In “How Societies Remember,” Paul Connerton argues that we can preserve the past without representing it in words or images. He presents us with two types of social practice: incorporating and inscribing. The concept of incorporating have the body as a vessel and inscribing can be executed through different media, like writing, recording, etc.

The idea is that the body, through commemorative ceremonies, re-enacts the past, keeping it alive for future generations – narrated by the oral tradition. At some point, the author will say that after 80 – 100 years after the ones who lived the history are gone, there is a need to inscribe the past in words and therefore institutionalize the knowledge: “When the memories of a culture begin to be transmitted mainly by the reproduction of their inscriptions rather than by ‘live’ tellings, improvisation becomes increasingly difficult and innovation-is institutionalized” (75) – transitioning from an oral culture (incorporating practices) to a literate one (inscribing practice).

This reading took me back to the practices of Candomblé and how the body preserved the rhythms and dances of our ancestors – without the idea of purity. During the 90s, many Yoruban traditional religious leaders flew to Brazil to see and compare with what they had in Nigeria. As a pleasant surprise, the Bahian Yalorixá (high priest) communicated with them through songs and dances that they would respond to with their body. Of course, it was not exactly the same because culture changes and adapts, but the primary information was still there.

In The Generation of Postmemory, Marianne Hirsch argues that memories of traumatic events live on past those who lived the trauma. The second generation inherits their traumatic stories. This made me think that the memories of the second generation can be as traumatic as those that suffered the traumas because the author says that this second generation will use their imagination to fill in the gaps. The text took me to the work of Kara Walker and the depictions of slavery and our collective memory and trauma. Is slavery a transgenerational trauma? Hirsch will say that “Political” and “cultural” memory, in contrast, is not inter(generational)- but transgenerational; it is no longer mediated through embodied practice but solely through symbolic systems” (33). Is it still an embodied practice? When non-Black bodies react instintevily to a Black body in the street, isn’t that resquícios de pensamentos escravocratas?