Journal Entry #3 - Historical Memory

Historical Memory & Intercultural

Communication Module 3 - Unit 3

COMM 174 Dr. Halualani

In This Module/Unit:

• Read M & N, Chapter 4

• Read Halualani Chapter on Historical Memory & Intercultural Communication

• Read the Hasian article

What is “History”? • History as a field of power

• History as a power-laden collection of events, images, experiences, sentiments, relations, and perceptions (memories) for a specific nation, culture, or group.

• History is not “neutral.”

• History as a field of power that is shaped by dominant structures and parties (for e.g., governmental bodies, economic interests and corporate powers, media conglomerates, legal and educational institutions, reigning majority groups).

What is “History”? • History is always created and

spoken from a position of power.

• The History that is created, is a construction and specific vested version of the past that exclusively advances the interests of dominant (and status quo) structures and power interests.

• Much work and effort are taken to continually and subtly reproduce the dominant version of History and the embedded power interests.

What is “History”? • Oftentimes, history in most

cultural contexts, stands as male, White, and upper-class privileged accounts and versions of “what happened.”

Historical Memory: How Do Structures and Groups Remember and Forget the Past?

• Historical memory (also termed “collective memory”) refers to a remembrance of the past as shared by a group or nation. Meaning, how we see and understand the past is largely a construction created, maintained, and circulated by a group or collective.

Historical Memory: How Do Structures and Groups Remember and Forget the Past?

• “Lies My Teacher Told Me: Everything Your American History Textbook Got Wrong,” sociologist James M. Loewen (1995) argues that what Americans learn in their history classes and from their history textbooks are inaccuracies and slanted representations that promote the positive (and innocent) image of the U.S. government.

• “The United States dropped three times as many tons of explosives in Vietnam as it dropped in all theaters of World War II, including Hiroshima and Nagasaki.

• Woodrow Wilson, known as a progressive leader, was in fact a white supremacist who personally vetoed a clause on racial equality in the Covenant of the League of Nations.

• The first colony to legalize slavery was not Virginia but Massachusetts.

• Helen Keller was a radical socialist.

• People from other continents had reached the Americas many times before 1492 (the year of “discovery” by famed explorer Christopher Columbus).”

Historical Memory: Your Own Family Histories & Memories

• Think about what you know about your own family history:

• Where did your parents/ grandparents come from?

• How far back can you trace your family tree?

• What do you know?

• What don’t you know?

• JE #3 & Discussion Posting #3

Historical Memory: My Own Family Story

• My Family Story:

• My Father’s Grandmother (My Great-Grandmother) (Eva Halualani)

• Trying to trace her roots to identify how much Hawaiian blood we have

• For our relatives and claims for a Hawaiian homestead

• Birth certificates (state documents)

• Census records

• To this day, we still cannot prove our Native Hawaiian bloodlines over 50% (via official documents)

• Difficult to recover

Historical Amnesia • Another key aspect of historical memory

and remembering is also what is forgotten about the past or historical amnesia.

• Certain events, traditions, and elements of the past are repressed and forgotten in historical memory and History narratives because of the power interests involved and the large stakes at hand in projecting a specific version of the past.

• Thus, what are forgotten and elided are just as important as what is remembered.

• We need to look at both the symbolic presences (what is told and what this reveals) and symbolic absences (what is not told or ignored and what this reveals) of depictions of the past.

Remaking Collective/Historical Memories • We are not forever doomed to History as our

only source of memory.

• Instead, the Popular Memory Group (1982), led by Richard Johnson, argue that communities re- create dominant historical memories, or the formal constructions of cultural histories and subjectivities found in state forms (e.g., museums, "History" textbooks, national commemorative discourse, administrative and legal documents). In social life, community members make different sense of the formal past by selectively remembering, forgetting, and re-articulating images, histories, and narratives of who they are, thereby constructing private memories.

• Such a notion resonates with Marx's popular explanation of social life -- "that people make history but in conditions not of their own making." Private memories, therefore, are framed by dominant conditions but not determined by them.

How Historical Memory Impacts Intercultural Communication

• Historical memories shape our specific intercultural relations and in ways that we may not fully understand.

• Pre-Contact

• Perceptions from myths or specific historical versions

• Avoidance

• Interpretations of those around us

• View the awesome videos in this Module/Unit #3 (Vis-a-Vis, Who Do You Think You Are/History Channel Videos)

• Think about the powerful role of history and historical memory!