The Complexity of Memory

In the case of each biographer, autobiographer, or memoirist, we have an experiencing self (the recorded self) and a remembering self (the recorder) acting on behalf of the individual or society.  There is always a gap between the two.

Remember Mary Karr and her experiment with her class.

Now listen to this psychologist:
https://www.ted.com/talks/daniel_kahneman_the_riddle_of_experience_vs_memory?language=en

For Carl Jung the memory was embedded deep in a personal and collective psyche:
https://search.yahoo.com/yhs/search?p=carl+jung+collective+unconscious+archetypes&ei=UTF-8&hspart=mozilla&hsimp=yhs-001

A figure like Malcolm X both helps to shape culture and is a product of a violent cultural memory.  What is interesting about both the film and the autobiography is the way he is claimed as an international icon as well as the individual that emerges in the memories recorded.

How much of a sense of an individual do you get?

Malcolm and identity

You can’t hate the roots of a tree:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Gb-tjIUu0i4

Our history was destroyed by slaves:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ENHP89mLWOY

Malcolm’s speech after returning from Mecca:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tuHYZdf-ad0

--What point is he making about identity as it unfolds?

Obama on Malcolm X and identity:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yeDuOR6vkLM