Essay On Collective Memory

“Let them eat cake”- the infamous phrase that is part of the popular collective memory of the image of Marie Antoinette. This phrase, however, was never uttered by the French Queen yet is an imperative part of the collective stereotype of Marie Antoinette and perhaps the most prevailing way of understanding her character. A myriad of example like these can be found throughout pop culture, where cultural memory creates a perception of a historical event that is not entirely accurate or in sync with the scholarly conception of such event. Collective and cultural memory morphs and twists the perception of historical events through misconceptions created by media, manipulations from people in power and various cultural gospels and legends. However, even when not entirely truthful, collective memory is a legitimate and valuable way of perceiving a historically event, even if it is not intellectually accepted in academic settings. The term “collective memory” was first used by Hugo von Hofmanshthal who defined the term as a “the dammed up force of our …show more content…
However, there is no reason why the popular memory should be disregarded as history, as it is just as valuable as the scholarly history itself, it just needs to be analyzed for different purposed. Historical events viewed in a scholarly way are widely more accepted by academia, where memory is seen as separate from history. “Memory is not history” an article in The Economist proposes. It states that “memory is by its nature subjective and selective. It cannot substitute for history” (The Economist), which is a view that is often shared in the academic community, where memory is disregarded as biased and thus unworthy. History is often seen as the opposite of memory: “At the heart of history is a critical discourse that is antithetical to spontaneous”, “History is perpetually suspicious of memory”