Linguistics

Philosophy

Collective memory

Classics

Pedagogy

Cultural memory

Social memory

Experiential learning

Computer science

Visual arts

Anthropology

Cognitive science

Computer network

Mythology

Generative grammar

Aesthetics

Psychology

Political science

Epistemology

Sociology

Memory work

Perspective (graphical)

Resource (disambiguation)

History

Nations and Nationalism

This article revisits Anthony Smith's landmark collection Myths and Memories of the Nation (1999) from the perspective of recent developments in cultural memory studies. It argues for a more clearly demarcated distinction between myths and memories which acknowledges cultural memory as a site of new experiential perspectives that often work against the authority of myths, seen as the unquestioned truths about the collective past. Drawing on studies of modern memory cultures, it presents a dynamic and generative model that construes memory in terms of cultural practices of remembrance. It shows that memory is not an unchanging legacy but rather a malleable resource for making shared stories about the past. Where Halbwachs (1925) presumed that social frameworks precede and shape memory, remembrance is presented here as a cultural force that helps to redefine social frameworks and to create links between hitherto unconnected imagined communities.

Remembrance as remaking: memories of the nation revisited