The Media-History of Memory. Mapping the Technological Regimes of Memory

Building upon the twin premises of the historicity and mediality of memory – individual and collective alike –, this study makes an analytic incursion in the history of memory in terms of the technological media of storing knowledge about the past, i.e. a media-history of memory. The paper aims, in the opening act, at shedding light on the inextricable relationship between memory and the bio-cultural technology available for preserving knowledge, and thus saving the past from oblivion. The study moves on to trace out the succession of the different “technological regimes of memory” emerged in human history, examining how the technology of memory influenced both the formal structure and the modus operandi of collective memory, that is to say, both its structural framework and its regime of functioning.

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