IDENTIDADES 1 ENGLISH IDENTIDADES 5 ENGLISH | Page 128

tempting to understand it as the flip side
of memory.
Despite the fact, this research paper
should restrict itself to theoretical reflection about what is absolutely necessary; I have to cite French sociologist
Maurice Halbwachs, and Irish political
scientist and historian Benedict Anderson.
Halbwachs was a pioneer in the study of
collective memory. He created this concept; the relationship it establishes between individual and collective memory
became a referent for later researchers.
His notion could be understood with
one single phrase: “We are never alone”
(Halbwachs 2011: 164). Our memories
are intrinsically collective, beyond
whether or not others have interfered in
them.
If man is a social being, there is a fluid
exchange between both kinds of memories. Although each individual has a
unique view of the past, the social ties
that have given sense to his or her
membership in the groups in which they
live and act proved the collective
framework of experience and generation thought patterns. Given this psycho-sociological tie between present
and past, these thought patterns highlight the fact that remembering is never
an individual activity.

Triple compartmented Mazacaya: an
idiophone, for indirect strikes, one for
shaking, with a wooden handle that
has one to tin three vessels on its distal
extreme, each one formed by two cone
trunks joined by one base, with pebbles, seeds and/or other small metallic
objects. Comparsa Negros Argentinos
de la Asociación Misibamba. Merlo
(Buenos Aires), 2008 © Pablo Cirio
Why a social history of silence?

Given each individual belongs and/or
acts in many groups, there can be multiple views of the past. For Halbwachs,
the structure of these social frameworks
of memory allow one to organize and
stabilize memories, know the past, to
make sense of it, confer a social function to individual recollection. As a

To speak of a social history of silence
may seem like an oxymoron. Even so,
from a historical and anthropological
point of view, silence is not simply the
absence of sound, but rather can be as
or more expressive than words and have
its own meaning, depending on the context and intervening actors. I am at-

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