Jacqueline DeSantis

In the first few lectures of my university english course, ASTU, we’ve begun discussing the way communities and individuals remember and how sometimes people fabricate memories to serve their own agenda. We also discussed briefly the concept of bias versus perspective, what those words actually mean, and the connotations we associate with them. During the past lectures a connection has appeared between the idea that memories are influenced by a number of outside factors and the idea that bias and perspective change the way people view or value a text. If a memory is viewed as a text would be, then how does the knowledge of  influences on a memory affect how that memory should be valued?

While reading the article “The Role of Interpretive Communities in Remembering and Learning” by Ferhat Shahzad in class we learned that there are three main factors that influence the way people remember, she makes the case that the most important and most overlooked of those factors is the influence from an “interpretive community”. Essentially, she argues that the communities surrounding an individual all have a unique impact on the way a memory is remembered, which sounded a lot to me like “our memories are biased by those around us”. Usually, when an academic text is examined any obvious affiliation the author has or prior work experience can taint the work as “biased” and devalues the work. In politics when politicians push policies that resembles those of the special interest groups that “influence” them we consider that politician bias. But when we recognize, as Dr. Luger explained in class, that everyone and everything has bias then the negative connotation of that word is maybe wrong. The difference between bias and perspective is not as cut and dry as it seems. If we replace the word bias with perspective then it seems like people are less critical of an outside influence. If a politician says he was influenced by the perspective he gained while attending a local town hall meeting people are less critical than if the same politician said he was biased by the arguments from the town hall meeting and would be pushing an agenda accordingly. The most important question this raises is how does the knowledge of bias or perspective change how a text, policy, or most importantly a memory is valued?

A good example of this concept was brought up in class when Dr. Luger explained a story about a man who wrote a book claiming to be a victim of the Holocaust and to have suffered in a concentration camp. When he was found out to be lying people no longer considered his book to be anything more than a manifestation of his lies but his story did still have value. Even stories known to be untrue have value, in this instance his narrative did still raise awareness and personify the horrors that some real people did experience. The influence communities have on memories is far less damming and not necessarily a positive or a negative thing, but once we recognize that a memory was influenced by say a religious or educational community does the memories significance change?

For example, if a trauma happens to a large number of people the many differing memories of the trauma may influence each other, do the other memories of the same trauma give perspective and thus contextualize the memory or does it create a bias. In an optimistic view, this contextualizes the memory and in a cynical view this dilutes the legitimacy of a memory. Even if memories of the same event begin to mix together into a more collective memory I believe their is still value in that memory. Regardless of whether you’re a cynic or an optimist memories should not be disregarded because of the factors that influenced the memory. The world is not black and white and no memory exists in a vacuum. Understanding the influences on a memory gives context to the memory just as understanding a subject prior to taking a class on it contextualizes the subject. It is important to acknowledge the fact that someone’s memory of an event is almost never independent of outside influences and it’s even more important to examine what those influences mean. Just as the memory itself holds value so does the process of remembering that memory. The way a memory is approached ought to be less black and white, memories like texts carry value even if they are fabricated or “bias”, and approaching memory with a less fact based approach can reveal more insight into the way someone remembers which too is valuable.