Kulturní paměť jako koncept sociálních věd

The paper summarizes the most important elements of the concept of cultural, social or collective memory in the social sciences. The concept has been broadly applied by scholars in the last few decades. I show that its application is mostly social-constructivist, when the cultural memory is understood as a social construct. The past serves as a tool that allows understanding and interpreting the present, since the past is socially shared and transmitted through the memory. Radical social constructivism understands the memory as a power tool to control the present and the future. Nevertheless this social constructivist approach to the memory has been challenged recently by cognitive approaches. This cognitive criticism is based on the denial of cultural relativism and it attempts to define common human cognitive patterns and principles through which memory operates. The paper concludes in synthesizing both approaches to the memory, the social constructivist and the cognitive, in identifying two options for such a synthesis. The first option consists in the intersubjectivity of memory: the memory is bound with the individual, yet it is also shared socially. The second option consists in the fact that the memory (as well as the cognition itself) is always embodied and therefore it is materialised. From this point of view, memory can be understood as a set of ideas or images, which are intentionally connected to the past. These ideas are none other than interpretations (social constructs) related to the elements of the material world. These elements become symbols and they are structured to the meaning units through the bodily experiences. These interpretations can vary from the point of view of their potential to be transmitted and shared. Some of them are transmitted and shared more easily than the others – these are endangered by forgetting. The potential to be transmitted and shared depends on the options and principles of functioning of human mind. It is also influenced by the social power of sharing (participation on memory).