Stretching Selves Through Empathy: the Role of Collective and Official Memories

In: International Journal of Politics, Culture, and Society

Abstract

Our identities consist of multiple identifications derived from roles, affiliations, and biographies, whose contents are shaped and reshaped as social resources. Nationalists and fundamentalists encourage us to construct vertical identities that emphasize the nationality of religion at the expense of other identifications. I explore mechanisms—including memorialization of collective memory—that can encourage us to reject horizontal identities in favor of vertical ones that emphasize our multiplicity and what we share with others in stigmatized groups.