Download - 2781705 Halb Wachs
-
8/10/2019 2781705 Halb Wachs
1/4
Maurice Halbwachs on Collective Memory. by Lewis A. CoserReview by: Suzanne VromenAmerican Journal of Sociology, Vol. 99, No. 2 (Sep., 1993), pp. 510-512Published by: The University of Chicago PressStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/2781705.
Accessed: 28/03/2012 06:54
Your use of the JSTOR archive indicates your acceptance of the Terms & Conditions of Use, available at.
http://www.jstor.org/page/info/about/policies/terms.jsp
JSTOR is a not-for-profit service that helps scholars, researchers, and students discover, use, and build upon a wide range of
content in a trusted digital archive. We use information technology and tools to increase productivity and facilitate new forms
of scholarship. For more information about JSTOR, please contact [email protected].
The University of Chicago Pressis collaborating with JSTOR to digitize, preserve and extend access to
American Journal of Sociology.
http://www.jstor.org
http://www.jstor.org/action/showPublisher?publisherCode=ucpresshttp://www.jstor.org/stable/2781705?origin=JSTOR-pdfhttp://www.jstor.org/page/info/about/policies/terms.jsphttp://www.jstor.org/page/info/about/policies/terms.jsphttp://www.jstor.org/stable/2781705?origin=JSTOR-pdfhttp://www.jstor.org/action/showPublisher?publisherCode=ucpress -
8/10/2019 2781705 Halb Wachs
2/4
American Journal of Sociology
quate
to
our sense of ourselves
as
not
simply singular but
unique,
irre-
placeable beings. Metaphysics fails to
solve the problem
because it deals
with individuality in general terms and can, at best, grasp the individual
as
the accidental, and the
philosophy
of
consciousness fails because it
makes the mistake of
thinking that
subjectivity will be uncovered by
introspection instead
of realizing with Humboldt and
Mead that individ-
uation
is
not the
self-realization of
an
independently acting subject car-
ried out
in
isolation and freedom (p.
152) but a
linguistically mediated
affair
in
which the
phenomena
of
individuality, intersubjectivity, and
life-historical identity
emerge as human
beings interact with one another.
While
it
can be
argued
that
this
fails to
capture that moment of
individu-
ality and subjectivity found when
subjects encounter
themselves
in
iso-
lation and freedom, it must still be granted that Habermas's discussion
illuminates
many
of the
important
connections between
individuation
and
socialization.
More
generally,
the
essays
in
this volume
devoted
to the thought of
C.
S.
Peirce and G.
H.
Mead
and
to
the
attempt
to level the
distinc-
tion between
philosophy and science, on
the one hand
and literature, on
the
other,
are
vintage
Habermas. They are grounded
in
a thorough mas-
tery of
the
material
discussed, and
they
are
invariably insightful both
in
themselves and because
they reflect and
embody
an
understanding
of
the whole of things. The translator's clear, insightful introductory
essay
adds to the value
of
the
volume.
Maurice
Halbwachs on
Collective
Memory.
Edited,
translated,
and
with
an
introduction
by
Lewis
A. Coser.
Chicago:
University of
Chicago
Press,
1992. Pp.
244.
$41.00.
Suzanne Vromen
Bard
College
To
Maurice
Halbwachs
(1877-1945), a
French
sociologist and
collabora-
tor with
Durkheim,
we
owe the
earliest
sociological
study of
memory.
Between
1925 and
1944 he
wrote
three
major
works on
this
topic.
Lewis
Coser has now
translated
sections
from
two of
these
works, The
Social
Frameworks
of
Memory,
originally
published
in
1925, and
The
Legendary
Topography of
the
Gospels
in
the
Holy
Land,
published
in
1941.
Halb-
wachs's
last work on
memory appeared
posthumously
in
1950
and was
translated
in
1980 as The
Collective
Memory
(New
York:
Harper
and
Row),
with an
introduction by
Mary
Douglas.
Halbwachs's
interest
in
memory
is
undoubtedly
due to
the
influence of
his
teacher,
the
philosopher Henri
Bergson.
Inspired
by him,
Halbwachs
studied
philosophy
at the
Ecole
Normale
and
first
pursued
a
career as a
philosopher.
Soon,
however,
he
was
attracted
to
the social
sciences,
be-
came
part
of
the
Durkheimian
group and
contributed
regularly to the
Anne'e
ociologique.
After
World
War
I,
Halbwachs
followed
Georg Sim-
510
-
8/10/2019 2781705 Halb Wachs
3/4
Book
Reviews
mel
in
the
chair
of
pedagogy
and
sociology
at
the
University of
Strasbourg
(Frenchagain),
moving
in
1935 to the Sorbonne
and
in
1944to the
presti-
gious College de France.
Halbwachs
made the
relationship between
memory and
society
his
central
program.
In The
Social Frameworks
of
Memory
he
argued against
considering memory an
exclusively
individual
faculty.
To
remember
means to be tied to
collective frameworks of
social reference
points that
allow memories to be
coordinated
in
time and
space.
Not
only
are
memo-
ries
acquired through society,
they are
recalled,
recognized, and
located
socially. Memory also orders
the experience
and ensures
the
continuity
of
collectivities.
Halbwachs detailed the
collective
memories of families
(e.g., as
they
are embedded
in
first
names),
religious groups, and the
nobility. Rooted not only in traditions but also in images and ideas de-
rived from the present
and
in
a concrete
experiential reality, these
collec-
tive
memories are not pure
recollections but
reconstructions.
Halbwachs's
views on
memory
stand
in
sharp
opposition to Henri
Bergson's
intuitive stance. For
Halbwachs,
consciousness of
duration is
a
social fact. To
remember,
one needs
others;
to remember
is to
under-
stand a relation.
The memorable
events
in
the lives of
groups
to
which
the individual
belongs serve as a
coherent
system
of
reference
points
for
recall.
Halbwachs treated religious collective memory empirically in The Leg-
endary
Topography
of
the
Gospels
in the
Holy
Land.
By
surveying
sacred
sites
in
the
Holy
Land
in
detail, he showed that the
locations of
major
events linked to
the
origins
of
Christianity change according
to
significant
doctrinal and
political
developments.
Therefore,
he
contended,
these lo-
calizations serve
as means of
legitimation,
as didactic
modes,
as
a
kind
of
staged
authenticity.
Coser's introduction is
a
signal
contribution to our
knowledge
of
Halb-
wachs.
Always
a talented
synthesizer,
Coser uses
contemporary
scholar-
ship
to
place
Halbwachs
in
context and to
present
a
comprehensive and
lucid sketch of his life and works. Coser also offers creative speculations,
for
example,
about the
reasons that
might
have led
Halbwachs to
opt
for Durkheim and
sociology,
and he
provides
a valuable
discussion
of
Halbwachs's
legacy.
Some
minor
biographical points
need
rectification.
For
example the version of
Halbwachs's arrest
in
1944
is
incorrect (p.
7).
The book
contains selections
from two different
texts.
The
first
half of
the
original
work on
the social frameworks
of
memory
is
reduced
in
the
translation to
25
pages,
the
second
half,
which
treats the
collective memo-
ries of
groups,
is
completely translated. From
the second text only
the
conclusion is
included. What we miss
therefore,
among
other
things,
is
the
continuity
of Halbwachs's
confrontational
dialogue
with
Bergson
and
the discussion of the
localization of memories.
Coser,
however,
compen-
sates for the
fragmentation
by
the
excellence of his
introduction.
Coser
objects
to
what he calls
Halbwach's
presentist
approach,
whereby
the
past
considered
only
as a
reflection of
present
concerns
and
becomes a
string
of
discontinuous
snapshots
(pp. 25-26).
The
criticism,
511
-
8/10/2019 2781705 Halb Wachs
4/4
American Journal of Sociology
I think, is not
justified. Halbwachs was clearly aware
of historical conti-
nuity and of the
particular mix of past traditions
and present concerns
that shape collective memory (pp. 120-21, 188). He was fascinated by
the topography
of the
Holy
Land
precisely
because
it
was
such
an extra-
ordinary case,
one
in
which
vestiges
of the
past
had been obliterated.
Marc Bloch, the historian and
a
Strasbourg
colleague,
had
no
prob-
lem in his review of Les Cadres Sociaux
de la
Memoire in discerning
this fusion of past and present,
yet he set Halbwachs's
future agenda
by asking
him
to give
more attention to
distortions and false
memo-
ries.
Coser has grappled valiantly
with a language often
awkward and
con-
fusing;
his
effort is our
gain.
Unfortunately
he has not
been helped
by
expert proofreading. Typos abound, words are missing and the page
numbers that
supposedly identify the translated
fragments in the original
version have
no
connection
with
reality.
A
critical reading of Halbwachs's
finest works raises questions about
representations, continuity,
and change, legitimation,
authenticity and
identity. It
is
timely that
we
finally
have
access
to it.
Thorstein
Veblen and His Critics, 1891-1963:
Conservative, Liberal, and
Radical Perspectives. By Rick Tilman. Princeton, N.J.: Princeton Uni-
versity
Press, 1992. Pp. 356.
$39.50.
Sidney Plotkin
Vassar
College
No writer
is
prone
to
causing
more
dismay
among
the
taxonomists of
social
theory
than
Thorstein Veblen. An authentic
American radical, to
be
sure,
Veblen's ideas
encompass significant
strands of
conservative
and
liberal, as well as radical
thought. Thoroughly opposed to modern busi-
ness enterprise for its power to sabotage production, distort consumer
preference, and dominate the
state, Veblen was as pessimistic as any
Burkean conservative about the
difficulties
of
coherent
social change and
as committed
as
any
classical
liberal
to
the
simple
virtue of
live and let
live. Rick Tilman's study is a
valuable effort to
answer the question,
What
has American
social science made
of
this most
recalcitrant
of
minds?
The
short answer
is,
not
much.
Its
range
and
reading of
sources, alone will make this book indispens-
able
to
Veblen scholars.
Tilman
has uncovered some real
gems,
for
exam-
ple, a little known review by George Herbert Meade of The Nature of
Peace (New
York:
Macmillan, 1917). However, those
thirsting for
a new
interpretationof Veblen
will have to
be
patient. Tilman's
study provides
neither
a
summary
nor
a
new
synthesis of
Veblen's
ideas,
and its
argu-
ments
assume
a
good
working knowledge
of
Veblen's many books and
essays.
In
this first
of a
proposed
three-volume
analysis
of Veblen's rela-
512