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Collective Memory and the Stakes of Power. A Reading of Popular Zairian Historical Discourses

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  13 May 2014

Bogumil Jewsiewicki
Bogumil Jewsiewicki*
Affiliation:
Université Laval
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Extract

For me collective memory is neither a narrative nor collective knowledge of the past (a sort of historical consensus). Contrary to past accounts, be they public or private, memory does not have a narrative form and is thus not of the literary kind (oral or written). Collective memory is above all a semantic code of memorization and of rememorization; it is, as well, a hierarchy of values which structures a discourse in the past while rooting it in the present. Collective memory gives meaning to the past and bears in mind certain places, facts, dates, and persons around which the memory or memories which also legitimate power build themselves. The relationship between a particular remembrance and its basic facts finds its prime meaning here. In this sense collective memory supports and rationalizes collective identity and, contrary to social fiction, offers a “definitive” reading as it bears on real, even though elapsed, relationships. Collective memory thus rejoins and often reinforces fiction and supports role and behavioral stereotypes, etc.

“En ce temps là le roi regardant dans sa maison à Bruxelles il étudiait les nouvelles venant de l'Afrique et dans ses nouvelles plusieurs tribus ont montré que les vivres et les matériaux de travail (n'arrivaient) pas à temps après l'expédition de l'Europe et le Roi Léopold II jetta un coup d'oeil sur l'Atlas (carte géographique) du pays et il dit: on trouvera la route pour faire passer les matériaux de travail, un racourci pour faire le chemin de fer rapidement pour que je puisse envoyer plus rapidement les matériaux en Afrique ainsi on aura pas besoins de porteurs.

Type
Research Article
Information
History in Africa , Volume 13 , 1986 , pp. 195 - 223
Copyright
Copyright © African Studies Association 1986

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References

Notes

1. I wish to thank the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada and the Canadian International Development Agency for research grants. This is a major part of a paper presented at the Fifth International Conference of Oral History, Barcelona, March 1985. Marc Dupont translated this paper from French. The analysis is based on some 250 life histories collected during the national competition for the best Zairian life history, organized in Kinshasa in 1985 by the Université de Kinshasa and université Laval de Quebec and directed by myself and my colleagues Ndaywel e Nziem and Sabakinu Kivilu. All life histories cited here were collected on that occasion.

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