Heritage and Memory

Abstract

‘Memory’ eludes any neat definition. It is as difficult to define as it is for any one of us to stop and consciously note its use as we engage, as part of our human being-ness, in our everyday memorywork of collecting, recollecting and employing knowledge gained through experiences in and of the past. In human practice, memory, perhaps at its most basic, may be defined as acts of recounting or remembering experienced events, a conceptualization of memory as something intangible but performed in some manner over space and time. Yet memory is also simultaneously agentic in that it is an aspect of the social construction, production and performance of everyday, lived social life which, by extension, includes heritage and identity. This is memory manifested through forms of memorywork, ranging from individual reverie and oral narratives to physical individual or collective performances such as dance or the enactment of daily routines, secular and religious rituals, or festival celebrations.