History and memory

by Geoffrey Cubitt

In recent years, ‘memory’ has become a central, though also a controversial, concept in historical studies - a term that denotes both a new and distinctive field of study and a fresh way of conceptualizing history as a field of inquiry more generally.

This book, which is aimed both at specialists and at students, provides historians with an accessible and stimulating introduction to debates and theories about memory, and to the range of approaches that have been taken to the study of it in history and other disciplines

Contributing in a wide-ranging way to debate on some of the central conceptual problems of memory studies, the book explores the relationships between the individual and the collective, between memory as survival and memory as reconstruction, between remembering as a subjective experience and as a social or cultural practice, and between memory and history as modes of retrospective knowledge.

Genres: History, Sociology

272 pages, Paperback

First published November 1, 2007

Reviews

[Victoria (Eve's Alexandria) · Rating 4 out of 5]

I haven't recorded PhD related reading on Goodreads up to now, but have decided to change to include books that I have read cover to cover. After all, these take up a significant amount of my reading time!

I highly recommend this book to anyone interested in getting an overview of memory theory as it relates to history and understanding the past. It isn't light reading by any means - Geoff writes dense, multi-clause prose - and took me ages to work through. But it's the best synthesis of the last 30 years of academic thinking on the subject I've read (and I've read quite a few), and is particularly interesting about how memory is externalised into culture. A bit repetitive at times, as another reviewer has noted, but I think that's necessary given the complexity of the ideas under discussion.

[Nicole · Rating 4 out of 5]

super dense, but pretty interesting. particularly insightful discussion of oral/written history transmission and collective/social memory. a little repetitive at times, maybe. lots of good ideas though - i found myself typing paragraphs worth of quotes from this book to think about later.

[Starbubbles · Rating 3 out of 5]

very dense read, but very interesting material. but that's what you get when you read about memory theory.

[talia · Rating 3 out of 5]

ok so this was a Very interesting book that im actually super glad I read and I learned a lot. some issues:

-the man uses the word 'obviously' on Every. Fucking. Page. i hate it so much. its stuck up and if the thing was obvious (it never was), you shouldnt be writing the sentence in the first place
-a lot of fancy writing for no particular purpose. i get if its the only way to say the thing you need to say but this guys went overboard. its not that serious. a lot of the time i understood the concept at 10 years old but he just wanted to make it seem cool and original and so he used big words. unnecessary.

besides that, there was a lot i didnt know and the examples he used were super interesting so yeah. cool cool cool

[Fresno Bob · Rating 4 out of 5]

thought provoking, but dense

[˗ˏˋ n o v i ˎˊ˗ · Rating 2 out of 5]

2025, 2 stars. Read for university.

[Sarah · Rating 4 out of 5]

Clear, well organized. A great place to start on ideas of memory in the study of history!