Abstract
Prolepsis – or the narrative manoeuver consisting of narrating or evoking a future event in advance – is a concept borrowed from literary theory that has been used in Psychology for studying the contribution of culture and meaning to development. Cole applies the notion of prolepsis to upbringing insofar as parents’ imagined goals vis-à-vis their offspring guide their educational childrearing, thus channelling the child’s present towards the parents’ imagined future. This view coincides with cultural psychology in that humans are considered as future-oriented beings, constructing cultural tools that mediate the way we interpret the world and act within it. Drawing from this theoretical framework, this paper applies the notion of prolepsis to collective memory in order to examine how imagined futures are brought into the present by means of particular ways of reconstructing the past, thus mobilizing collectives towards certain political goals. Along these lines, the narrative, pragmatic and normative dimensions of collective memory are discussed. The paper concludes with some reflections on the role of politics of imagination in promoting different ways of relating past, present and future.
Introduction
“The past is thought of as being ‘there’, fixed, unalterable, indelibly recorded in the annals of time, whether we are able to decipher them or not. The future, on the other hand, is regarded as being not merely largely unknown but largely undecided… Thus the future is thought to be open, whereas the past is closed” (Ayer, 1958, p. 188)
The phenomenon of collective remembering has been approached through the social representations theory (Moscovici, 1984), thus considering memory as something “actively engaged, socially and materially situated, reconstructive and oriented to the future” (Wagoner, 2015, p. 143). According to Wagoner (2015), social representations can be considered as dynamic social frameworks within which vivid and condensed images of the past are transmitted, negotiated and reconstructed, thus making the past familiar to the group. This dynamic involves, on the one hand, a process of objectification, by which the group’s historical past is conveyed through a range of images, stories, rituals, monuments, etc., and on the other hand, a process of anchoring, whereby the group’s representation of its past acts as a framework against which to interpret the present and imagine the future. Along these lines, Liu and Hilton’s (2005) work on social representations illustrates the key role of narratives about the past not only in fostering collective identity but also in prescribing how certain conflicts should be defined in the present and, accordingly, which course of action should be taken in the future, something that points to what they call historical charters. Narratives conveyed by social representations of the past therefore possess a social mobilizing power inasmuch as they outline a trajectory telling “us who we are, where we came from and where we should be going” (Liu and Hilton, 2005, p. 537). So viewed, it could be argued that the past weighs on the present, thus constraining the future.
The aim of this paper is to complement this linear approach to collective memory with a more circular or non-linear one – already used in autobiographical memory 1 or in theory of history 2 – in which the weight shifts from the past to the future. Drawing on the concept of prolepsis – a notion borrowed from literary theory – this paper sets out to examine how, on occasion, the collective past is reconstructed according to different imagined futures in order to foster current actions, thus guiding the present towards certain goals. Such a dynamic relationship between past, present and future can be found in certain utopias – for instance, the Marxist account of the past was presented as underpinning a political programme for the future (Southgate, 1996) –, in most nation-building processes, 3 in supranational identity formation projects, 4 as well as in nationalist movements seeking either independence or a nostalgic renewal of the past. 5 In all these cases, the past is interpreted in such a way that it appears as a path towards an already imagined future. This, in turn, poses some problems with respect to the traditional linear concept of time, based on efficient causality, in which events are inevitably pushed from the past into the future (Morselli, 2013). In contrast, in the above-mentioned examples it is an imagined scenario that pulls the present towards the future through a certain way of reconstructing the collective past.
Humans do not passively react to stimuli but are constantly constructing other possible worlds (Bruner, 1986) and imagining new futures that can alter our own present (Zittoun & de Saint-Laurent, 2015). This approach is in line with one of the key assumptions of cultural psychology, namely that we are goal-oriented beings and, as such, we use different cultural tools (Wertsch, 2002) to interpret the world and create bridges towards what is not yet given (Abbey & Bastos, 2014). In so doing, we guide our actions towards the future, thus reducing its inherent uncertainty (Valsiner, 2007). In this regard, narratives are key meaning-making tools through which past, present and future can be meaningfully related (Wertsch, 1997). But how is collective memory narratively articulated? What influence can the future have on the reconstruction of the past? And to what extent can narratives about the past affect individuals’ positions and actions, and the way in which they both come to be morally justified? In the pages to follow these questions will be addressed by focusing on the narrative, pragmatic and normative dimensions of collective memory. This will set the stage for examining how prolepsis is at play in certain social representations of the past, or in other words, how the future is brought into the present through certain ways of reconstructing the past.
But, what exactly does prolepsis mean? And how might it contribute to the study of collective memory?
Introducing the concept of prolepsis
Prolepsis, according to the Merriam-Webster dictionary, is a word of Greek origin, meaning “the representation or assumption of a future act or development as if presently existing or accomplished”. 6 Prolepsis is a term mainly used in narratology. 7 From this field, Genette (1980) defines prolepsis as “the narrative manoeuver that consists of narrating or evoking in advance an event that will take place in the future” (p. 40). So, contrary to analepsis or flash-back – consisting of bringing the past into the present in the story – prolepsis or flash-forward is a “movement forward in time, so that a future event is related textually before its time, before the presentation of chronologically intermediate events (which end up being narrated later in the text)” (Toolan, 1988, p. 43). One classic example of prolepsis can be found in the famous first lines of García Márquez’s book One hundred years of solitude: “Many years later, as he faced the firing squad, Coronel Aureliano Buendía was to remember that distant afternoon when his father took him to discover ice” (1967/1970, p. 1). Bringing the future into the present – in this case, bringing the tragic end of one of the main characters into the very beginning of the story – is a narrative mechanism for guiding the reader, since subsequent events in the plot acquire meaning and directionality vis-à-vis a future scenario already presented (for a cognitive approach to prolepsis in text processing, see Bridgeman, 2005).
In Psychology, Michael Cole (1996) applied the concept of prolepsis to the study of upbringing. According to Cole, adults interpret upbringing in terms of what they imagine or expect their child’s future to be. So here, we also see how the future is brought into the present, the result being that parents’ expectations mediate their actions during the upbringing, thus channelling the child’s present towards the parents’ imagined future. 8 In Cole’s words, “parents structure the child’s experience to be consistent with what they imagine to be the child’s future identity” (p. 185). This imagined future is, in turn, culturally mediated, since it is strongly based on the parents’ past experience, including the way in which they were raised. As can be noted, this is a rather non-linear process whereby the imagined cultural future of the child, based on the parents’ past experiences, is brought into the present adult treatment of the baby (p. 184). As a result, “the parents’ imagination of their child’s future becomes a fundamental materialized constraint on the child’s life experiences in the present” (p. 184). In short, prolepsis in upbringing contexts would be an illustration of “the cultural mechanism that brings the end into the beginning” (p. 183).
Applying prolepsis to the study of collective memory
This way of studying upbringing through the concept of prolepsis shows how culture provides different social scripts through which people can guide themselves and others according to certain future goals and expectations. In other words, it could be said that in such cases an imagined future scenario acquires pragmatic force for current actions. Building on this assumption, the following sections will extend the notion of prolepsis to collective memory by focusing on how the past is reconstructed according to different future goals in order to encourage and justify certain actions. To that end, we will first examine the narrative dimension of memory, looking at how past events acquire meaning and significance through a story-line that links the past with the present. This will lead us to the pragmatic dimension, whereby collective memory is understood as a socio-culturally situated activity aimed at giving meaning to the past in order to meet present demands and attain different future goals. Finally, we will address the normative dimension of collective memory, looking at how the past prescribes different actions and goals to be pursued in the present; something that will bring us to the notion of script which ties the three dimensions together.
The narrative dimension of collective memory
Collective memory is articulated and transmitted through different social practices and cultural tools (from ritual performances to museums and history textbooks) whereby the past is brought into the present. Among these tools, narratives play a key role. As pointed out above, narratives are crucial in reconstructing the past and endowing it with meaning as well as an affective linkage to the collective’s present situation. Hence, the collective reconstruction of certain historical episodes (whether recent or remote) can easily bring about a wide array of feelings within a particular social group, such as pride, grievance, resentment, hatred, guilt, sense of revenge, etc. (Wagoner & Brescó, 2016). However, groups (including nations) typically support manifold accounts of the past, thus endowing the same historical events with different meanings, sometimes at odds with one another. This inevitable existence of different stories about the past, or stories about history, 9 raises some theoretical questions regarding the role of narratives in relation to historical accounts.
Narratives might be conceived as ways of representing the past. According to this viewpoint, past events are real entities that exist out there, charged with their own meaning and properties, waiting to be accurately recollected and represented by means of language. Brockmeier and Harré (2001) refer to this approach as representation fallacy, which consists of “supposing that there is one and only one human reality to which all narratives must in the end conform” (p. 48). In history, this realist notion is associated with Leopold von Ranke’s classic statement according to which historical accounts should merely show how the past actually was. In Psychology, this approach has also prevailed within memory studies, where events are usually considered as real entities that can be stored and reproduced with more or less accuracy through individuals’ accounts.
However, this viewpoint raises a problem, that of significance. As long as it is impossible to reproduce the whole reality of the past, a criterion based on significance is required. According to the philosopher Arthur Danto (1985), the historical significance of an event has to do mainly with its future consequences, thus transcending any meaning we might attribute to that event taken on its own. Hence, the significance of a particular event does not so much stem from its supposed intrinsic qualities, but from the way in which we relate that event to subsequent ones; something that we usually do by resorting to narrative plots. 10 But does reality (including that of the past) come into view in the form of ready-made plots? Brockmeier and Harré (2001) refer to such a standpoint as ontological fallacy, according to which “there would be really a story ‘out there’, waiting to be uncovered” (p. 48). Contrary to this stance, philosophers like Hayden White put the stress on the creative or poetic role of historians who, rather than identify a ready-made historical drama, impose a narrative form (or emplotment) onto the past, a form that necessarily conveys a moral content – the content of the form (White, 1986).
Historical accounts – unlike fictional ones – aspire to account for the events that took place in the past, even though both types of writing come into view in the form of narratives that tell a story. Thus, on the one hand, historical accounts are supposed to be based on what remains of the past in the present such as documents, archaeological remains, witnesses, etc. On the other hand, however, the narrative dimension imposed on the past (such as the plot, subject matter, genre, etc.) becomes the criterion whereby events come to be selected, interpreted, appraised and even inferred so that they can fit into a certain story-line. This implies an abductive relationship – à la Peirce – between events and narratives, or using Wertsch’s terms (forthcoming), between propositional truth – i.e., the Basque town of Guernica was bombed in 26 April 1937 – and narrative truth, i.e., the meaning bestowed on the past through different narratives. The result is a story-line aimed at making the past something significant and meaningful, but in relation to what? This leads us to the pragmatic dimension of memory.
The pragmatic dimension of collective memory
As stated at the beginning, we are goal-oriented beings. We do not simply react to what happens, but we also strive to simultaneously imagine and pre-adapt to what is still to come, thus orienting our actions towards the future. Likewise, when we remember, we do not simply store and reproduce the events of the past, as if they were antique objects. As underlined by Bartlett (1932) at the beginning of the last century, remembering is rather a constructive activity aimed at meeting different demands and goals in the current situation. Bartlett developed this functionalist approach to memory around the notion of schema which he defined as “an active organisation of past reactions, or of past experiences, which must always be supposed to be operating in any well-adapted organic response” (p. 201). In light of this approach, accuracy in memory is subordinated to the subjects’ ability to reconstruct and make sense of the past in accordance with the demands deriving from a continuously evolving present and an uncertain future (see Wagoner, this issue, and Wagoner, 2013, for a comprehensive and historical overview on the concept of schema). Such an adaptive constructive process has been examined in a number of recent studies showing cognitive and neurological similarities between remembering the past and imagining the future (see Schacter, 2012 for a review).
Bartlett’s functional view on memory has been developed within the framework of cultural psychology for the last two decades (see Kashima, 2000; Saito, 2000), thus understanding remembering as a socio-culturally mediated activity. This approach goes back to Vygotsky’s (1987) assumption on humans’ capability of deliberately manipulating their environment with signs in order to prospectively regulate their remembering and therefore their actions. Vygotsky provides an example of how the creation of a sign in the environment – like tying a knot on a rope – can act as mnemonic device that, in turn, acts back on its creator in the future (see Wagoner, 2015 for a discussion). In this respect, remembering always takes place within a dynamic context (Brescó & Wagoner, 2016), a context that transcends a purely physical environment as it is shaped by a set of social practices, artefacts and signs developed throughout history. From tying knots on ropes to commemorations and the erection of monuments, from equestrian statues of kings to graffiti murals (see Awad, this issue), from the passing down of epic poems in oral cultures to the transmission of national history in schools, over time different cultural tools have mediated the way people reconstruct the past according to the different demands of each socio-historical context.
And just as tying a knot on a rope acts as a mnemonic device aimed at prospectively regulating individuals’ remembering and actions in the future, the set of mnemonic practices and tools developed by social groups also aim to bring the past to future generations, thus enabling individuals to assume the collective’s historical claims and aspirations. This leads us back to Liu’s and Hilton notion of charter, “a central part of a group’s representation of its history”, consisting of “an account of its origin and historical mission, which [is] amended and renegotiated over time to reflect changing circumstances” (Liu & Hilton, 2005, p. 538). Charters therefore serve a pragmatic function by relating the group’s foundational myth to a set of goals to be pursued in the future. Along these lines, the authors point to the siege of Masada by the Roman occupants of Israel in A.D. 72–73 as an example of how a past event is brought into the present in order to justify certain pragmatic ends related to the modern state of Israel. 11 Thus, similarly to Bartlett’s pragmatic approach on memory, the future-oriented dimension of collective remembering makes groups constantly reconstruct their past so that it can be meaningfully linked to the current situation and future goals by means of a narrative plot, thus generating some kind of guidance for action. As Gergen and Gergen (1984) point out, “perhaps the most essential aspect of narratives is the capability to generate directionality” (p. 174). However, such directionality is not always linear – going from the past to the present and the future. As we shall see in the next section, the past does not always serve as a guideline for the future; occasionally, it is the future that proleptically serves to guide the construction of the past.
Prolepsis and the normative dimension of collective memory: Mobilizing the past towards the future
“On the basis of [its] purposes and expectations, a given mentality orders not merely future events, but also the past. Events which at first glance present themselves as a mere chronological cumulation, from this point of view take on the character of destiny” (Karl Mannheim, 1936/1979, p. 188) “Narrativization functions not only to construct an identity of who I have been, but also of who I plan to be. People construct imagined hypothetical stories as a means to plan their future actions or to anticipate possible future actions of others. They can play out various stories in their imagination to produce what if scenarios” (p. 15)
Bringing the notion of prolepsis to the nationalist rhetorical triad model implies breaking its seemingly linear logic and thus shifting the rationale for mobilization from the past to the future. Figure 1 illustrates this more circular or spiral logic resulting from adopting this shift.
Prolepsis or bringing the future into the present through the reconstruction of the past. Example based on the Nationalist rhetorical triad (Levinger & Lytle, 2001).
As we can see in the figure, it is precisely the imagined future (arrow A in the picture) that shapes the way in which the past is reconstructed (arrow B); a past that can be used, not only to interpret the present situation, but also as a moral argument for mobilization in order to attain certain political goals (arrow C). Nation-building processes as well as most of independence movements would be paradigmatic cases of this. For it is the future independent state what makes the past to be nationally reconstructed, and rhetorically used in order to justify such a political goal. In this way, the imagined future is presented as a natural consequence of the past, when in fact the former has been brought into the present by a certain way of reconstructing the latter. Here, just like in Cole’s upbringing example cited above, a final cause – the imagined future scenarios, be it of the child or the nation – becomes an efficient one as it acquires pragmatic force for mobilization, thus constraining and guiding present actions. These future scenarios act as valuational endpoints (Gergen, 2001), thus becoming the criterion from which to endow meaning and directionality to the past, as well as to assess the development of events in the present, in accordance with their proximity or remoteness vis-à-vis the imagined goals. This is where the narrative and the pragmatic dimension of collective memory conflate. For not only does the imposition of a certain plot or narrative genre permit the past to be appraised and endowed with meaning, but it also makes it relevant for groups’ present purposes. As can be seen in the example of the nationalist rhetorical triad, the emplotment of the past through a certain narrative form (in this case, a tragedy resulting from a loss) conveys a moral content to the present, which allows the main character of the story to adopt the role of victim, thus making their claims and actions more legitimate.
This brings us to the normative dimension of collective memory. As Nienass and Poole (2011) point out, collective memory is normative inasmuch as it indicates to us – either individually or collectively – those episodes in the past that we must take into account when deciding what to do in the present (p. 89). Drawing on the Schank and Abelson (1977) model, it can be argued that collective memory conveys a kind of script which, like charters, prescribes guidelines for action. In this regard, when people make these scripts their own, they tend to assume, in the first person plural, past affronts and grievances, as well as the collective claims and future scenarios transmitted through such story-lines. By doing so, individuals become actors of a ready-made historical drama, in which it is not only acceptable, but sometimes even a duty, to undertake certain types of action in order to achieve certain political ends. Scripts resulting from social representations of the past result then in the assignment of different rights and duties (Harré & van Langenhove, 1991). 12 In this way, they constitute symbolic tools for people to position themselves and assume their role vis-à-vis a ready-made scenario, thus giving rise to expressions like: “we know this story, and we know its awful outcome, and we also know what must be done in response to it” (Tölölyan, 1989, p. 112).
However, the normative dimension of collective memory, and the scripts resulting from it, do not stem straight from the past qua past – unless we assume that the past comes into view in the form of ready-made plots – but from the goals to be attained in the future, hence the existence of so-called protracted conflicts (see Nicholson, this issue) in which disputing parties seem to remain locked in their own positions. In such cases, warring factions, as it were, are trapped in different closed loop narratives where, on the one hand, competing imagined futures are rhetorically legitimized by different ways of reconstructing the past which, on the other hand, provide the rationale for interpreting the conflict and justifying the actions to be carried out in the future. Against this backdrop, encouraging critical self-reflection in relation to social representations of history is needed so that actors can become authors, endowed with more agency to break away from the ready-made scripts and thus imagine new possible futures and more open pasts. This implies moving towards politics of imagination (see Bottici & Challand, 2011; Glăveanu & de Saint Laurent, 2015).
Final remarks: Towards politics of imagination
The main objective of this paper is to reflect the significance of the future when it comes to remembering and reconstructing the past, and to that end, it has highlighted the narrative, pragmatic and normative dimensions of collective memory. Along these lines, prolepsis has been brought to the field of collective memory in order to examine the way groups use different narratives about the past as symbolic tools to guide (and on occasion mobilize) their actions in relation to different future goals. However, this is not to assume that groups remember and act as one. It goes without saying that modern societies comprise a wide array of social positions (see de Saint-Laurent, this issue) and social representations of the past – whether hegemonic, emancipated or polemic (Moscovici, 1988) – differently connected to multiple imagined futures, whether in line or disruptive with the present (Larocco, unpublished).
In such a scenario, prolepsis is one of a range of possible ways of imagining and articulating the past, the present and the future vis-à-vis different political projects. 13 Future can be imagined as a placid continuation of the present, or even as a progressive improvement of the latter. It might also be imagined as a looming threat inching closer to the present – as environmentalists warn – or as something to be gained and fought for in order to leave behind a past of inequity – e.g., in the case of feminist and LGBT movements. Conversely, the past can become ‘imprescriptible’ so that crimes against humanity can be judged in the future (Mudrovcic, 2014). It can also be something not to be repeated in the future – as in the case of the Holocaust – or, by contrast, something to be recovered, where the future is imagined as a nostalgic renewal of the past. However, nostalgia can also involve looking back to the past in search of those futures that never came to pass (see Bradbury, 2012; Brockmeier, 2009). Using the dynamic systems theory terminology, it could be said that both past and future can potentially act as attractors and/or repulsors (Valsiner, 2005) within different social representations of history, thus disclosing and closing off options for imaginable scenarios while implying the possibility or necessity of action (Straub, 2005). In this respect, politics of imagination adopt different verb tenses (i.e., imperative, subjunctive, indicative, future perfect) and modal verbs (i.e., must, should, can), thus showing different degrees of agency and ways of orienting action (see De Luca Picione & Freda, 2016; Hedetoft, 1995).
Yes we can! If only we could go back to the old days, we must fight for our rights, we are the people! We should leave the EU, we shall overcome… as Levinger and Lytle (2001) point out, “action is prefigured in the realm of imagination, and thus it is in the realm of political imagination that an analysis of nationalist action must begin” (p. 190). Although political imagination, in the form of utopias and promised lands, has often led to tragic endings, Glăveanu and de Saint Laurent (2015) remind us that “without imagination, particularly political imagination, human agency would be impossible since the assertion of one’s agency is, itself, a political project. Neither would our experience of sociality and communal living” (p. 562). As these authors remark, along with a ‘dark’ side, there is a ‘bright’ side to political imagination that allows us to think of other possible worlds, something all the more necessary in times where in face of the world’s increasing complexity and unpredictability, we seem to move towards a pensée unique, regarding the current system as the best and only possible way to structure society. Perhaps it is time to claim back imagination as a tool, not only for thinking about the future but also for re-thinking the past, making history an open-ended drama in which we can be authors instead of mere actors subjected to ready-made scripts. It is up to us to take responsibility for our future and not let others imagine it for us.
Footnotes
Acknowledgements
I would like to thank Constance de Saint-Laurent for her useful comments on an earlier draft of this paper and the journal’s reviewers for their generosity. I am deeply indebted to all of them.
Declaration of Conflicting Interests
The author(s) declared no potential conflicts of interest with respect to the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.
Funding
The author(s) disclosed receipt of the following financial support for the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article: the Niels Bohr Professorship grant from the Grundforskningsfond of the Danish Ministry of Science and Technology.
1.
2.
Assuming a non-linear conception of historical time, Chris 
has recently written: “The dominant time conception has changed from a linear, irreversible and progressivist time conception to a non-linear, reversible and non-progressivist one” (p. 46). I am indebted to the journal’s reviewers for this quotation.
3.
4.
5.
7.
Prolepsis is also used in other fields which will not be addressed here, such as in argumentation theory where prolepsis stands for a figure of speech in which the speaker anticipates the objections that the audience may raise against her own argument (see Walton, 2007).
8.
9.
The distinction between history and story that exists in English does not appear in either Latin languages or in German, where the words Geschichte, the same as historia, storia and histoire combine both meanings.
10.
Using the metaphor of what he called the Ideal Chronicler, beautifully demonstrated the severe limitations of making historical accounts without considering the events’ future outcomes, thus pointing to the key role of narratives in providing the past with meaning and significance vis-à-vis the future.
11.
12.
13.
In turn, it should be borne in mind that the very notion of past, present and future, along with how their articulation is imagined, has changed throughout history, especially with the advent of modernity (see Koselleck, 1979/2004). I am deeply grateful to the journal’s reviewers for raising this important aspect.