Keeping an Intentional Frame of Mind: Active and Passive Memory of Kenyon

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    This week, navigating through the archives involved sifting through folders and boxes that offered specialized insights into Kenyon’s history. Kenyon’s old age and consequent long history is no secret, so materials – including folders stuffed inside a box detailing information about the Civil War period – provided a fascinating window into the world of Kenyon from centuries past. The contents of these boxes illustrating Kenyon’s youthful years certainly painted a different picture from the senior and aged Kenyon we find today. While Kenyon today is recognized for its inclusive and diverse campus life, certain artifacts my group uncovered suggested a very different atmosphere in its earlier days. Among the particularly confounding and striking discoveries were a preserved Confederate flag and records showing students and faculty taking leave from Kenyon to join the Confederate army. We also found an article written in the 1960s by Kenyon students containing overtly racist messaging – though the excessive use of convoluted syntax left us questioning whether the piece was satire. On the other hand, we also found materials that aligned with our view and impression of Kenyon, such as a folder detailing the origins of Kenyon’s League of Women Voters and records of Kenyon’s former President Lorin Andrew’s involvement in the Union army.

    During our class discussions, we explored Aleida Assmann’s concept of the Canon and Archive of collective memory. The Canon represents the active memory that shapes our understanding of the past, influencing our present day beliefs and values. Archives, on the other hand, serve as a passive repository, preserving the past without necessarily keeping it relevant in contemporary life. Assmann discusses how both remembrance and forgetting shape collective memory. The intentional or unintentional omission of past events alters how we remember history and influences the memory we carry forward. We also discussed Barry Schwartz’s observations on the power collective memory in interpreting the past. Schwartz argues that the way we understand past events through a modern lens actively frames our current moral and social beliefs. The past, as he puts it, serves as a model of and for society, actively “reflecting, shaping, and framing” a reality for behavior and meaning in the present.

    The artifacts we encountered in the archives illustrated these ideas profoundly. Kenyon has clearly worked to maintain an image that is more aligned with today’s values, actively including some aspects of its history in everyday discussion while leaving others behind. The archives themselves serve as a record of passive remembrance – preserving the past but often disconnected from the present day narrative. This selective forgetting reframes the impression of Kenyon, and as we sift through the archives, we interpret its history through a modern lens, ultimately shaping our view of the institution as it stands today. 



References

Assmann, Aleida. 2010. “From ‘Canon and Archive’.” Pp. 334-337 in The Collective Memory Reader, edited by J.K. Olick, V. Vinitzky-Seroussi, and D. Levy. New York: Oxford University Press.

Schwartz, Barry. 2000. “From ‘Abraham Lincoln and the Forge of American Memory’.” Pp. 242-247 in The Collective Memory Reader, edited by J.K. Olick, V. Vinitzky-Seroussi, and D. Levy. New York: Oxford University Press.

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