#olick

History is the remembered past to which we no longer have an “organic” relation— – the past that is no longer an important part of our lives— – while collective memory is the active past that forms our identities. Memory inevitably gives way to history as we lose touch with our pasts. Historical memory, however, can be either organic or dead: We can celebrate even what we did not directly experience, keeping the given past alive for us, or it can be alive only in historical records, so-called graveyards of knowledge.