Memories without a place

Emilio Martínez Gutiérrez

Introduction lective aphasia and amnesia totally overwhelmed

the population within the confines of run-down
“We can live without architecture, though not ruins, pushing them into a liturgy of customary
allowed to remember without it”. With such solem- actions and expressions to overcome and to recover
nity, John Ruskin (1819–1900) put into words the from the emotional shock, using the protection of
fundamental value of architecture, its ability to oblivion. While Pamuk stresses that a stable physi-
conquer oblivion and to cal environment guarantees
mark out the transformations Emilio Martínez Gutiérrez is a Doctor in memories, both necessary to
within societies. In an ellipti- Sociology. He is currently Professor of have an impression of conti-
cal manner, the author’s Sociology at the Universidad Complutense, nuity of the ego and the group
statement in The seven lamps Madrid (Department of Sociology VI, (family, local), Sebald con-
Public Opinion and Mass Culture). He was
of architecture (Ruskin 1849 a professor of Urban Sociology and firms the link inferred from
[1989]) assists Orhan Pamuk Researcher at the Multidisciplinary Institute absence: the obliteration of
much later on (Pamuk 2006), for Environmental Studies Ramón Margalef the constructed landscape
to recover in each corner of (University of Alicante). He has authored would have made oblivion
Istanbul his own memories several articles and books on social and necessary and this, in the end,
urban morphology, urban theory, and public
and those of the entire city, spaces (most recent publication: Maurice the projective caesura of the
which he cannot help but Halbwachs. Social morphology studies of group, of its members and of
make his own. Is not perhaps the city Madrid, CIS, 2008). the space itself, in the way
everything to do with the city Email: [email protected] Nietzsche considered that in
a pure evocation? Istanbul order to act it was necessary
and Constantinople, the to forget.
sumptuous East and the legacy of a non-less flam- As inevitable as they may seem, reconstruc-
boyant West, the woven temporariness, the figura- tions of the urban landscape can only aspire to
tive horizons, and the longings on each side of the function as a screen, to stop any desire to return
Bosphorus. Pamuk’s memory is carved upon that that the old inhabitants may have, guiding them
of Istanbul, the real and imaginary one, confusing into the future. Since utopian projects began, this is
one with the other, like an arranged topobiography: one of the most alluring calls for a genius en-
I am also the place I remember. On his part, and livened with demiurgic aspirations, which urban-
without intending to, W. G. Sebald (1999) would ism has not always been able to avoid: the creation
have confirmed the harsh proposition of the of a new society and a new social age would una-
English reformer by arguing it from the other voidably need the creation of an aseptic, empty
direction. Thus, in his essay Luftkrieg und Liter- spatial canvass, free from scars from the past. But,
atur, he echoed those observations which referred in the same way that places without memories can
to the inability to speak and remember of the be strung together, is it not possible to talk about
inhabitants of the German cities devastated in the memories without a place, dragging wherever they
allied raids during the Second World War: a col- go the weight of their emptiness and their relentless

ISSJ 203–204 © UNESCO 2012. Published by Blackwell Publishing Ltd., 9600 Garsington Road, Oxford, OX4 2DK, UK and 350 Main Street, Malden, MA 02148, USA.
20 Emilio Martínez Gutiérrez

memories? The Polish writer Adam Zagajewski – socially built and encoded. Hugely interesting
grew within that tension, recalling in Two cities ideas can be derived from different readings, in
(Zagajewski 2006) the traumatic experience of the relation to the link between space, identity, and
groups of populations forcibly displaced after the collective memory, and the way the last two both
musical chairs game played with country borders shape each other and cling to space, qualifying it.
at the end of the Second World War – communities It is not possible to have identity without
alienated from both their original places and their memory –self-conscience along a time line – nor
destinations who found themselves in a frame of memory without identity – the conscious chain of
mind that asked them to manage their own identity time sequences and significant events (Candau
and memories within contexts of inscrutable codes. 2005); the physical and symbolic space becomes
Leaving other determinations aside, how could an the support that both use to protect and recognise
alien background stimulate their own memories each other. This is the framework that we would
and grant a displaced society with a sense of con- like to stop to consider, using Maurice Halbwachs’
tinuity? How could the devastating effects of group reflections on it as a starting point, which offer both
deregulation, and the precarious relations caused original and generous observations. Making infer-
by the forced displacement, be contained? Which ences means, in this case, to meditate about three
strategies might be developed in order to maintain vectors which are well delimited, although inti-
a certain degree of social space cohesion in the mately and necessarily linked in their complexity,
absence of support from the original physical in the society–space dialectic that the author under-
place? “My mother used to cry when she walked took in several studies, in both a univocal and tan-
along its streets” – as the author recalls, referring to gential sense.
the “insignificant” and “alien” city of Gliwice, A first vector refers to the seam between col-
where they were forced to be immigrants in their lective memory and constructed space, to be under-
own country, wandering about the streets in a slow stood as a social product; to the role that a more or
agony, unable to recognise themselves in the less unchanged and recognisable place (physical
“Prussian brickwork of the buildings”. In a terri- and symbolic) performs in the definition and per-
tory they watched with suspicion, they turned their sistence of the group. A second vector, in contrast
thoughts back to the pockets they came from, and with the previous one, could be outlined around the
mimicked the politeness and the roles they used to gap and disruption caused by the suppression of
play there, as if the ground were neutral and the the physical space (due to natural or social causes),
social geometry of their relations had not changed while the local group, its lattice of relations, and
under the new political regime. A strategic ritual the various meanings and memories attributed to
devised to sustain their coherence, even if it was such space (accepting its inherent dynamism)
only intelligible to them under the old ways. remain mostly stable. If the previous situation
Moreover, making it their business, the eldest could sustain a memory of catastrophe, the last
“used to willingly chose a life amidst a fog where vector reinforces this impression while constrict-
time, people and dates were confused. . . . For ing it to a double meaning: material disaster and
them, paradoxically, losing their memory meant to social tragedy. The contrast here would be total,
get it back. . . . They used to talk about lost things: since everything in desolation feels like absence.
the lost city, the hills of that city, a day a long time This way, we would position ourselves, on the one
ago, the delicate and ripe raspberries. . . . The city hand, by the suppression of the original physical
they had left was the most beautiful city in the space, impossible to recover from except by a
world.” A trauma caused by memory and a sociali- remembrance exercise, not necessarily faithful nor
sation dislocated by the contradictions of survival. far from fabulation. Added to this, we would have
a group resettled in an alien scenario and lacking a
memory (that turns out to be paramount to conven-
Places of memory and iently indoctrinate and reorientate the self-
memories of places representation of the group in question). On the
other hand, we could see a fragmentation, reduc-
The above mentioned texts glide over the captivat- tion, and rupture of the local group, left lost as
ing but very complex relation between social much as disoriented at being incapable of jointly
groups and places – physical and symbolic spaces remembering, which in turn would affect its col-

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Memories without a place 21

lective identity. In conclusion, a change in the a part of life – manifests itself after the forced
social framework, and the suppression of the social mutation of the referential social frameworks,
place (lieu) and environment (milieu), would nec- amongst which we need to consider the changes in
essarily entail the shift of the collective memory the social composition of the group (in the size and
and identity. intensity of its relations) and the resettlement, in a
Naturally, we could complete the scene with a village built from scratch based on a formulaic
fourth vector that would raise the situation of per- composition compliant with the identitarian aes-
manency of an unaltered physical space, at least in thetics of the Francoist New State. Hence, we study
its basic form, without the presence of the resident the roles of the new social frameworks (socio-
group. Such a situation corresponds, for example, morphological and spatial) in the construction of a
to the widespread problem of the rural population new identity, whether this identity is more or less
drift in contemporary societies (which in particular compatible with the original one and maintains
areas of inland Spain reaches discouraging levels, continuity links, or whether we are dealing with a
without any public or private initiatives committed peripheral identity, trapped between the memory of
to recover those spaces, now totally outside the a past that remains and the memory of conquest.
social memory). In fact, everything stems from a
basic piece of information: the way the group is
anchored to its space. Architecture and discourse:
All these vectors are not merely suggested, from Ars Memoriae to Ars
but admirably outlined in Halbwachs’ writings
about collective memory. However, with regard to
Oblivionalis
the concept of space and the relation with the There is no memory free from a spatial framework,
group, we should not forget his work in social taken as a reference used to localise and support
morphology, his research on the transformation the memories of events lived or transmitted, even
processes of the urban structure of Paris, followed the vague recollection of something we believe we
by Berlin (where the “collective memory” of the have seen. Spatial images are built to support and
city is explicitly mentioned), nor the accurate char- frame the memory to such an extent that a whole
acterisations of the social classes or the livelihoods Western school of thought, dedicated to rhetoric,
of the peasantry (the group deeply-rooted to the used them as a guarantor of proper discourse con-
land par excellence). Although in this instance we struction. In that sense, in his particular discussion
will confine ourselves to a theoretical approach, between ancient and modern thought, Ruskin
focusing on the Halbwachsian perspective about could have well invoked the old Ars Memoriae to
the space–memory bond, this document refers to strengthen the poetic link between space and
an ongoing ethnographic investigation where each memory. Developed by the Greeks first, and Latin
and every one of the situations and vectors men- thought later on as one of the classical rhetoric
tioned above are present. We would have liked to domains, the Art of memory constituted until the
have shown some of its results, but they are at a Renaissance a mnemonic instrument of discourse,
stage that prevents us from offering a rigorous based on spatial images and places. According to
account. Nevertheless, it is a study on the readjust- Frances A. Yates (1966) about the general rules of
ment process of a small rural community in Castile mnemonics:
(Santa María de Poyos, Spain) that has suffered a
displacement and resettlement process as a super- The first step was to imprint on the memory a series of loci or
vised settlement (with the subsequent change of places. The commonest, though not the only, type of mne-
status, temporalities, and spaces) in a new geo- monic place system used was the architectural type. The clear-
graphical and cultural environment after their est description of the process is that given by Quintilian. In
village and the rest of the valley were flooded in the order to form a series of places in memory, he says, a building
1950s to construct the Buendía mega reservoir is to be remembered, as spacious and varied a one as possible,
the forecourt, the living room, bedrooms, and parlours, not
(Cuenca province). The aim is to understand the
omitting statues and other ornaments with which the rooms
role that the memory of its population (memory of are decorated. The images by which the speech is to be
both place and group) has played in its definition remembered . . . are then placed in imagination on the places
and resistance; likewise, formulating the matter in which have been memorised in the building. This done, as
other terms, to what extent oblivion – which is also soon as the memory of the facts requires to be revived, all

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22 Emilio Martínez Gutiérrez

these places are visited in turn and the various deposits long as they were also propagated, learnt, and
demanded of their custodians. We have to think of the ancient evoked in succession, could have served in the end
orator as moving in imagination through his memory building as authentic models for the real constructions.
whilst he is making his speech, drawing from the memorised
places the images he has placed on them. The method ensures
Undoubtedly, the externalisation of typified inter-
that the points are remembered in the right order, since the nal images and the internalisation of standardised
order is fixed by the sequence of places in the building. (Yates external images would have reinforced the corre-
1966, p.3) spondence between standardised architectural
types and formalised discourses, whether they
This is certainly an artificial construct in every were of a universal or idiosyncratic vocation. With
sense: both contents and containers are but mental regard to their materialisation in the urban space,
elaborations with predefined purposes. However, it such correspondence would explain to Marot
is worth noting the acknowledgement of a (2010) the existing affinity between scholastic
topophilic vocation of memory, and its determina- thought and Gothic architecture (discussed by
tion to be fixed on spatial images and places that Panowsky) or the cruciform or Trinitarian configu-
are capable of making the absent – past or imagi- rations present in some medieval urban plans
nary – present (Candau 2005; Ricoeur 1998). We (according to A. Corboz). In addition, since the
might agree that this correspondence seems to be Renaissance, a constant theme is the desire for
unequivocal when we think of facts and persons in outlining urban plans in the form of huge “memory
our daily lives who entail the representation of theatres”, capable of offering a unanimous reading
spaces more or less familiar, known or cherished. of the history and identity of the local group. This
This way, reviving the memory of any event is can be said of the Rome of Sixtus V, or
simpler when we localise the spatial reference and Haussmann’s layouts; a similar purpose could be
this is in fact recalled faster and more reliably than assumed from configurations closer in time such as
other signs, such as temporal ones. those, self-evident and clumsy, perpetrated under
totalitarian regimes – the pseudo-imperialist aes-
. . . when we evoke a city, its neighbourhoods, its streets, its thetic of the architecture of Italian fascism, or the
houses; how many memories emerge, many of them we neo-Herrerian years of Franco’s regime in Spain,
thought gone for ever, helping us in turn to discover many both in cities and in rural settlements.
others! (Halbwachs [1925] 2004, p.52) Based on that ability for physical objectivisa-
tion leaving mnemonics aside, it is possible to
Georg Simmel said something similar, speaking of imagine the existence of a link between architec-
the ease with which we remember the place and not ture, memory, and specific discourses: aiming to
so much the exact time of a rendezvous. provide meaning to a tale, offering continuity,
balance and rhythm, and a starting and destination
Generally, in the memory, places acquire a stronger associa- point that could push aside all traces of chaos and
tive force than time, because places have a more tangible confusion, an accurate identity. That is why, like a
nature. This is true to such an extent that with a unique event,
story (across time), the stone book (as a meta-
that happened only once, which has caused a strong emotional
shock, those particular memories usually merge inseparably
narrative) or the physically constructed space could
with the place and vice versa, so the place ends up being the start appearing as a configurative element of
rotation point around which the orbiting memories bond the memory (Ricoeur 1998). This affinity is obviously
individuals, in perfect correlation. (Simmel 1977, p.665) noticeable in the spheres of power (political, reli-
gious, civic), because of what they tell and do not
Returning to the mnemonic techniques and their tell (the written, the prescribed, and the prohibited),
influence in Western culture, even when the views and the way they do it: due to a need to personify
of semiotics (Eco 1989) and the history of ideas their own constituent abstraction in order to be
have speculated about the hypothesis of a stand- recognised, distinguished, loved, or feared; due to a
ardised transmission of mnemonic types and con- vocation to glorify and to perpetuate in stone their
tents, i.e. discourses (a logical-topic assimilation), domination; because of their ability to achieve it
from a history of architecture point of view, under the formula of monuments and heritage. It is
Sébastien Marot (2010) has reasonably estimated true that this connection should not be limited to
that architectural prototypes or urban landscapes major architecture. Ultimately, every urban artefact
designed to locate memories and discourses, as – and to a wider extent every cultural landscape – is

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Memories without a place 23

a potential depository of a more or less well con- Collective memory and

structed frame of meanings, values, hierarchies, and theory of the city
social identities recognisable by the members of the
group. It is this frame that qualifies space through The tension between permanency and suppression,
use, familiarisation, and emotional investment, between presence and oblivion of space and in
leaving a footprint on the place and receiving one in space has accompanied architectural and urbanistic
exchange. However, it needs to be accepted that not debates since the nineteenth century, a time of
all discourses become materialised and not all the strong historical conscience. In fact, Ruskin’s view
“materialised discourses” carry the same weight or should be placed inside this debate. Nevertheless,
vigour to impose themselves and remain. The con- the tension intensified after 1970 as a consequence
structed space, the territory, the cultural landscape, of the massive interventions carried out under the
as social products, are in a physical and symbolic Athens Charter. The misuse of its propositions
way the result of an unbalanced game of perma- (breaking with the past, creating new spaces for the
nency and suppression linked to the social and new industrial modern society) was translated into
power inequalities among the participating actors. the partial or total destruction of high value histori-
They are not all visible and many are simply erased. cal districts within many cities and the spread of
This is why there are abundant references in urban landscapes without any quality – like the invisible
studies to the existence of a selective memory, con- city of Zirma (Calvino 1996), only managing to
ceived in this case using the safeguards applied to settle in the memory through repetition and super-
certain areas and buildings of the city, while others fluousness. Different initiatives came to articulate a
are allowed to disintegrate or be demolished (con- “new old” discourse that condemned the progres-
tainers and residual social groups). Let us not even sive outburst of the modern movement, the techno-
talk about the whole rural environment, which cratic dirigisme, and the consequences on the city
seems to have shut off from the world like a folk- of real estate capitalist greed. This was understood
loric residue of the cultural, ideological, and physi- as a collective effort through time, theoretically
cal fabric of the dominant urban society: to the linking the configuration of the urban landscape to
disdain of the official memory, sometimes there is the notions of length and collective memory of
also its own desire to leave everything behind and Bergson and Halbwachs, respectively. Since then,
not to conserve anything from a detestable and as an alleged equivalence of the manifestation of
servile past. Patrimonialisation outlines, in its own the urban past, the collective memory became
way, a spatial meta-narrative that fosters and dis- something more than a simple fetish term used in
seminates the official memory while hiding the the debate to position itself in the core of numerous
conflict, offering a consensual reading of the past: it theoretical formulations and its corresponding pro-
operates as an ideological construct of memory posals for action. Nowadays it is assumed as a
(Guillaume 1990). relation that is taken for granted, and the spatial
Following that logic, it might be worth taking metaphor of memory and the anchorage of the
certain precautions against the political exploita- collective memory to places are common topics in
tion of architecture (and to a wider extent, of any different fields of social, historical, and urbanism
spatial modelling devices) as a configurative research.
element of the memory as it can also be used, the This subtlety is perceived in some studies on
other way round, as an effective configurative urban structure undertaken by Aldo Rossi, about
element of oblivion, in the Orwellian doublethink the existence of elements of continuation with the
sense. Naturally, the pathological transmutation of urban past. Consequently, it is crucial in his desired
the ars memoriae into ars oblivionalis (i.e. “how to search for the genius loci and the âme de la cité, to
remember what I need to forget” is in itself a con- find a way to give meaning to the meaningless
tradiction of mnemonic rules) can only be based on present and to qualify a space, which is to a
the overload, the juxtaposition, the displacement, great extent trivial. Thus, reintroducing loosely
and/or, ultimately, the elimination and the total Halbwachs’ theses, he asserted that:
substitution of the places (topocide). That is, the
displacement and suppression of the social mean- the city itself is the collective memory of the communities;
ings deposited in them, of their social contents and and since memory is linked to facts and places, the city is the
the identities built under their shelter. locus of the collective memory. . . . In the end, the collective

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24 Emilio Martínez Gutiérrez

memory becomes the transformation of space thanks to the Space and collective
community, a transformation always conditioned by these
material data in contrast with this action. (Rossi 1971,
memory for Halbwachs
pp.226–227)
The “itinerary” of collective memory is articulated
in three big “sociological monuments” of
A more successful effort in this direction can be Halbwachs, Les cadres sociaux de la mémoire
found in The city of collective memory by C. Boyer (1925), La Topographie légendaire des évangiles
(1994), strongly critical of the pseudo-historical en Terre Sainte, and La mémoire collective (1950).
imagery used in commercial operations of urban On the one hand, the first of them came to break
intervention (nostalgia as a vehicle for consumer- with the radically singular and intimate concept of
ism). Similarly, the work of Gravagnuolo (1998) memory, and on the other hand, with the identifi-
considers the revival of the collective memory as cation of the memory with an immutable recipient
the foundation for rebuilding the “urban project” of of past events, mnemonic remains stratified by
the European city. Beyond certain conjectures, at virtue of their age – like recorded and accumulated
least in a theoretical level, besides the criticism of geological layers or succession structures – of
a façadism typical of a theme park, a more plural which the individual would use at will. Not even in
approach is formulated in relation to the concept of the metaphor of the palimpsest city (Rome, the
inhabiting – and not so much of the habitat – and Eternal City), used by Freud in Civilization and its
the meaning of the city itself to its daily inhabit- discontents (1930), does this analogy impress con-
ants: an approach that does not only answer to an vincingly. In The social frameworks of memory
accumulation of passive memories, inert remains, (Les cadres sociaux de la mémoire), Halbwachs
and memories, but also – as indicated by Boyer – to came to establish the influence of the social envi-
a system of socially built mnemonic places, ronment on the individual memory, the need to
dynamic, plural, and concurrent. lean on an affectionate community in order to
In spite of some controversial interpretations remember. Therefore, he argued that memory
of the Halbwachsian propositions, there is a need could not be interpreted as a mechanical operation
to acknowledge, within these efforts about a theory of the individual conscience, but as a rational and
of the city, a true recognition of the value and scope constructive act involving the community to which
of Halbwachs’ work about the relation between the individual belongs. Those memories presumed
space, social morphology, and collective memory. to be the person’s own (not referring to a memory
This bond has been consolidated and refined, induced by socialisation and transmission, where
strictly in the sociological field, by the studies tradition is the official memory) are registered in
undertaken by G. Namer, M. Jaisson, E. Brian, and the collective tales: we recall with the help of
other researchers. In fact, we might be facing a others, significant referents. That is why the con-
logical inference of Halbwachs’ initial approach templative memory, the one suggesting to us that
about the city as a social form, set out in his mor- we have achieved a state of isolation and evasion,
phological work, where the temporal dimension would only mean a way out from a context to
has always been present. Nonetheless, it would uncover a different one, though equally populated
now be much more marked: the estimation of space by faces and significant relations (family, col-
as a support for the continuity and identity of the leagues, neighbourhood . . .). Likewise, whoever
group. This line of interpretation undoubtedly con- remembers only what others cannot remember
stitutes one of the most thought-provoking regis- could be seen as an alienated person. Social reifi-
ters of Halbwachs’ research, gathered from the cation, typically Durkheimian, becomes evident
analytical link between social time, memory, and a this way in the conception of a memory that is a
city understood as a symbolic and physical space. collective one (of the group and the individuals
The city would be established then, as a privileged part of it) and the social frameworks that make a
place of the collective memory. However, being a common memory possible.
physically and socially differentiated space in In addition – as Halbwachs indicated – the
transformation and formed by a diversity of past was not preserved in itself as it was, but as a
groups, it would be more appropriate to name it in reconstruction made with the urgencies, desires,
plural, since there are as many collective memories and the present circumstances of the social group.
as there are social groups. Further than the facts themselves, what is relevant

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is the meaning assigned by the group and the continuous reference that will be also boosted by
group’s context linked to relevant memories: the publication of his Morphologie sociale (Social
common objects, social frameworks, and shared morphology, 1938); but as we progress, a more
identities. Undoubtedly, the statement elaborates abstract, symbolic, and relational interpretation of
on the symbolic function of memory which, selec- space becomes noticeable. Certainly, the author
tive and localised, guarantees the continuity of the localises his memories in familiar surroundings
group and its cohesion by adapting, using time and and frequented neighbourhoods, refers to Goethe’s
meaning to tie together impressions and events memories about his environment, and rooms,
(Ramos 1989). Furthermore, it indicates a concep- squares, streets, cities, train stations . . . appear in
tion of the social space of a group defined by the detail; in short, physical spaces, many of which
weft of its relations, which will become more remain or are by other means accessible to the
obvious in his later works. groups’ members (“I can point out . . .”). We situate
If the notion of collective memory could seem memories in such tangible spaces and, as a scen-
a bit diaphanous (Candau 2005), it is considered, ario, frame, or support of experiences and rela-
on the contrary, that a relative observation of The tions, they seem to boost evocation unexpectedly:
social frameworks of memory constitutes one of when crossing the threshold of a room, in a street
the greatest contributions to understanding the . . . But alongside the physical objectivisation, the
issue: it is not possible to remember outside them. space of the group translates the bonding and the
Language (remembering by the group is always a carrying out of activities, created relations, and
socio-communicative action), time, and space – meanings assigned by their members (the affec-
which in turn is physical, social, and symbolic – tionate community). A social language encoded in
are the frameworks that allow us to set, recall, and the society that we form with objects, in their
reconstruct any memories. Without them the arrangement, in the particular perspectives. The
memory would be volatile, purely a flow: localisa- social construction of space implies, on the one
tion prevents confusion with dreams. hand, its externalisation (production of form and
meaning); on the other hand, its internalisation
The recognition of memories always involves localisation, (appropriation). So, a qualification of place is
and this in many occasions precedes recognition, evocation, expressed by social mediation, which converts the
and it seems to determine it: localisation contains part of
rigid and homogeneous geometrical space into an
the substance of what will become a recognised memory,
and it reflects that, shaped as ideas, it already contains spe-
easily malleable frame, manageable and similar at
cific and tangible facts. In this and many other ways, locali- every moment to the relational requirements of the
sation would explain memory. (Halbwachs [1925] 2004, group and to its own interaction. A surrogate dis-
p.144) tillation of the group takes shape in the symbolism
of space; beyond that, the spatialisation of its rela-
Social frameworks allow memories to set, but under tions is insinuated, the weft of the group and its
no circumstances are they immutable, unique, and identity.
homogeneous: they are not a final packaging or
Cartesian coordinates, nor are they arranged like an What is often kept in the memory of a house where one has
atlas – Namer says – but they are made of the same lived is not so much the layout of the rooms, the way we would
essence as memories, they change, they vanish, and find them in an architect’s drawings, but some impressions
they reconstruct themselves. that, should we want to arrange them in relation to each other,
The reader should notice the abundant spatial perhaps they would not fit, or would even contradict each
other. (Halbwachs [1925] 2004, p.120)
references of the author to capturing and evoking
memories. From The social frames onwards, the
meaning attributed to space within the memory and Later:
identity of the group does nothing but grow.
However, an increasingly more complex reading of When we talk about spatial framework we do not mean any-
thing resembling a geometrical shape. Sociologists have dem-
the spatial dimension is noticeable across the rest
onstrated that, in many primitive tribes, the space is not
of Halbwachs’ writings and even in this first work. represented as a homogeneous environment; instead, its parts
Thus, after the trail of his first works, a “material- are differentiated by the qualities of mystical nature attributed
istic” conception seems to be inferred (naturally in to it . . . Likewise, the different rooms in a house such as
the sense of a morphological materialism). It is a corners or furniture and, surrounding the house, such as the

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26 Emilio Martínez Gutiérrez

garden or corners, in so far as they usually provoke vivid they followed uncertain vestiges and in others, due
impressions in the child, and are associated with certain to the absence of any evidence, they followed the
members of the family, with toys, with certain events, either “inspiration of the moment” or even texts from the
one-off or repeated ones . . . it is not just a framework but all
the familiar aspects that are part of the social life of the child
Jewish tradition (like those related to the Judea of
. . . (Halbwachs [1925] 2004, p.120) the Old Testament). Halbwachs himself was sur-
prised by the fantasies and volatility of the back-
Naturally, an abstract conception of space, insert- grounds and places where the events were
ing its diverse parts in the extension, does not established, real or imaginary, through time: the
prevent the symbolic, emotional, or relational Mount of Olives, the Cenacle, the stations of the
qualification of a place (for example, of the family non-existent Via Dolorosa . . . Since frames and
house, of the home . . .). In fact, this is what feeds memories have the same nature, places are moved,
the desire to return home (Ulysses’ nostalgia) and invented, fragmented, redefined, and facts are
to recall the memories attached to particular adjusted to match beliefs, in a game of references
spaces, or the memory of the place itself, whose legitimising the different memory communities.
identity is not an inherent one, but an emanation of This way, concerning the spatial fixing of memo-
the group – a crucial aspect for understanding the ries, we could talk of division (memories fragment
adherence of individuals and communities to the and tend to relocate elsewhere; or groups taking
space, and its incorporation to its identity. ownership of places tend to reposition them in
The symbolism of space and the role it might other places); concentration (a single place can
perform in shaping the group’s memory and iden- host many unrelated memories); and duality (two
tity is more marked in La Topographie légendaire or more localisations are allowed for the same
des Évangiles en Terre Sainte; étude de mémoire fact). If the Church and its believers agree to such
collective (The legendary topography of the variations and contradictions, it is because the reli-
Gospel in the Holy Land; a study of collective gious memory needs to imagine those glorified
memory, 1941) As a study of the application of places in order to evoke those events linked to them
collective memory, the work restores many of the or about them. Constituent imagination: the
propositions of The social frames; similarly, some abstract memory (dogma) requires a specific image
suggested ideas that will be confirmed in The in order not to be just a “symbol suspended in thin
social memory are noticeable here. Nevertheless, air”. Fixing itself to physical places, it participates
as we will see with regard to the evolution of the in its permanency and solidity. “However, in order
Halbwachsian spatial conception, we need to con- for a truth to be fixed in a group’s memory, it needs
sider not only the key mediation of his work Social to be defined under the concrete form of an event,
morphology, published only three years earlier, but a personal figure or a place. Indeed, a purely
also, and to no lesser degree, the authority recov- abstract truth is not a memory, because a memory
ered from Leibniz, a thinker very much appreciated takes us back to the past. An abstract truth, on the
by Halbwachs. contrary, has no anchoring point to a series of
In reference to the religious memory of Chris- events; it gets confused with a desire, with an aspi-
tianity, in The legendary topography the same ration” (Halbwachs [1941] 2008, p.124).
logic discussed above operates concerning the Indeed, the work shows the need to count on
reconstruction of the past, adapting the image of an external space, a solid and tangible shelter from
old facts to the needs and beliefs of each moment. fears and all sorts of agitations, but also a place to
However, to a large extent, his research is a study spread around and rearrange the memories of the
about the illusions of memory, about the spatial group. As a condition of the possibility of memory,
fabulation that inspires and on which is based the the physical spaces objectivise the collective con-
identification of the group and its “soldiering on tinuance. In conflictive situations – across commu-
memory”. Thus, based on biblical accounts, the nities and across faiths – these places also give
narration of the pilgrim of Bordeaux, and facts support to the legitimisation of their narrative,
from the Crusades, and based on the context of a accentuating its symbolic facet. The topological
tension between different faiths and communities, fabulation feeds the identitarian topography: glori-
Halbwachs observes the arbitrariness with which fied places are inseparable from the various
some details of Christ’s life and of the early Chris- modalities of memorising and group construction.
tian Church were spatially located. In some cases Alongside the Cartesian absolute space, suitable to

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Memories without a place 27

conceive extent, is insinuated a space of relations, collective memory. In both, Halbwachs is content
and relations between relations, typically Leib- being led by the game between the permanent and
nizian, where spatial logics can be registered, inter- the modifiable, between the extension and the dis-
twined, and associated to different events, realities, continuity of the social existence. However, such a
or groups of interests. Hence, the spatial plasticity game does not always correspond to the strict cir-
of memory configurations, where the emanation of cularity of the group’s action, however much more
symbols strengthens a group’s identity and their this underlies the conception of Halbwachs, and it
legitimising evocations. This is why people would be necessary to consider that on some occa-
grouped around their memories can resist a sions external powers penetrate the physical and
destructive pressure for longer compared to ma- symbolic referential spaces, with the aim of con-
terial spaces; it is also why they battle harder to cocting or displacing social representations.
eliminate or defend the symbolic places compared
to the real ones (Cléro 2008).
G. Namer noticed a circular conception, par- The group’s identity
tially seen in other works of Halbwachs, about the adherence to space
reciprocal action between physical space and sym-
bolic space, which in essence would affect the Balance and stability in space, said Halbwachs in
group representation itself. It is necessary, in this Social morphology, and he brings this up again
regard, to bear in mind the Halbwachsian concep- when reintroducing Comte in the chapter dedicated
tion of the social reality contained in his Social to space in The collective memory. The adherence of
morphology (1938), according to which it would the group to both a place and its memories is the idea
present a dual nature (physical and ideational). which permeates his text: if the collective memory
Within its formulation, the material aspects influ- allows the group to remain firm in spite of the course
ence the configuration and dynamics of the social of time, achieving stability through it all, preserving
phenomena and institutions, while different social and persevering in its sameness, then one way of
domains explain the physical constitution of achieving it is to rely on the persistence of the
groups. If society was, above all, a group of repre- material environment. Under a reality that endures,
sentations, thoughts, and trends, it also existed and we would not know how to recall the past were it not
played its part insofar as it was around space as a preserved by its surrounding material environment.
physical reality, participating like an organic body Objects, layouts, furniture, walls, rooms, houses . . .
in the universe of physical things. Aware of the fact they all configure a sort of silent society around us,
that it was not enough to shape the physical sub- giving us balance. Bearer of attributed significan-
stratum and to distinguish the physical aspects ces, of images of other significants, insofar as it
from the rest of social reality (the reality of the remains stable, gives the impression of the order and
social groups, necessarily associated with a space, calmness necessary to recognise ourselves in it, the
but to which its concurrence is not enough to estab- comforting image of continuity. In this sense, the
lish itself and to last), Halbwachs takes morphol- relation with the material environment is not merely
ogy to meet the collective psychology of groups: objectual and distant, of mere usage, and it could be
presumed that in the end the space represents the
Us paying attention to those physical forms has the aim of group itself.
discovering behind them a whole branch of collective psy-
chology. Because society is inserted in the physical world, and
the group’s thought finds, within the representations from When a group is inserted in a part of space, it transforms it to
those spatial conditions, a principle of regularity and stability, its own image, but at the same time it bends and adapts to the
in the same way as individual thought needs the perception of physical things that resist it. It withdraws into itself inside the
body and space to stay balanced. (Halbwachs [1938] 1970, frame it has built. The image of the external environment, and
pp.12–13) the stable relations maintained with this environment, become
the foremost idea that the group forms of itself. This image
impregnates all the elements of its conscience, moderating and
That call for attention with respect to the social
regulating its evolution. The image of things participates in
conscience, to the intangible links that guarantee the their inertia. It is not the isolated individual, but the individual
cohesion of the group, its internal configuration and as a member of the group, the group itself, which in this way
its durability under a socialised form, would lead us ends subjected to the influence of the material nature and
to a convergence between social morphology and participates in its balance. (Halbwachs [1950] 1997, p.195)

© UNESCO 2012.
28 Emilio Martínez Gutiérrez

Under this approach we can see again a whole vious arrangement was originally the work of a group, and
theory of place as a social space codified by a what one group has done another one can undo. However, the
group, which leaves on it its footprint and receives intention of the original individuals has taken shape as a ma-
terial structure, that is, a thing, and the power of local tradition
one in exchange, since: emanates from that thing, of which it was an image. This is
true to such an extent that for a large number of its members,
Each aspect, each detail of this place has in itself a meaning groups imitate the passivity of inert matter. (Halbwachs
intelligible only for the members of the group, because each [1950] 1997, pp.200–201)
part of the space corresponds to as many different aspects of
the structure and the life of its society, at least as regards
whatever is most stable in it. (Halbwachs [1950] 1997, p.196) This interpretation situates the author close to the
German sociology theses related to the territorial
An accidental relation is not conceivable: the group dimension of the collective identity, very much
incorporates its thoughts and takes shape in the present in the discussion of co-spatiality of
material structure that it creates and in turn sup- Tönnies, Spengler and, especially of Simmel
ports it. Were this structure to remain firm and the (Amphoux and Ducret 1985), who, in relation to
group were to participate in its inertia – imitating the self-preservation of groups says:
its passiveness, the group would get the impression
of remaining identical. This is true for all groups, The most general case where the problem of self-preservation
of the group is present, is to remain identical, in spite of the
whether spatially based or not, but it is logically
disappearance and change of its members. . . . This is one of
noticeable with a higher intensity in those groups the cases in which the chronological sorting of phenomena
and sectors whose existence – professional, family, displays a satisfactory analogy with its spatial arrangement.
daily lives . . . – is necessarily linked to places. . . . The first element, the one which most immediately serves
This way, in old districts, in those relatively as a basis for the continuity of the collective unit is the per-
secluded areas of big cities, in those small cities manence of locality, of the land upon which the group lives.
with a slow rhythm alien to the big modernisation The State, and even more the city – but also other uncountable
trends, and in summary, in those “small closed groups – settle firstly their unit on the territory, which consti-
tutes the lasting substratum of all the modifications in their
universes”, physical space and social space get
contents. (Simmel 1977, pp.524–525)
confused, with the weft of one acting upon the weft
of the other and vice versa; the place becomes the
Nevertheless, Simmel sees the importance of the
link, and the link gives credit to the place. That
persistence of a spiritual unity, since this type of
way, the correlative construction of an affective
connection with a territory designated as its own is
community is outlined, where co-spatiality, i.e. a
essential for its continuity as a group: again, we
relation based on spatial proximity, becomes an
come to the circularity of the internal meaning and
essential, though not the only, condition of its
the external conscience of the locality.
existence. In the face of threat with destruction,
and facing loss of quotidian places with the
advance of the demolition and alteration of the
spatial arrangement, those individuals and groups Dissociations: memories
that ensure their identification on the basis of ter- without a place and
ritory manage to show their resistance to change: displaced identities
they have shaped a good part of their existence on
their physical environment and: Halbwachs is aware that the modern city, where life
is constantly renewed, is par excellence the field of
. . . it is not so easy to change the established relations between tension between the forces that push, in all the
stone and humans. When a human group has lived for a while spheres of existence, towards social change and
in a place adapted to their habits, not only its movements, but those that resist, in an often vain attempt to float
also its thoughts are regulated by the succession of physical along on the warmth of social inertia. The problem
images which external objects represent. Now, let us partially had been documented first in his studies on the
suppress or modify the orientation, direction, shape or looks of
urban morphology of Paris, then built on in his
those houses, those streets, those passages, or let us just
change their arrangement. The stones and materials will not
studies about urban expansion plans, and was now
offer any resistance, but the groups will certainly do so. It is in observed from the point of view of its consequences
this resistance, if not of the stones, at least of their old relations for the memory of the affected groups. In fact, the
with the groups, where one stumbles. Undoubtedly, the pre- sentiment of loss, disorientation, and alienation of

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Memories without a place 29

individuals and groups is addressed in great detail, of their house and the rooms that they have abandoned, if they
when facing the disappearance of familiar spaces, stay joined together across space, it is because they think
the uncertainty created when moving to new physi- about those rooms. This way, nothing happened after the
expulsion of the Messieurs and the nuns of Port Royal, while
cal surroundings, the possibility that related memo- the buildings of the abbey and those who kept their memories
ries might dissolve once the physical frameworks of remained standing. (Halbwachs [1950] 1997, p.196)
reference disappear. If we are able to find such an
extraordinary attachment to the material forms of Indeed, Port Royal would not be about collateral
the city, which in itself constitutes a compromise repercussions on offended individuals or residuary
between permanency and change (Baudelaire’s The trades trampled on bit by bit by the currents of
swan expressed it with clarity), the central role of modernisation but, on the one hand, about the
space in the identity and memory of people has to be presence of a strong, affectionate, and united com-
understood even more clearly when we place our- munity and, on the other hand, the intervention of
selves within the frame of mind of local rural a power alien to it by means of a premeditated
groups. Even when the text hardly mentions their exercise of suppression of the physical and sym-
memory, the observations already made may bolic referent of the community, with the intention
undoubtedly be extended. A more intense bond with of destroying it, dissolving its influence, erasing
the place can be appreciated in them, the apparently its memory, and displacing its identity. What was
inert duration of landscape and peasantry, almost pointed out in The social frames is reinstated here:
confused in their passivity, and from there on to the memory of the group is modified when the
presume, on the one hand, the broken feeling of spatial (lieux) and social (milieux) referents
rupture and alienation when facing the destruction vanish. If the physical place disappears, where
of their environment, and on the other hand, the could they possibly be recovered? Nevertheless,
emptiness of the prevailing social memory, built memories can flow and be repaired for a while
upon the structural amnesia of the urban process. across the space defined by the relations in a
Thus, reintroducing the observations of Halbwachs group, according to its thickness or density (the
about social morphology and collective psychol- Simmelian emotional unity related to self-
ogy, and in relation to the rural “livelihoods”, we preservation would adopt the formula “we still are
find the peasantry a community whose thought is where we were”). However, from the moment that
turned to its traditions, pleased with the stability of the group frameworks are abandoned, which may
things, hostile to any novelty, sympathetic to its seem inevitable, after the person is framed within
idiosyncratic memories and its marginal existence, other notional systems and gets involved with
but above all, attached to the land: alpha and omega other memory communities, the initial memories
of its existence, could disappear not because of their age but
because of their displacement. In the case of indi-
. . . such seems to be the motive or the fundamental reason vidual exile, or the dispersion of societies due to
explaining why they do not want to leave the little piece of migration, the individual remains suspended in an
land where they were born, where they have grown roots,
excluded memory, like the “marginal man” theo-
where their family has been living since a time that seems
indefinite to them. (Halbwachs [1938] 1970, p.65)
rised by Robert E. Park: a displaced identity, in
trance and transitory. A different situation would
In rural towns, the place synthesises their entire be that of the diaspora of communities that remain
family, neighbourly, economical, relational, and united under threat and on the move, and whose
religious world, as an integrated whole, inclusive moral density can ensure for a while a circulation
and capable of generating memories, where the of their thoughts, the anchorage of memories to an
pieces cannot be dissociated without the risk of unreal space. This would be the memory of a
collapse of the entire complex established since catastrophe where the event (the loss) would
times immemorial. What would be the conse- brand in their minds a before and an after on the
quences on their identity of a radical intervention collective existence, between an unrecoverable
against their environment? The evocation of Port past and an inevitable present: the exceptional
Royal’s topocide is eloquent about its memory drift: event would not only remain an integral part of
the vestiges of the spatial framework left behind
. . . when the members of a group are dispersed and do not find or those of what the group used to be, but in the
anything new in their physical environment that reminds them social space of the group and its duty to memory.

© UNESCO 2012.
30 Emilio Martínez Gutiérrez

However, this is a wounded memory, heading groups and ensure subtle compromises. The trans-
towards transformation, since: mission of a legitimised narrative by means of the
manipulation of space underlies the actions of
. . . a seriously momentous event always entails some change those institutions in charge of guaranteeing social
in the relations of the group with the place, whether it modifies housing, equipment, and a new communal refer-
the group size . . . , or whether it changes the place. . . . From ence (rural colony, neighbourhood, public spaces,
then onwards, neither the group or collective memory will stay etc.). Identity, obviously, has to be seen as a fragile
exactly the same, but nor will the physical environment.
reality, always under creation and disintegration,
(Halbwachs [1950] 1997, pp.196–197)
subjected to changes and attacks. As social frame-
works are modified (the physical and social space)
Here we find the role of the architecture of oblivion
the group changes, diminishes, grows, and mixes
in the definition of new pathways and social rep-
and, all in all, when confronting its sometimes
resentations which are more or less aseptic and
imposed evolution, certain memories will be dis-
configurable; the desire to employ a physical
carded and with them the old distinctive features of
framework as a generator of new identities, espe-
its identity. But that is what is characteristic of it,
cially relevant to the standardised prototypes of
and not the pretension of being a finished entity,
progressive urbanism focused on abstract subjects.
absolute and transcendental. Like memory, like
A modified and aseptic framework, where time
space.
seems to never stop; but a frame many times arbi-
trated by power structures to guide the identity of Translated from Spanish

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