The intergenerational transmission of collective memory and the subject of the society of fatigue

Abstract

The transmission of collective memory, far from being an essential natural process, is configured today as a political act and a form of resistance against the scourge of forgetting, allowing for the reconstruction of intergenerational bonds and the reinterpretation of cultural heritage. In late-modern society, characterized by singularity, presentism, the commodification of life, and a crisis of meaning, great philosophers such as Manuel Cruz and Byung-Chul Han delve into the causes of the abandonment of the recent past and the pre-modern subjectivation that implies not only the institutionalization of forgetting but also the weakening of collective identity and community ties. This reflective article becomes an invitation to reconsider the importance of recovering the narrative essence, memory and its transmission, but above all, the “aroma of time” and the “contemplative life,” which, as Han proposes, involves reconstructing a time that endures, that opens itself to being and to narrative, thus enabling an authentic experience in the face of the fleeting nature of contemporaneity.