Social Processes and Collective Memory: A Cross-Cultural Approach to Remembering Political Events
Jose Luis Gonzalez
University of the Basque Country, Spain
Social memory reflects the influence of social factors on individual memory. Collective memory, on the other hand, can be considered as distributed processes of memory or transactive memory ( Wegner, 1988) with social functions. This chapter studies how individuals and groups assimilate and cope with past collective traumatic political events. Much of the research builds from Halbwachs' approach to social and collective memory. Specifically, the function of socially shared images of the past is to allow the group to foster social cohesion, to develop and defend social identification, and to justify current attitudes and needs. Halbwachs posited that past political events are remembered when they are commemorated and this commemoration serves each of these functions. However, traumatic political events are a problem in Halbwachs' theory. They are "silent memories," usually repressed, which voluntarily are forgotten and usually divide a society.
In synthesizing the research on how individuals and groups (in this case families) cope with past political traumas (Spanish and Latin American dictatorship periods), this chapter examines how social sharing, inhibition, remembering, and the attitude toward past and current society are related. It becomes evident that strong relations emerge between remembering negative political events, social sharing, and negative attitudes toward both past and current society. Interestingly, results do not support predictions based on neo-Freudian approaches to collective memory, between inhibition and rumination. Indeed, evidence is provided to suggest that the "conspiracy of silence," or the inhibition of talking about past traumatic