In search for lost memory: Mind, brain, culture

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In search for lost memoryMind, brain, culture

• Jens Brockmeier
• Freie Universität Berlin
• University of Manitoba

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• I. February 22, 2007Searching for memory Will
  we ever find it?II. March 21, 2007Locating
  oneself Autobiographical remembering and
  narrative identity constructionIII. April 19,
  2007Remembering Confucius Autobiographical
  memory as cultural practiceIV. May 17,
  2007Cultural memory New spaces of remembering
  and forgetting.

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• March 21, 2007
• II.
• Locating oneself
• Autobiographical remembering and narrative
  identity construction

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• 1
• Struggling for memory
• Heros, villains, sinners

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• Five levels of the study of memory
• 1 Molecular biological level
• 2 Neurological level
• 3 Cognitive- neurocognitive level
• 4 Social level
• 5 Cultural and historical level Cultural and
  historical memory
• Level of memory artifacts and other symbolic
  structures
• Historical semantics
• Conceptual and noetic level

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• A reminder metaphors

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• Heros and villains

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• Anamnesis
• Crossing Lethe and back to the origin

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• Augustine Confessions (397)

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2Fallen heros and other sinners
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• Daniel L. Schacter
• Schacter, D. L. Tulving, E. (Eds.) (1994).
  Memory systems. Cambridge, MA MIT.
• Schacter, D. L. et al. (Eds.)(1995). Memory
  distortion. Cambridge, MA Harvard University
  Press.
• Schacter, D. L. (1996). Searching for memory The
  brain, the mind, and the past. New York Basic
  Books.
• Schacter, D. L (2003) How the mind forgets and
  remembers. London Souvenir.

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• Memories as family pictures
• snapshots from the past stored in the photo album
  (or digital photography archive) of our minds
  that, if stored properly, could be retrieved in
  precisely the same condition in which they were
  put away

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• Elizabeth and Geoffrey Loftus (1980)

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• Transgressions or sins of memory
• 1 Transcience

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• Seven transgressions or sins of memory
• 1 Transcience
• 2 Absent-mindedness

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• Seven transgressions or sins of memory
• 1 Transcience
• 2 Absent-mindedness
• 3 Blocking

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• Seven transgressions or sins of memory
• 1 Transcience
• 2 Absent-mindedness
• 3 Blocking
• 4 Misattribution

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• Seven transgressions or sins of memory
• 1 Transcience
• 2 Absent-mindedness
• 3 Blocking
• 4 Misattribution
• 5 Suggestibility

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• Seven transgressions or sins of memory
• 1 Transcience
• 2 Absent-mindedness
• 3 Blocking
• 4 Misattribution
• 5 Suggestibility
• 6 Bias

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• Seven transgressions or sins of memory
• 1 Transcience
• 2 Absent-mindedness
• 3 Blocking
• 4 Misattribution
• 5 Suggestibility
• 6 Bias
• 7 Persistence

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• Schacter, D. L. (2001)
• The seven sins of memory
• How the mind forgets and remembers.
• Boston Houghton Mifflin

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• 3
• Autobiographical remembering
• and the self

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• 1 An autobiographical act is mixed together with
  other autobiographical acts

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• 1 An autobiographical act is mixed together with
  other autobiographical acts
• 2 An autobiographical process is intermingled
  with other perceptual, cognitive, and affective
  processes and it is often part of or triggered
  by social interaction

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• 1 An autobiographical act is mixed together with
  other autobiographical acts
• 2 An autobiographical process is intermingled
  with other perceptual, cognitive, and affective
  processes often it is part of, or triggered by,
  social interaction
• 3 An autobiographical process is fused with the
  self

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• 1 An autobiographical act is mixed together with
  other autobiographical acts
• 2 An autobiographical process is intermingled
  with other perceptual, cognitive, and affective
  processes often it is part of, or triggered by,
  social interaction
• 3 An autobiographical process is fused with the
  self

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• Self and Identity

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• Narrative identity construction overlaps and,
  indeed, fuses with the autobiographical process
  to the extent that they become indistinguishable
  from each other

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• The self in the bathroom

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• Fabula story (sequential/chronological)
• Sjuzet plot (narrative composition)

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• 9/11
• busy working week
• wakes up, walks to the window, watches burning
  plane
• broods
• goes to the kitchen, has coffee with his son,
  watches the news
• goes to bed again
• makes love to his wife
• she leaves, he listens and thinks and doses and
• sleeps, wakes, doses, daydreams
• thinks of errands (cooking dinner, the
  fishmonger)
• goes to the bathroom
• sits on the toilet
• rises and flushes
• goes to basin to shave

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• Memory defined by retention time
• Sensory memory
• Short-term/working memory
• Long-term memory

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• Narrative techniques and devices
• Shifts between fabula and sjuzet
• Shifts between different levels of time (past,
  present, and future and between difference and
  simultaneity)
• Shifts between different mental states (sleep
  half asleep daydreaming hallucination
  fringes of psychosis fully awake)
• Shifts between different narrative
  perspectives/voices (omniscent narrator narrated
  autobiographical - self s indirect and direct
  voice quoted cultural voices)
• Foregrounding/backgrounding (concrete and
  abstract thought remembering and forgetting)
• Shift between individual and cultural memory
• Tropes
• Metaphors (diaphanous films, archnoid)
• Metonomies (flushing rain molecule magazine
  in coffee room)
• Similies, comparisons (half asleep exploring
  the fringes of psychosis in safety)
• Pictures (the wide green-and-white marble
  floor)

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• 1 An autobiographical act is mixed together with
  other autobiographical acts
• 2 An autobiographical process is intermingled
  with other perceptual, cognitive, and affective
  processes often it is part of, or triggered by,
  social interaction
• 3 An autobiographical process is fused with the
  self

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III. April 19, 2007 Remembering Confucius
Autobiographical memory as cultural
practice