Christian Pentzold

Personal and collective memory-making are usually studied on large scales that bridge rather extensive temporal distances, at least in human time. What is overlooked are the kinds of ordinary phenomena mundane memories are made of. The routines of keeping and recurring records, taking notes and planning the proximate future as well as representations thereof and the tools used to accomplish such activities often seem neither especially consequential nor important. Yet we argue that frames of meaning, cultural practices and socio-political cleavages profoundly inform their ethics of attention and recognition. They impact upon which mundane memories become normalised while others are rendered redundant, suspicious or precarious. The full open access article can be read here.