The social function of memory - and of forgetting

"The social function of memory - and of forgetting - can thus be seen as  the final stage of what may be called homeostatic organization of the cultural tradition in non-literate society. The language is developed in intimate association with the experience of the community, and it is learned by the individual in face-to-face contact with the other members. What continues to be of social relevance is stored in the memory while the rest is usually forgotten: and language - primarily - vocabulary - is the effective medium of this crucial process of social digestion and elimination which may be regarded as analogous to the homeostatic organization of the human body by means of which it attempts to maintain its present condition of life." pp.30-31. 

INDIVIDUAL
|
INTERPERSONAL    :     SCIENCES              
HUMANISTIC --------------------------------------  MECHANISTIC
SOCIOLOGY :   POLITICAL
|
GROUP

individual memory forgetting (salience) learner - literacy writing - reading books truth via dialectic soul of the learner	function speech - writing digestion / elimination [anatomy & physiology] homeostasis - body - life
community language - oral society social function of memory culture social digestion & elimination homeostasis	organisational memory power specious sense of knowledge

Literacy in Traditional Societies

"The emphasis on memory, the repository of the cultural tradition in oral society, is significant; and it is appropriate that Socrates should deliver his attack on writing in the form of a fable or myth, in a distinctively oral and non-logical mode of discourse (Notopoulos 1938: 465-93). The ensuing discussion, and several other discussions, of which the most important occurs in the Seventh Letter, make clear that the objections to writing are two-fold: it is inherently shallow in its effects; and the essential principles of truth can only be arrived at dialectically.

Writing is shallow in its effects because reading books may give a specious sense of knowledge, which in reality can only be attained by oral question and answer; and such knowledge in any case only goes deep when it 'is written in the soul of the learner' (Phaedrus, 276a)." p.50.

 

Goody, J. (1968) Literacy in Traditional Societies, Cambridge: CUP.

See also: "Life, Literacy, Oppositions, Complexity and Information"