Paul Ricœur on collective memory: the cohesion of social life

Abstract

The aim of this article is to present a critical reconstruction of Ricoeur's analysis of the complex phenomenon of memory as a collective act of recollection. By focusing the attention on memory as a collective practice, through the use of resources drawn from phenomenology, sociology, and history, I will seek to outline the construction of the collective memorial discourse and its foundations, looking particularly at the eighth chapter of the third volume of Time and Narrative and at the work Memory, History, Forgetting. I will show that our identification and location with others in social collectivities imply to negotiate a gap between subjective and cosmic time. Temporality comes, then, in the plural: our being in time is not merely personal, but rather we are originally involved in a shared social and historical framework.