Remembering together: is there a social ontology of memory?

Abstract

In analysing certain integrated collectivities as group subjects or institutional persons, Philip Pettit stresses that such collectivities engage in a social form of self-regulation by collectivizing reason in the service of rational unity over time. This is an additional and distinct sign of collective intentionality -- of the existence of a genuinely plural subject -- over and above the mutual awareness among group members of any shared beliefs, intentions, and goals. Do either of these signs of collective intentionality extend to the case of memory? Consideration of this question is aided by some initial explorations of: memory's role in the self-regulating individual mind; the distinctive nature of groups which engage in shared activities of remembering; the role of memory in the kinds of discursive dilemma which, for Pettit, effective social integrates tend to resolve by collectivizing reason; whether or not there can ever be stark discontinuities between a group's memory and the memories of its members; and the relative contributions of mutual awareness and of the urge towards rational unification in grounding the normative commitments of groups and their members.