AMST 102 Final UNC

Invented Tradition (Eric Hobsbawm) 

  • Set of practices, normally governed by rules and of a ritual/symbolic nature to represent certain values and norms by repetition 

Imagined Community (Benedict Anderson) 

  • Nation is an imagined political community that is inherently limited in scope and sovereign in nature

  • Must be constructed and upheld

  • National identity impedes the prospect of a world community

Synecdoche

  • figure of speech in which a term for a part of something refers to the whole of something

Apocryphal

  • a story or statement of doubtful authenticity, although widely circulated as being true.

Barbie Zelizer’s six basic premises about collective remembering:  processual, unpredictable, partial, useable, both particular and universal, and material

  • Mnemonic: Peppa Pig Uses Pink Umbrellas Under Monsoons

  1. Processual

  • Changes over time

  • Remembering is a process that is constantly unfolding, changing, and transforming

  1. Partial 

  • Power interests behind which are remembered 

  • No single memory contains all that we know or could know about any single event

  1. Usable

  • Serve different purposes

  • Evaluated for ways it helps use make connections over time and space and to ourselves

  1. Particular & Universal

  • Has an origin and becomes bigger

  • Can act as a particular representation of the past for certain groups while taking on universal significance for others

  1. Unpredictable

  • Don’t know why some memories become dominant

  • Not linear, logical, or rational

  1. Material

  • Grounded in some trace of matter

  • Exists in the world and is embodied in different cultural forms

John Bodnar: “Public memory (“an argument about social reality”) emerges from the intersection of official and vernacular memory….remains a product of elite manipulation, symbolic interaction, and contested discourse.”

  • Official memory: comes from concerns of cultural leaders at all societal levels

  • Relies on dogmatic formalism: dogmatic means given to the expression of opinions very strongly as if they were facts and formalism means excessive adherence to prescribed forms

  • Vernacular memory: represents an array of specialized interests that are grounded in parts of the whole

Official: upheld by  public cultural leaders interested in social unity… and loyalty to the status quo …[that] promotes a nationalistic, patriotic culture…[that is] sacred and timeless

Residual, Emergent, Dominant (Raymond Williams)

  • Residual memory: those beliefs, practices, etc. that are derived from an earlier stage of that society, often very long ago, and which may in fact reflect a very different social formation

  • Emergent memory: practices developed out of a new set of social interactions as societies change

  • Dominant memory: the memories that are most often remembered 

Official or Dominant Memory: upheld by  public cultural leaders interested in social unity… and loyalty to the status quo

 Hegemony: the domination of a culturally diverse society by the ruling class who manipulate the culture of that society—the beliefs, explanations, perceptions, values, and traditions —so that their imposed, ruling-class worldview becomes the accepted cultural norm. *consensual persuasion rather than coercive control

Vernacular: specialized interests grounded in parts of the whole…derived from first-hand experiences and small-scale communities… what social reality feels like; efers to one’s mother tongue, dialect, accent rather than any imposed official language (Latin was dominant language in Catholic Europe) From Latin word vernaculus “domestic, native”; Near synonyms: common, popular, ordinary, local, experiential, ethnic, regional, alternative

Residual:  those beliefs, practices, etc. that are derived from an earlier stage of that society, often very long ago, and which may in fact reflect a very different social formation (different political, religious beliefs, etc) than the present.

Emergent: practices are those that are being developed, usually unconsciously, out of a new set of social interactions (often vernacular ones), as societies change. They often are very different from and actively challenge the dominant. All dominant practices were once emergent. 

Palimpsest: a manuscript page from which the text has been scraped off or erased and can be used again, i.e. a template that is used again for a different purpose

Collapsing Commemoration (Zelizer): When an earlier celebration is replaced by a later one that “forgets” the original one or makes it residual.

Retrospective (Zelizer):  When a name is given to a historical event after it occurs that was not used when the event was happening in the present

Iconoclast: a person who attacks cherished beliefs, traditional institutions, etc., as being based on error or superstition; a breaker or destroyer of images, especially those set up for religious veneration.

Hegel’s Master-Slave Dialectic: In its basic form a “master” needs a “slave” to affirm his self-consciousness as “master.” This necessity of the “slave’s” recognition of the “master” ironically grants the “slave” a degree of power over the “master” – the “slave” is indispensable for the “master,” but the “master” isn’t indispensable for the “slave.” In a similar paradoxical way, freedom requires slavery, and whiteness needs blackness to affirm its own self-awareness  (See Edmund Morgan’s American Slavery, American Freedom)