7.3 Collective Memory and Collective Forgetting

In addition to shaping our individual memories, cultures carry memories of their own, which are often referred to as collective memories (Dudai, 2020; Roediger, 2021). Collective memories are critical, culturally rooted stories that group members typically know and integrate into their identities. These collective memories often take the form of origin stories, which are tales about how a people came to be and how that origin impacts their values. For instance, Black Americans share a collective memory of their ancestors’ enslavement and emancipation, which informs their awareness of ongoing oppression and their cultural value of resilience.

Collective memory is maintained and transmitted through various mechanisms, such as formal instruction (for example, in a history class or textbook), stories recited regularly as a matter of tradition (for example, during Passover or Ramadan), and cultural institutions (for example, museums and landmarks).

Like other memories, collective memory is not a perfect representation of historical events, but rather a narrative-driven reconstruction of them. Because collective memory is reconstructed, it often overlooks a group’s wrongdoings, a process referred to as collective forgetting. Myriad acts of collective forgetting have occurred within the United States, manifesting in the rewriting and erasure of historical events. Examples of this phenomenon include the forced displacement of numerous Native American tribes in the 1830s, the fight to retain legal authority to enslave Black people that led to the Civil War in the 1860s, and the internment of Japanese Americans in the 1940s. Of course, collective forgetting is not unique to the United States. For instance, the fact that the French government collaborated with the Nazi regime during World War II was downplayed and even erased from French history books for many years.

The ubiquity of collective forgetting reaffirms a core tenet of social identity theory: people derive a positive sense of identity from their group membership and strive to maintain the group’s positive status. For more information on how our sense of self is intertwined with our group memberships, see the NOBA unit “The Psychology of Groups.”