Remnants of the Past and the Quest for Identity: Reading August Wilson’s The Piano Lesson in the Context of Collective Memory

Abstract

In our quest to negotiate the present and define our place within the continuum of the human experience, we try to engage with the past, examining relics, searching for roots, and sifting through memories. As members of a group, our engagement is shaped by two representations of the past: history and collective memory. The latter term was introduced by the French philosopher and sociologist, Maurice Halbwachs, in his seminal work On Collective Memory first published in 1950. Collective memory is a conglomeration of individual recollections of past experiences handed down from one generation to another, thus helping in the formation of a group identity that differentiates it from other groups, each with its own collective memory. In that respect, collective memory is different from history, which is a physical representation of past events in the form of accounts, monuments, and artifacts. Whereas neither has a claim to objective representation of the past because both are mere interpretations by their transmitters, collective memory is more dynamic because it is more apt to engage with the present and can undergo gradual transformation based on how the group defines its identity and envisions its future. For African Americans, “It was the memory of slavery and its representation through speech and art works that grounded African American identity” (Eyerman 2). This identity did not take form in the land of origin, where people identified themselves through tribal affiliations, but was defined or rather imposed on them through the experience of slavery and its subsequent reproductions that gave rise to the group’s collective memory. The Charles family in August Wilson’s The Piano Lesson is a microcosmic representation of that collective memory which binds the different group members together and ultimately saves them from utter loss and despair. The surviving members of that family span three generations reflecting the growing distance from https://doi.org/10.1080/00144940.2021.2005518