Reading and unpacking "Memory and Sociology: Themes and issues by Paoll Jedlowski" - Part I | Academic Literature | NuBlaccSoul Reads…

Recall of past experiences so as to best respond to subsequent events is the primary function of memory or re-membering. This capacity to modify, to evolve in the present based on (un)learnings of the past, for an experience that is better, or at least different, in the future.

In Contemporary Culture and Society, memory and re-membering has evolved past it being a site of storage of past experiences but has since shifted to being present-orientated, understanding that the past is re-written, unwritten and revised as per the needs of the present, through selective filtering and (re)structuring as required by the today. The now "shapes the past" and re(orders), (re)constructs and (re)interprets as required in a plurality of interrelated functions.

The temporal shift backwards and forwards through the two-way arrow of time constitutes a necessary part of the human experience culturally, politically, psychologicay, economically, socially, sociologically and anthropologically. It is in the negotiation of what we choose to re-member, how we individually and collectively choose to re-member, and what it is we elect to forget and cast collective amnesia for about ourselves and our histories.