Open Access

Faustino Oncina Coves

• Koselleck has repeatedly rejected the existence of a collective memory. All memory derives from individual experiences which are not interchangeable. Any person has the right to his own memories, without which he could not live and which cannot be collectivized. Only the conditions under which they are realized and recollected may be referred to as supra-individual. For this reason it is advisable to distinguish between the primary experiences of those who have lived them as a first person and who bind them to their own memories, and the secondary experiences after the fact of those who were not present in the situation which gave rise to the immediate experience. This distinction also applies to memorials. The messages of monuments are open to a double exegesis: they evoke the unmistakable occasions that have led to death. Like primary experiences they are not interchangeable. But, even so, artistic responses to incomparable occasions repeat themselves. There is only a limited repertoire of aesthetic solutions for fixating violent death – which individually is always unique – in the memory.