socio-cultural contexts.'4 As i noticed, these memories are limited and individual,
which makes Forum excluded from the realm of cultural and collective memory.
This research paper concludes with the question whether Forum should indeed
still be remembered, including the opinion of several Forum participants on how
to remember it.
Methodology: Memory studies
To use cultural memory studies as a theoretical approach for this local case is
appropriate since the studies' concepts show that it is not a tool which can only
be applied to a single discipline, but instead functions in relation to multidis-
ciplinary issues. it may thus help approach the historical, sociological, and art
historical aspects of Forum. The discipline's importance is not only recognised
because of its rapid growth of publications treating of specific national, social,
religious, or family memories, but also by the contemporary trend which aims to
provide overviews of the state of the art in this emerging field and to create differ
ent research traditions.5 However, since the term 'cultural' memory is ambiguous
and vague, one should indicate a clear, consistent definition. i will hence be using
the definition of cultural memory presented by Astrid Erll, which is: 'the inter
play of present and past in socio-cultural contexts.'6 This definition allows for a
broad inclusion of different phenomena that play a role in the creation of cultural
memory, whether they be individual acts of remembering with their position in a
social context, or group and national memory, with their invented traditions and
transnational memories. This field thus remains open to expatiate on different
forms of memory, ranging from intentional to unintentional or from narrative to
non-narrative, such as visual or bodily memories.7
A pivotal figure to mention in the establishment of memory studies is Maurice
Halbwachs, who laid the foundation of the field in the 1920s by coining the term
mémoire collective.8 Next to this fundamental legacy, he also brought into life the
concept of cadres sociaux de la mémoire (social frameworks of memory), which
explains that individual memories are inherently shaped and triggered through
Eva Langerak
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4 Astrid Erll, Cultural Memory Studies: An introduction. in: Astrid Erll, Ansgar Nünning and
Sara B. Young (eds), Cultural Memory Studies: An International and Interdisciplinary Hand
book. Berlin/New York: de Gruyter, 2008, 2.
5 Erll, Cultural Memory Studies, 1.
6 Erll, Cultural Memory Studies, 2.
7 Erll, Cultural Memory Studies, 2.
8 Erll, Cultural Memory Studies, 2.
