Memory, identity and public discourse

Abstract

Identity and memory seem to be closely linked, whether we speak of an individual actor, or whether we refer to a collective actor. Sociological theory and historical studies, however, have marginally addressed this double relationship between identity and memory, and between individual and collective identity. In the first relation, the temporal dimension is omitted, as in the classic works of Maurice Halbwachs, or treated as "collective memory", as a set of "social frames" in which the memory of the individual goes back, but rarely the role it plays in the formation of the subject's identity (individual and collective) and social action is investigated.