Abstract
This chapter explores the links between collective memory and the imagination of collective futures. Drawing on works on imagination and autobiographical memory, it first discusses the role of past experiences in imagining the future. It then highlights the consequences of this perspective for collective memories and collective futures, arguing that the former provides the basis for the latter. Three case studies are presented, each illustrating a different type of relation between collective memory and imagination. This will lead me to the conclusion that representations of the world are characterised by “temporal heteroglossia”, the simultaneous presence of multiple periods of time, and that they mediate the relation between collective memory and imagination, allowing us to “think through time”.
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- 1.
All the transcripts come from the French Parliament website. The only additions are the political inclination in brackets after the name of the speaker, and […] to signal that parts of the quote were removed to shorten it, although always while being careful not to alter meaning. Political affiliations were simplified for clarity (see de Saint-Laurent, 2012, 2014 for full details). All the transcripts are identified by date and parliamentary session, and all the translations were made by the author.
- 2.
All the names in the quote work in opposite pairs, one representing humanist ideals and the other their oppressors. The original quote, rather long, can be found in de Saint-Laurent, 2014, and includes more of such oppositions .
- 3.
The participants in this study used a variety of processes to reason about history . However, analogies were employed quasi systematically when the participants were discussing the future, which was the case for no other process. For a full description, however, see de Saint-Laurent, 2018.
- 4.
All names have been changed.
- 5.
The idea of time travel also employs a spatial metaphor , which has been shown to be deeply problematic for memory (Brockmeier, 2010).
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de Saint-Laurent, C. (2018). Thinking Through Time: From Collective Memories to Collective Futures. In: de Saint-Laurent, C., Obradović, S., Carriere, K. (eds) Imagining Collective Futures. Palgrave Studies in Creativity and Culture. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-76051-3_4
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