Self-Talks 2: Childhood, Collective Memory, Embodiment of the Self

Importance of Childhood to the Self

In the first part of Self-Talks, we had talked about the self and the different frameworks and theories aligned with it. We tried to explain and apply the concepts of essentialism, social constructionism, power, and reflexibility. We learned that the self and its development is viewed in different ways.

But are those concepts enough for us to understand the self and how society plays an important role in its development? To supply more ideas about the self, in this part, we will try to discuss the importance of childhood to the self

“Maayos ang pagpapalaki sa’yo ng mga magulang mo. (You were properly raised by your parents.)”. Consider this line, how can a person tell that you were properly raised by your parents? It all starts in childhood. Childhood is one of the most important stage in a human life. It is when we are kid when we start to discover what is right and wrong within a specific context. also, it is the time wherein a person starts to learn the cultural mechanisms of his society. With that, we could say that it is in the childhood where the self starts to develop.

The self reflects a person’s childhood. The behavior, personality, and character of a person relies on how he remembers his days as a child. The self indirectly indicates the experiences of a person in the childhood which explains how a person could tell that you were properly raised because people tend to credit things on what surrounds such things. if you surround yourself with good people, then you tend to be a good person as well. Childhood is an important foundation of the self, the self’s judgment on things will tend to vary depending on what is still remembered through the collective memory of the person.

Collective Memory and the Self

Are you fond of throwbacks? How do you remember the past? How do you remember your childhood?

In this part, we will be talking about the collective memory and the self. This topic is somehow relatable on the first topic which talked about childhood’s importance to the self.

According to the Chapter 4 entitled “Space and Collective Memory” of the Maurice Halbwachs’ book, “The Collective Memory”, we first remember the place or the space before we could remember the scenes happened to it, the emotions and feelings we felt within that area, and the people we encountered in that space. This tells that the space is important for us to form a collective memory.

Our homes, its arrangement, its furniture, and its decorations give us a space. This space will then help us to recall the people we encountered in such area, of course, if the space is a home, we will likely to remember our families and our experiences with them, this also explains the concept of what we call “sentimental value”. This make space an important concept for the self, in a social constructionist’s point of view, the self develops through social experiences, thus, if the self fails to record memories, its development would be slow or could stop.

Filipinos use the term “promdi” which means “a person from the province who then went to a city”, this could be a great example of how space is important to the collective memory and then to the self. A promdi being in a city would feel that he is in a jungle, the places are unfamiliar and so is the people it is obviously because he has no memory in such huge space. However, he will be bringing with him his collective memory from the province which has a high chance to be different on what he could experience in the city. This causes him to be alienated, but not for too long, if he stayed in the city for a time he considered long, he will gain memories with it, in that space as well, allowing his self to develop new behavior and personality. But that does not mean that he had totally forgotten his life in the province, as some things could trigger him to remember the space he had before, like for example, an image of a rice fields with resemblance to his province. Moreover, if he returns to his province, his collective memory on it will definitely remind him on how he used to live there. However, as collective memory reflects behavior, his acts even his language did change already, mixing what he learned from the cities to the ones he had in the province.
To sum it up, a person’s collective memory expands through time, from childhood to the adulthood we remember different spaces, having an attachment to it gives the self a continuous growth, change in worldview, and an opportunity to embody a new self.

Embodiment of the Self

For Michael Foucault, the ability of the body gave rise to dominance of men in institutions and in concepts of liberty. Why? It is because the body limits what a person could do, this makes us to embody the self with such body limits as constraint.

In the Philippines, it has been in the culture to let a woman to take a man’s chair. What caused such culture? The reason why such culture birthed out is because of the perception that it is always the man that must protect the woman. It is observed even in the earliest age that the men do the jobs that requires body strength and the women must stay at homes as they deemed as weak and incapable for doing the men’s job. Well, it was true as men could do physical-requiring jobs better than women. This belief continued to evolve until we had come up with the culture that a man must be a gentleman to a woman.

But do all of us agree? Obviously, no, especially these days, women are continuously fighting for an equal treatment especially in the allocation of jobs within a society. I must say, such women are able to embody their true self.

How can a person embody his self? To embody the true self, one must consider his body and mind. He must be aware on his mind of what he could do using his physical form or his body, considering the limits of his body as well. There must be the willingness from the person itself and the force forcing the person to be someone else based on societal standards must be rejected.

Today, women fight for their rights as they’ve seen that their sisters from the early and past generations were “assigned” to societal roles wherein power is not present. Women in this century transcend to such culture favoring men, proving that they could do a man’s job as well. Their awareness in their own capabilities enabled them to embody the self without considering sexuality and promoting the fact that women are empowered the same level as men. Thus, with such continuous rally for equality in treatment, we could expect a society wherein both men and women could be physically strong or weak, depending on the drive they take as they are able to embody their true self.

Summary
Here, we discussed childhood, collective memory, and embodiment of the self. The childhood is an important stage of human life, the start of the development of the self starts here. Collective memory, attaches the person from its experiences through objects forming a space. As collective memory continues to expand, it gives the self an opportunity to continuously develop as well. Embodiment of the self takes place if a person willingly accepts and transcend from weaknesses which is usually because of the limitations of the body. Embodying the self implies that the true self will only show if the person starts to recognize the interrelatedness of everything especially his body and his mind.

References
Foucault, Feminity and the Modernization of Patriarchal Power
Author: Sandra Lee Bartky

Chapter 4: Space and the Collective Memory of the book “The Collective Memory”
Author: Maurice Halbwachs