 Memorisation
The art of storing information in the memory is distinguished by the fact that it
is ether mechanical or deliberate. It is through practice and imitation, through
the mechanical repetition of traditional gestures and speech of his or her social
group, that the individual without actually realising it memorises most of the information
necessary for social behaviour. Taken in this context, memorisations culminate
in the acquisition of innumerable actions, of behaviour, thought and sensibility
that define a social and cultural identity.
Memory Testing
Investigation exists where certain individuals are temporarily separated from
their usual social group in order to take part in an initiatory ritual or to become
part of an educational institution. These extreme cases do not apply to all members
of a community, however, and those to whom they do apply are never required to memorise
anything, except those gestures, techniques and special narratives that are of particular
importance, as, for example certain ritual formulas, declarations of faith, religious
chants, prayers and rules of religious behaviour. Deliberate memorisation thus
appears to be a specialisation of the more natural process of acquiring knowledge
and techniques, religious and otherwise, that unconsciously determines a person's
membership in a particular tradition. Oral memory and memory determined by writing
can easily Co-exist in the same culture, as the Greek, Jewish, Celtic and Hindu examples
to be mentioned later will show. There is a line that leads from the oral to the
written.
Societies Without Writing
In societies without writing, riddles, proverbs, fables and stories depend on memory
that is more or less shared by the whole community. In this sense one can speak of
a 'social memory' or 'shared knowledge' Henri Junod (1936) recalls a woman (among
the Tsonga, an African tribe) who could tell riddle after riddle late into the night.
He met story-tellers of every age and both sexes: 'such a narrator may know only
one story, and repeat it on every occasion, as did Jim Taldane, who told the story
of an ogre Nwatlakoulalambibi, with such enthusiasm that he was nicknamed after his
hero. But others could tell many more. In Ruanda, the oral tradition
of the Uberäni, in which the rites to be performed by the king were described,
was divided into 18 rituals that were kept strictly secret.
In certain societies, in particular, among the Native Americans of North America,
the knowledge and possession of a particular chant or myth may be the privilege of
an individual who may alone pronounce it. It is for this reason that the Navajo
of New Mexico, may give as a sign of his 'poverty' that he does not own a single
'chant'. A 'chant' may thus have become a piece of 'property' that concerns it's
own social and spiritual identity.
Most often, however, it is because certain stories are of important collective interest
that they are entrusted to the vigilant memory of one or more persons. A specific
institution then takes up the task of memorisation often religious. An elite
then controls these institutions, which is close to power. In an essay on this oral
tradition Pierre Smith (1970) notes that 'the individuals in charge of remembering
and repeating the text word for word - errors could be punished with death - were
the most important dignitaries in the kingdom. |