Collective memory in the centre of modernity in Jeffrey K. Olick’s approach

Reconstructed is a research-oriented approach toward collective memory and pastrelated politics, as per Jeffrey K. Olick’s The Politics of Regret. On Collective Memory and Historical Responsibility. The inspirations and assumptions made by this author are recognised with regards to procesuality, plurality and relational entanglement of the practices under research in various social processes. The criticism is recapitulated whereto Olick subjects a substantial approach to collective memory, and his proposed instrumentarium for investigation of such memory is shown; it is namely organised around the notions of field, medium, genre, and profile. The image of contemporary social space is presented, shaped as it is by a politics of regret. There, transformations of timeness (in specific, the so-called chronic differentiation) and memory (particularly, the specificity of collective memory) turn out to be the central issue of modernity and post-modernity.