6.23. Cognitive, Networked, and Phenomenological Models of Remembering and Forgetting

Abstract To remember in Palestine is to live without aftermath. This paper proposes Durative Memory (DM) as a theoretical framework for memory under conditions of unresolved violence. Unlike prevailing models shaped by post-Holocaust or transitional paradigms, DM does not assume rupture, closure, or recovery. It begins from structural non-resolution—where memory is neither commemorative nor redemptive, but durative. Drawing on memoirs by Ghada Karmi, Ramzy Baroud, Nasser Abu Srour, and others, the paper shows how memory endures not as archive but as repetition. It moves across four analytical registers: life-course, intergenerational transmission, diaspora, and silence. In each, memory is kept alive through pedagogical refusal, spatial routines, inherited silences, and narrative stances. The Nakba is not past—it recurs. DM reframes key debates in memory studies. Against the premise of “postmemory,” it posits a continuity without generational remove. Against “communicative memory,” it shows how recollection survives not by fading, but by being reactivated through siege, exile, and political refusal. In settler-colonial contexts, memory resists not only erasure, but temporal confiscation. As with other historical genocides—Rwanda, Bosnia, Armenia—the genocide in Gaza is becoming a fixed point in collective witnessing: not as an event concluded, but as a structure remembered, reactivated, and carried forward. Within Palestinian life-writing, it joins the Nakba as a durative site of narration and refusal—where catastrophe does not end, and memory becomes survival. Palestinian memoirs do not reflect on aftermath. They inhabit an unfinished present. DM names this inhabitation—a form of endurance, structure, and narration. It is not a metaphor. It is a life-grammar.

This paper explores the role of memory in sustaining and deepening democratic life. It examines how the development of collective and individual memory within democratic contexts contributes to building an inclusive future grounded in dignity, cooperation, and mutual understanding. I approach memory through the Phenomenology of the Human Experience of Time (PHET), a process that dynamically integrates our experience of past, present, and future to produce human consciousness. In this model, memory operates together with attention and expectation as part of a tripartite temporal dynamic that mirrors the brain’s hierarchical organization of processing. This neural and phenomenological architecture is both evolutionary and developmental, tending toward the increasing integration of sensory and affective information. From this perspective, human experience evolves toward sensitivity—understood not as weakness but as the capacity for meaning, resonance, and ethical awareness. Such sensitivity enables individuals and the communities they form to reduce uncertainty, foster empathy, and enhance cooperation. Democratic practices of memory thus function as instruments of temporal and ethical integration, strengthening societies’ capacity to understand the present and envision a more dignified and peaceful future. By situating memory within a phenomenology of consciousness and time, the paper offers a theoretical contribution to memory studies: it conceptualizes memory as a process of adaptive integration that deepens awareness and resilience, supporting democracy as an evolving form of collective understanding.

Collective memory helps societies maintain historical continuity and social identity, yet its cognitive organization remains poorly understood. This study examined how public events are structured within collective memory by combining an event-cueing paradigm with reaction time measures. Middle-aged adults (N = 72) were presented with political and non-political event cues and asked to recall related political, non-political, or personal events. Political cues more effectively triggered other political events, which were recalled more quickly and with less effort, indicating tightly connected memory clusters. In contrast, non-political cues often led to personal memories and were associated with slower, more effortful recall. These findings suggest that political events are organized within coherent socio-political narrative structures, while non-political events are more diffusely integrated into autobiographical memory. This study provides novel empirical support for the thematic clustering of collective memory and offers insights into the cognitive mechanisms underlying the retention and retrieval of public events.