One question is worth to consider: I am referring to historiographical perspective suggested by a revisited notion of “cultural memory” (as used by one of the athor of the book in his paper). This perspective seems to be at the core of a historiographical reconsideration of the theme of memory (displayed on the other hand by a specialized bibliography, within which I will just mention the foundational work by Aleida Assmann, Erinnerungen, Formen und Wandlungen des kulturellen Gadächtnisses, 1999, It. trans. 2002). The tension between memory and memories revealed to be a constant feature of the various perspectives approaching the theme, urging to a subjective re-appropriation both of memories, in order to contrast a far too rigid and codified public or collective memory, and of memory, contrasting on the other hand a specialistic or experiential dispersion of memories preventing the historical elaboration of life (as a whole as well in private spaces as in time and spaces of history). This way a renovated understanding of cultural memory seems to be capable of contributing the narratives a new reflection on the past. It is certainly a complex category, variously declined by scholars, which has an intrinsic reference to the notion of culture and is marked by the contiguity with other memories otherwise qualified, e.g., public memory, collective memory, shared memory. We cannot investigate here all these themes, neither we can deepen the various aspects regulating that mutual fashioning, through subjective participation, of the individual dimension (even better, personal) of memory, and its collective dimension. Let’s just think about commemoration as an elaboration of memories between private and public spheres (with all the implications involved by this ‘public’ quality) or about sharing as an elaboration of shared memories within a voluntarily defined memory.
Even if we are aware of all the potentials expressed by this notion and as well of the difficulties connected to it, it seems to us that cultural memory, as a heuristic category and as a programmed perspective, might give to memory that temporal openness it requires to become a space for change. The mobile and problematic features of the papers here presented, which do not claim scientific rigour, but involve in a serious debate, they all suggest the possibility of a new path.
