The second voice

Abstract

Understanding of social aspects of remembering in diverse communities requires a focus on the listener, and on the role of uptake in memory's inter-individual dramas. We come repeatedly under the influence not only of our own pasts as understood by others, but of the pasts of others. Sharing memory is our default. So we can respond to any preoccupation with accuracy in the philosophy and psychology of memory by theorizing the self as relationally shaped, and by acknowledging the value of ongoing renegotiation over the significance of shared experiences as communities forge a useable past together.