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social problems. Similarly, the personal digital stories produced in the Silence
Speaks project? addressed highly sensitive issues, focusing on public health
problems (e.g., HIV prevention and domestic violence) and raised awareness
among the public and policy-makers.
In oral history narratives and digital stories, narrators organize their
experiences of historical-cultural events in a causal context. This is done
through reliving their own experiences as they narrate, reflecting on the
events as witnesses, and thus interpreting them. The narrators include moral
values and self-reflections in the narration and draw conclusions from the
story. The more oral histories or digital stories are revealed about an event, the
more perspectives and details the researcher and the recipient can examine.
Although these narratives are individual stories, they can also contribute to
the construction of a collective social memory.
In various social science discourses, the question arises as to which
interpretations are considered “true” and congruent in relation to a particular
topic. This question is particularly relevant to history and its interpretation
since there are as many individual readings of an event.
It is worth examining how individual memories relate to the collective
memory and cultural heritage of a nation. The concept of memory can be
approached by different disciplines and researchers, including historians,
sociologists, anthropologists, aestheticians, communication experts, as well
as narrative and experimental psychologists.
Sonkoly (2005) interprets cultural heritage from a historical perspective,
drawing from the research fields of heritage and memory. He considers
individual commemoration as part of collective historical memory, in place
of or in addition to the commemoration at the religious or national level. In
order to reconstruct historical events, it is essential that individual narratives,
or so-called testimonies, evolve. They are often uncensored, giving individual
memory-growing autonomy and impact.
The rememberer contributes to the construction of history as a witness to
past events. According to Laszl6 (2003), a narrative is a cognitive tool which
can be used both in the social (and historical) space and in the individual’s
process of self-understanding. According to narrative psychology, memories
are narrative constructs that cannot be disconnected from the cultural
narratives of a given society. The narrative is thus dual in nature: the individual
constructs history through narrative, but its cultural schemas can have
repercussions on individual narrative construction. As Bruner wrote: “It is
through our own narratives that we principally construct a version of ourselves
in the world, and it is through its narrative that a culture provides models of
identity and agency to its members.” (Bruner, 1996, p. 14)
# https://www.storycenter.org/silence-speaks