CULTURAL MEMORY
Cultural memory: the link between past, present, and future. Two types of memory: the communicative one, related to the diffuse transmission of memories in everyday life through orality, and cultural memory - in which the speech was focused - referring to objectified and institutionalized memories, that can be stored, transferred and reincorporated throughout generations.
Aleida Assmann
Thus, memory appears as a device to protect the past against the corrosive action of time and to give subsidies for individuals to understand the world and know what to expect, 'so they do not have to reinvent the wheel and start each generation from scratch.' The researcher concluded that cultural memory should not be understood as an unhealthy fixation to the past, but as a back-up, a kind of background necessary for society to build its future. But, according to her, this memory should be inspected critically, as any other.Origin
Jan Assmann
Reading Context
"Architecture belongs chiefly to what [Francois] Jacob calls "mental memory," cultural memory. Life, on the other hand, is neither art nor discipline, although capable of being disciplined. Life too is concerned with its own logic and its own standingup, and it belongs to what Jacob calls 'genetic memory.' Very little from mental, or cultural, memory becomes inscribed in the genetic memory by which the body is reproduced over time, although almost everything about the body and its biological life has been a subject of inquiry in contemporary cultural life. [Erwin] Schrodinger remarks extensively on the irrelevance of our cultural lives with genetics. We know that this can't possibly be completely true but the terms of its untruth are difficult to pin down."1
Garbage City Context
The Zabbaleen are Coptic Christians which they have kept since they migrated from Dakhla Oasis to Mokattam Village. Their religion has found its way into their garbage culture. They believe its God's plan to recycle. Therefore, garbage collecting is not just recycling but a part of their religious culture which has manifested into a garbage culture which both have been passed down generations and will continue to be passed down to future generations.