Blog Post #1

Class
The first day of class was a success! I was honestly quite nervous due to the fact that I was not sure what to expect. Also, I was doubting my understanding of the readings. I read them both twice but I always get nervous with having to read and answer questions because I do not want to make any silly mistakes or miss anything important. I enjoyed the open, informal discussion and the 3 hours seems to fly by.

Borges

The start of "Funes de Memorius" by Jorge Luis Borges took place 1884 in Fray Bentos. The narrator is Jorge Luis Borges who is an Argentine that has a ranch in San Francisco. Jorge meets the character of interest in the story in passing when Jorge's friend, Bernardo, asked Ireneo Funes what time it was and he gave them the exact time without having a clock to look at. Funes in a boy that lives in Fray Bentos with his mother and he was known for being quite a peculiar individual. “Ireneo Funes, known for certain peculiarities such as avoiding contact with people and always knowing what it was, like a clock”. 

It is revealed later in the story that after the narrator had left Fray Bentos, Funes had become paralyzed after a horseriding accident. This accident turned out to make Funes "open his mind" because he said that after he has awoken from being unconscious, things seemed much clearer to him, almost as if he had been living with his eyes closed and not fully taking in everything around him. This accident gave Funes the exceptional ability of perfect memory. He could remember anything that has ever happened and recall it flawlessly. According to the narrator, he believed that “he (Funes) was not very capable of thought. To think is to forget differences, generalize, make abstractions. In the teeming world of Funes, there were only details, almost immediate in their presence".

To me, to make memory occurs when one takes an occurrence or detail and internalizes it within their mind to never be forgotten. To remember means to recall details or occurrences that have transpired in the past. I am very excited to learn more about the concept of memory and how we as people utilize it in our culture and everyday life. 

Communication and Culture Memory

I feel like this reading was the one I had the hardest time with, as it felt dense and like a lot of information was being given to me all at once. One of the first things talked about in this article is memory and how it enables us to form an awareness of selfhood. What I think the author means but this is that our memories are what build us into the people we see ourselves as currently. All past events shape how someone views themselves and how the choose to be as a person. There is not only just "memory", as according to this article, but there are also different levels of memory. The first two levels that are talked about in this article are inner level and social level memory. According to the article, a function of each of these is "on the inner level, memory is a matter of our neuro­mental system. This is our personal memory” and “On the social level, memory is a matter of communication and social interaction".

A different type of memory that is discussed in this article is cultural memory. According to the article, "Cultural memory is a form of collective memory, in the sense that it is shared by a number of people and that it conveys to these people a collective, that is, cultural identity Treating cultural objectifications as carriers of memory". A few examples of cultural memory are as follows

1. Marcel Proust's famous madeleine
2. artifacts
3. objects
4. anniversaries
5. feasts 
6. icons 
7. symbols or landscapes

Another type of memory is communicative memory. This is different from cultural memory in that "Cultural memory is a form of collective memory, in the sense that it is shared by a number of people and that it conveys to these people a collective, that is, cultural, identity. Halbwachs, however, the inventor of the term "collective memory," was careful to keep his concept of collective memory apart from the realm of traditions, transmissions, and transferences". My interpretation of this difference is that something that stays away from cultural memory but falls under collective memory could be a fishing rod that someone’s father bought them. This is because this memory of the fishing rod stays away from “the realm of traditions, transmissions, and transferences.”

While memory has many different levels and types, the author does say that memory is an open system. What the author means by this is that memory is forever changing. This is because things are always being forgetting (since memory does not reach all the way into the past, one to 8 years or so). This relates to identity because just like memory, identity is constantly changing, and being shaped by what we remember from our past. Finally, one of the last things that we discussed in class was The participation structure of cultural memory has an inherent tendency to elitism; it is never strictly egalitarian". One example that I can think of this that is present today is with groups of people such as the Klu Klux Klan. I know that there is a hierarchy of members, and I am sure that the higher status members have memorized certain things that have been passed down to them verbally from other members. People of lower positions do not have access to this information, due to them not being a high enough rank.

I am not sure if that answer suffices because like I stated earlier, this article was hard for me to grapple, but I did my best with what I as able to get from reading the article twice.