The study of memory and its effects on people is becoming a rapidly growing field in the Historical community.\u00a0 Specifically, the study of \u2018collective memory\u2019 is becoming much more prominent.\u00a0 The keystone work on this subject is written by a French philosopher named Maurice Hawlbachs.\u00a0 His thesis is that a culture or a society can actually have a group memory that is dependent on the framework in which the society is constructed.\u00a0 He argues that society is full of not just individual memories, but a separate collective memory.\u00a0 Hawlbachs looks particularly about how societies remember episodes of tragedy and trauma.\u00a0 This memory is crucial in forming a national identity.<\/p>\n

I believe this thesis can be used to add to Richard Slotkin\u2019s chapter on Myth and Historical Memory<\/i>.\u00a0 In fact, I believe that you can use Hawlbachs thesis in conjunction with Frederick Jackson Turner\u2019s frontier thesis to help explain why Custer\u2019s Last Stand is mythologized so much in our culture.\u00a0 The Myth of the Frontier is the longest living American myth according to Slotkin.\u00a0\u00a0 I believe the Frontier Thesis is back this argument up.\u00a0 The ideological underpinnings of the frontier such as \u201cmanifest destiny\u201d and \u201csocial Darwinism\u201d have helped lay the frameworks for the framework of our culture.\u00a0 Slotkin points to the \u201claws of capitalist competition\u201d and the system of supply and demand as direct results of the Myth of the Frontier. These ideologies don\u2019t just effect the construction of our society, they also effect our collective memory.<\/p>\n

The way we remember Custer\u2019s Last Stand is crucial to our national identity not only because it was fought against Indians, but because it was fought in the new territory of Montana.\u00a0 I believe the environment that the battle was fought in is just as important as the people it was fought against.\u00a0 The fact that the battle took lace in what was considered the frontier at the time is probably what made this such a lasting memory and such an important part of shaping our national identity.\u00a0 I also believe that the time period is another important factor.\u00a0 Custer\u2019s Last Stand occurred right at the end of the Reconstruction period.\u00a0 The country was desperately trying to find a new nationally identity after the devastation of the Civil War.\u00a0 Having a shared memory that all Americans could draw on had to help in this process.\u00a0 Slotkin argues that a term like \u201clast stand\u201d of \u201cfrontier\u201d are not historical references.\u00a0 Rather they are metaphors that implicitly connect the events or places they are describing to a value system.\u00a0 In this sense, Custer last Stand is more than just a historical event because of the way we remember it as a nation.<\/p>\n

This chapter also compliments Ian’s<\/a> post on the Literature of the Environment. \u00a0Ian’s discussion is very similar to mine about how people remember and wrote about their travels on the frontier. \u00a0There are different individual narratives and reasons for each person who traveled to the frontier. \u00a0However, as a collective memory, we often just attribute the same reasons for everyone such as manifest destiny. \u00a0Slotkin’s work ultimately shows the power and the danger of collective memory.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The study of memory and its effects on people is becoming a rapidly growing field in the Historical community.\u00a0 Specifically, the study of \u2018collective memory\u2019 is becoming much more prominent.\u00a0 The keystone work on this subject is written by a French philosopher named Maurice Hawlbachs.\u00a0 His thesis is that a culture or a society can … <\/p>\n

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