Abstract
The Byatt novels analysed in this book repeatedly link their discussion of individual identity to aspects of both personal and collective memory. These two different dimensions of memory claim a central position in the various ways in which Possession, The Biographer’s Tale and Byatt’s tetralogy explore the notion of identity.
This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution to check access.
Access this chapter
Tax calculation will be finalised at checkout
Purchases are for personal use only
Preview
Unable to display preview. Download preview PDF.
Notes and References
The close conceptual connection between memory and individual identity has a long tradition in Western philosophy, with both John Locke and David Hume, for example, conceiving of memory as a prerequisite of individual identity (Locke, 1975, p.336; Hume, 1964, p.247).
In her article’ spectres of the Past: A. S. Byatt’s Victorian Ghost Stories’, Louisa Hadley links the aspect of ghosts to that of literature, arguing that Possession conceptualizes ‘literature as a form of resurrection’ (Hadley, 2003, p.92).
For a different reading of the similarities between Greenblatt’s ‘desire to speak with the dead’ (Greenblatt, 1988, p.1) and Byatt’s conception of her fictional poets’ voices cf. Gauthier, 2006, pp.74-5.
Halbwachs delineates his theory of collective memory in three works: Les Cadres Sociaux de la Mémoire (1925), La Mémoire Collective (published posthumously in 1950) and La Topographie Légendaire des Évangiles en Terre Sainte (1941).
Noa Gedi and Yigal Elam, for example, point out that Halbwachs does not explain how and why collective memories are formed (Gedi & Elam, 1996, p.37). Furthermore, Gerald Echterhoff and Martin Saar state that Halbwachs neglects to make clear where he locates collective memories (Echterhoff & Saar, 2002, p.29). Martin Zierold highlights the conceptual inconsistencies of Halbwachs’s theory. Zierold criticizes the fact that Halbwachs, on the one hand, uses the term ‘collective memory’ as a metaphor in order to describe the relationship between individual memories and their social frames of reference, while, on the other hand, ascribing ontological existence to the memories of groups (Zierold, 2006, p.66).
For a detailed analysis of these different social groups and their collective memories cf. Halbwachs, 1992, pp.52-167.
However, Halbwachs makes amends for this omission in his later work La Topographie Légendaire des Évangiles en Terre Sainte (1941). In this study, he ascribes mnemonic power to cultural objects, thus aiming to explain why collective memories are not exclusively bound to the narrow time frame of personal communication.
Jan Assmann uses the term ‘communicative memory’ to describe the form of memory which Halbwachs terms ‘mémoire collective’ (collective memory).
Between these two periods of the past lies what the ethnologist Jan Vansina terms the ‘floating gap’ (Vansina, 1985, p.24). This gap covers a time in the past which an oral society only rarely remembers, as it lies between its distant and its recent past. The gap is of a dynamic nature, ‘[b]ecause the limit one reaches in time reckoning moves with the passage of generations’ (Vansina, 1985, p.24). Although the members of a given society are not aware of the floating gap, scholars definitely notice it (Vansina, 1985, pp.23-4). In the context of collective memory, however, it is not the floating gap that is of interest to scholars, but rather the fact that the various social modes of memory are organized without society being aware of the gap (J. Assmann, 1997, p.49). According to Jan Assmann, a society has the impression that its recent past directly borders on its distant past (J. Assmann, 1997, p.49).
Jan Assmann first introduced the concept of cultural memory in his article ‘Kollektives Gedächntis und kulturelle Identität’ (1988), which he re-published in an English translation in 1995 (‘Collective Memory and Cultural Identity’). All further references will be to the English version of this article. Although both Jan and Aleida Assmann have each published widely on this topic, the concept of cultural memory can be regarded as their joint scholarly effort (J. Assmann, 2002c, p.278, endnote 1). Consequently, I ascribe the concept to both of them by using the plural form ‘the Assmanns’ most of the time.
Covering the period of a society’s recent past, communicative memory is also the subject matter of oral history (J. Assmann, 1995, p.126; 1997, p.51). However, this does not imply that only oral societies develop communicative memories, because literate societies have communicative memories, too (J. Assmann, 1997, p.59). According to Jan Assmann, the difference between these two social modes lies instead in the different versions of their distant pasts which they create. While oral societies refer to their mythical origins as their distant past, literate societies construct their distant past out of historical facts and events (J. Assmann, 1997, p.51).
In their early work on cultural memory, the Assmanns only differentiate between two forms of collective memory, namely communicative memory and cultural memory(cf. esp. Assmann & Assmann, 1994; J. Assmann, 1995 and 1997). In their more recent publications, however, they attempt to further differentiate their theory of memory, introducing the two additional concepts of generational memory and ‘kollektives Gedächtnis’ (collective memory), which is however not to be confused with Halbwachs’s mémoire collective (A. Assmann, 2002; J. Assmann, 2002c).
Critics such as Siegfried Wiedenhofer (2002, p.268) and Peter Fritzsche (2002, p.252) reproach the Assmanns for applying far too narrow a conception of culture by defining it as memory. Indeed, Jan Assmann claims that ‘[c]ulture is memory’ (2002b, p.239), but he is also aware of the fact that memory is only one of the many aspects of culture (2002b, p.273).
For Cassirer’s concept of symbols also cf. Cassirer, 1972, 1977b.
Copyright information
© 2009 Lena Steveker
About this chapter
Cite this chapter
Steveker, L. (2009). Identity and Memory. In: Identity and Cultural Memory in the Fiction of A. S. Byatt. Palgrave Macmillan, London. https://doi.org/10.1057/9780230248595_8
Download citation
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1057/9780230248595_8
Publisher Name: Palgrave Macmillan, London
Print ISBN: 978-1-349-36561-6
Online ISBN: 978-0-230-24859-5
eBook Packages: Palgrave Literature & Performing Arts CollectionLiterature, Cultural and Media Studies (R0)