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Memorandum: memory and history in
psychology
The
electronic scholarly journal “Memorandum” appears as a space for debates
about memory and history in the field of psychology: their specifics and
relationships.
This
space, focused on human experience in different historical moments, wishes
to help in the task, proper to psychology, of knowing individual and
collective subjects as they produce culture, that is, as they seek and
attribute meaning while positioning themselves in their social context.
Culture
is the subject’s instrument for the elaboration of experience and, at the
same time, it is the received range of perception for the delimitation of
the world in which to orient itself. Therefore, one can apprehend culture
from the point of view of the subjects who make it.
History’s
and memory’s proper dynamics can be recognized from the standpoint of the
subject:
History
seeks in the past for the understanding of the questions that interest the
subject in the present, focusing in discontinuities in order to remake the
links of a course of connections.
Memory
works on given links – some historical elements – as a bridge towards
the past and establishes an immediate and affective connection with the
origin in which it is interested.
The
subject, mobilized by his present concerns, turns to the past – in
association with diversified social groups in order to limit themes and
perspectives – thus accomplishing both the works of history and of memory.
History
and
memory, with their own
instruments and perspectives, both and each one make culture.
Memory
needs the elements of history to achieve its dynamics. History needs memory
that makes possible the definition of historical objects by attributing
value and meaning to them.
Such
a large and complex perspective must be assumed, in a regular and rigorous
way, within an interdisciplinary field, to be construed and shared among
researchers stemming from different areas of knowledge, such as philosophy,
history, sociology, anthropology, literature, arts and others.
The
title “Memorandum” points out “the memorable dimension of objects,
personalities, events”, and, at the same time, evocates the advice: “Memora,
dum! Come, tell!”.
The
challenge is made. Set to work!
Miguel Mahfoud
Marina Massimi
Editors
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