Individual and collective functions of family historical memories

Cordonnier, Aline [UCL]

Within this symposium, presented by researchers from four different universities, we will venture the road of shared memories, starting where most of us start, within the confinement of our families, before examining the memories that are shared amongst members of a social group. During this trip, we will also broaden our temporal horizon by not only focusing on the past, but also on how these memories travel and live across generations, and how they can affect our perception of the future. The first talk of this symposium will be presented by David Baudet. With an online survey, he investigated how often grandparents and parents feel they transmit personal memories to the younger generations, and how frequently children and grandchildren feel they are told about the older generations’ past. This frequency of transmission is analysed with regards to the generation, the generational gap and the type of memory (autobiographical memories or personal memories set in historical time). In the second talk, Aline Cordonnier will describe her study on the descendants of people who either resisted or who collaborated with the German during the Second World War. She argues that vicarious memories in the form of family historical memories can serve many functions – both individual or collective – for the members of the family. Jeremy Yamashiro will then lead us to the world of collective temporal thoughts. They refer to mental representations of the collective past and collective future, and how these two temporal domains relate to one another. In his talk, he will present some recent work on how narrative frames can help mediate the relation between collective memory and collective future thought, and influence variation in temporal horizons for remembered and imagined social identity-relevant events. Finally, Pierre Bouchat will examine in Belgian and American samples which psychosocial variables can predict how members of different groups perceive future collective decline. The symposium aims to develop a discussion around how shared memories can influence the way we perceive and understand ourselves, our family and our society.