The distance between cultural heritage and memory (Part 1): Feelings about the passing of time｜Contribution #24
Author: Caspar (PhD candidate, University of Groningen)
I believe everyone has had the following experience: when you open a cabinet door or open a drawer and think about cleaning and tidying up your room, you move, carry out, pick up, brush, watch and appreciate from various angles, Then put down an item; you recall, imagine, lose focus, be in a trance, smile, sigh, and be moved. This item may be a mulled wine glass bought at a Christmas market in Europe in 2016, a bottle of hand-folded paper stars, a magnet bought in Tainan, or a test paper from your middle school days.
Maybe you will repeat the above actions for every item that needs to be organized, maybe some items will occupy you for a long time, or maybe you have completely forgotten that some items have appeared in your life. Finally, you arrange the important and useful items well and maybe get out a few bags of trash.
Then you will find that some items occupy an important position in your memory and are destined to be cherished by you; some are not that important, but you still remember your emotions when you received it on the first day; some are It's so strange that you wonder why it appears in your space. You stare at them, and what you see brings back one memory, and another, and another. . .
You may even think: Can my "good old days" only be reminisced? Why does time pass so quickly? Can my memories only stay in my mind? Then you look at the items you just sorted and arranged a few more times, as if you want to project a certain memory onto them, so that you will never forget these sweet, brilliant, peaceful, or bitter, exciting, and thrilling things. remember.
"Lieux de Mémoire"
Eh? Am I not reading a popular science article? How could there be such a sensational and romantic beginning? This is indeed true, but this may also be a manifestation of the "human nature" of the humanities - if "people" do not resonate, how can we understand it?
Having said that, the phenomenon mentioned above is called "Lieux de mémoire" (Lieux de mémoire) by French historian Pierre Nora; some Chinese translations will translate it into "the place where memory is located" and "memory." field"). He used France as an example to describe how, starting from the end of the 18th century, the Marseillaise, the tricolor flag, festival calendars and even books and textbooks carried the memories of different French people. Their materiality, symbolism, and functionality dominate the daily lives of French people, and inversely affect how people view themselves, ultimately forming a strong nationalism and then constructing an "orthodox" French history.
According to Noha, although those original most intimate and personal memories may eventually be absorbed from top to bottom, even crushed, or become specimen-like and textbook-like history, but because of this, when people see When the outside world "is different from the memory" and you feel "why time flies so fast", you will be more devoted to project your memory to the outside world, carry your own memories, and at the same time resist the baptism and forgetfulness of time.
Just like when you are afraid that you will forget something important, you will write notes to "externalize" what you remember into words or images that you can see. When you project a memory to a place or an object, objects, or even an idea, they become associated with your memory. They also become your "memory place", so that when you remember them, you will also remember the projected memory.
A better example is souvenirs. When you travel abroad and hope to get something to commemorate and record your journey, you may look for a souvenir - something that can be used to carry the memory of your journey, and at the same time, you can remember it by looking at it. A souvenir of the journey. When you project your memory on such an object, it becomes your "memory place" and is given a unique meaning by you. Interestingly, the English word "souvenir" for souvenirs comes from French, which means "remember" or "remind". It allows you to remember it and at the same time, it can remind you of this special memory in the future.
By extension, if we take photos, videos, write articles, etc. in order to record our memories, this is how we create more "memory places", and the purpose is to freeze our current memories so that they can be preserved. So that we can look back on these memories later.
In this way, in order to fight against the thief of time and the weight of history, people always hope to project invisible memories onto objects to give the invisible memories more weight. Create more "memory places", let seemingly permanent materials help carry our fleeting memories, preserve and maintain them, and then deal with our forgetfulness.
But to put it another way, when an item no longer carries someone’s memory, or we can no longer evoke a memory from an item, or the memories evoked are weightless and no longer cordial, this item Objects will become meaningless. At this time, the "memory place" will disintegrate and become a cold specimen - just like those ancient cultural relics sealed in the display window of a museum, or even become a piece of useless garbage, facing destruction and destruction at any time.
Therefore, the more we fight against the torrent of history and human forgetfulness, the more people will build more "memory places" to allow us to "remember" our experiences, identities, cultures, thoughts and values. At the same time, if something wants to avoid being fossilized or destroyed, it needs to carry the memories of different people and different eras, so that it can continue to be protected and cherished. The "Land of Memory" requires different people to cast different memories, and use memory to renovate the "Land of Memory".
Therefore, perhaps a memory only "belongs" to one generation, but if it is cast as different memories by several generations and given a lasting and ever-new meaning, an object - an object that serves as a place of multiple "memories" - can Against time, it continues to be understood and passed on.
Memory and cultural heritage
Memories, meaning, inheritance, specimens, destruction. . . After reading this, perhaps readers have already thought of another concept that is often discussed in Macau - "cultural heritage" (what you are seeing brings back a memory...).
Although Noha did not explicitly state the connection between "memory place" and "cultural heritage", many scholars have discussed the similarities. After all, many of the examples mentioned by Noha have become France's "cultural heritage" under common understanding.
The reality is that most heritage research will discuss the management of cultural heritage (about administrative bureaucracy, legal lists, maintenance and promotion, etc.), or the (improper) use of cultural heritage (such as tourism, economics, politics) etc.), so that many people often feel that "cultural heritage" is irrelevant or boring. Even "cultural heritage" has become a cliché, giving people a preconceived feeling.
But Noha's "Place of Memory" may allow us to redefine what "cultural heritage" is and experience firsthand what "cultural heritage" is - after all, Macau's cultural heritage "has something close to it". What's more, Macau people have a lot of "thirst" for memories. You only need to look at how many platforms with the names of "memory", "reminiscence", "nostalgia" and "then" on the Internet to get a glimpse of it.
If we look at the "cultural heritage" around us from the perspective of "memory places", we will find that we do not need to have an accurate understanding of every item or place first, but must first understand it. Look at yourself: What do I “remember” about this object and this place? Do I have any memories of them? Or, what kind of memories can they bring back to me? What kind of memories do these hold for me? Is it the quiet past? An ups and downs yesterday? Private? Or collectively?
As mentioned at the beginning of the article, when you find a personal item that can remind you of important memories, you will cherish and collect it. If you find that certain "cultural heritage" can remind you of important memories, you may I began to feel that these places or things labeled as "cultural heritage" are worthy of being cherished and "collected". Because when you start projecting your memories on these places or things, they also become your "memory places."
At the same time, to put it more romantically, by revisiting those places that are remembered and cherished by you; re-looking at those objects; repeating those behaviors and habits, in a sense, you can break through the line of time and pass through the brain. The inner memory and the things in front of you are connected here-and-now to there-and-then.
Therefore, if we first put aside the label of "cultural heritage" and then look at what places, objects, festivals, and even lifestyles can connect our memories, this approach will probably be better than top-down methods. Instilling "what is and why cultural heritage should be protected" can enable us to sincerely appreciate certain places, objects, festivals and lifestyles, and then learn, understand, protect and inherit them. After all, rather than being "required" to recognize and protect those cultural relics with a sense of distance, it is more natural and spontaneous to contact them in the name of memory.
Therefore, "cultural heritage" is not just a list or a gimmick that people talk about, but more importantly, how they relate to personal experiences and memories. Probably in this way, we can be said to be able to "inherit" them, and they can become our "heritage" and become those things around us that make us recall, imagine, lose focus, seem, smile, sigh, and move. .
Good old days can only be good "old" days?
The imagination is wonderful, but in reality, if we only use this understanding of "memory" to view our cultural heritage, a big problem will arise: being too obsessed with the "good old days" of the past may cause us to ignore it. Forgetting the future and development will make us overly romantic and overly individualistic. How would other memory studies and heritage scholars respond to this question? How can recalling the past be combined with development and progress?
In the next article, we will continue to discuss how to put into practice the relationship between cultural heritage and memory.
bibliography:
Nora, Pierre. “Between Memory and History: Les Lieux de Mémoire.” Representations 26 (1989): 7-24.
Nora, Pierre, ed. Rethinking France: Les Lieux de Mémoire . University of Chicago Press, 2001.
Smith, Laurajane. Uses of Heritage . London: Routledge, Taylor & Francis Group, 2006.
#Number of articles: 1️⃣8️⃣7️⃣
👉 Lecture in October: Macau in British Declassified Archives after 1949 (Ph.D. Chui Yongjian, Department of History, National University of Singapore)
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