111), “neither a total interiority nor a total exteriority is possible” because they are interrelated and they complete and transform each other.
In “Sources of the Self” (1989), Charles Taylor develops an important insight into ontological accounts (ontological narratives) and webs of interlocution (public narratives). Ontological narratives are used to define who we are (Somers and Gibson 1994:61). When we define ourselves, our identities are constructed through narratives, so
‘our identity is what allows us to define what is important to us and what is not’ (Taylor 1989:30). Hence, ‘no matter how much it feels like a discovery, both self identity and self knowledge are always constructions’ (Calhoun 1994:10) that form and are formed through narratives.
Our definition of who we are relies considerably on our autobiographical memory, which is the memory of those events that we ourselves ‘experience’ (Olick and Robbins, 1998:111), and we construct information related to ourselves out of this experience.
Ontological narratives process these events into episodes (Calhoun 1994:59). Thus, our self-understanding incorporates narrative (Taylor 1989): the ‘events’ that we ‘experience’
are always embedded in and occur through narrative frames. There is therefore no primal, unmediated experience that can be recovered (Olick and Robbins 1998:110): we
‘experience’ the world because we understand and interpret it in certain ways, not vice versa” (Bakhurts & Sypnowich 1995 and Bruner 1989:19).
Similarly, we ‘experience’ events in certain ways as we remember, forget and narrate them accordingly. In his essay on ‘The image of Proust’, Benjamin (1999a:198) analyses the distinction between ‘experienced event’ and ‘remembered event’: although the experienced event is finite, the remembering event is not. The experienced event is confined to one sphere of experience in a specific time and place, whereas the remembering event is influential both before and after the event, as it is the weaving of memory. The way we remember the event is constructed by our memories, which are articulated by certain discourses. Hence our interpretations of an event are not the outcome of our ‘experiences’ but of a remembering that is embedded in social and cultural constraints. Thus, although autobiographical memories are mostly conceived as
the reflections of ‘personal’ and ‘private’ experiences, they are social and interpersonal.
‘Experience’ is the interpretation that is caused by inter-subjective exchange with others and embedded in social relations. As Thelen (1989:1122) points out, “people depend on others to help them decide which experiences to forget and which to remember and what interpretation to place on an experience. People develop a shared identity by identifying, exploring and agreeing on memories”.
According to the Popular Memory Group (1982), the authors of ontological narratives are social individuals who speak out of particular positions in the complex of social relations characteristic of particular societies in particular historical times.
However, not only societies, but also other social formations and institutions such as families, nations, communities and media, play a crucial role in the construction and articulation of ontological narratives. The narratives of these social frameworks can be called public narratives because they are related to social and institutional formations that are larger than the single individual (Roberts 2001, Calhoun 1994). In this respect, it is not possible to locate ontological narratives as independent of public narratives. Our identities exist only within public narratives because one cannot form an identity on one’s own; identity can only be described with reference to those who surround it. From this perspective, ontological and public narratives look like different sides of the same coin;
although they represent a different side, they complete each other and compose a single identity. However, this does not mean that memories specific to the social individual do not exist. Autobiographical memories that consist of those events that we ourselves experience are peculiar to us as individuals. Thus, although public narratives that encompass the narratives of families, connections, school education, official history (i.e history textbooks, symbols of tradition, commemorations) and media influence how we interpret the events that we experience alone, they can be defined as our public memories as they are mediated through the public narratives.
Moral values and beliefs also play a role in the articulation of identity that is constructed through the interrelationship between public and ontological narratives.
Oyserman and Markus (1998:107) note that, ‘[a] cultural group’s shared ideas about “how to be” are reflected in culturally significant stories, sacred texts, proverbs, icons, and institutions, as well as lived in the everyday practices such as language, schooling, media, religious and workplace. According to Taylor (1989), to know who we are is to be oriented in moral space, a space in which questions arise about what is good and bad, what has importance and what is trivial. The moral space is located within public
narratives that are the sources of our identity; moral values and beliefs function like the cement which fixes and constructs the structure. And without partial fixity, one cannot talk about the existence of the structure that forms the identity.
The dominant public memory of identity represents temporal fixity; it is connected with dominant institutions and is supported by public narratives that construct moral values and beliefs within a specific time period. Moral values and beliefs are effectively used by the dominant public memory for the continuation of its power. In this respect, as Foucault (cited in Clifford 2001) argues, ‘counter-memory’ liberates us from a particular mode of subjectivity, as it consists of essentially forgetting who we are. It is a forgetfulness of essence, of necessity, of the moral and ontological obligations that bind us to an identity. The self, as a coherent identity, becomes foreign through counter memory. In this way, ‘counter-memory might evoke symbolic struggles over the meaning of events’ (Fowler 2005: 60).
Dominant discourses play a crucial role in the process of turning cultural and social practices into identities: identity is not natural, but historical and political.
According to Gregory (1999:13), the social construction of identity or the ‘fixing’ of racialized, gendered, and other subject positions within a given social order is not only political, it is also the precondition of politics. Identity is constructed by politics to support and undermine particular relationships. As Leed (cited in Gillis 1994:4) points out, identities imply and mask a particular social relationship that is constructed and sustained through social and cultural practices constructed in power relations. In Foucault’s terms, there is no recourse to objective laws and no recourse to pure subjectivity. There are only the cultural practices which have made us what we are. To know what that is, we have to understand the history of the present and that politics is immanent in it (Dreyfus and Rabinow 1982). Cultural and social practices are thus the main source of our memory in relation to identity, which is constructed and articulated through political discourses formed under historical constraints. Without a structured identity, the field of politics would be indefinite and uncertain (Gregory 1999) as the construction of identity provides politics a means for retaining its control. From this perspective, in the next chapter, I examine memory in its relation to national identity and politics, exploring the ways in which ruling groups use the mechanisms of memory (symbols of tradition, commemorations, history textbooks and media) to mobilize memories in the service of concepts of national identity that are parallel to their discourses.
CHAPTER 2: SYMBIOSIS- MECHANISMS OF MEMORY AND