collective memory

is a spurious notion that is not a remembering but a stipulating: That this is important, and this is the story about how it happened, with the pictures that lock the story in our minds.

Strictly speaking, there is no such thing as collective memory-- part of the same family of spurious notions as collective guilt. But there is collective instruction. . . .What is called collective memory is not a remembering but a stipulating: that this is important, and this is the story about how it happened, with the pictures that lock the story in our minds.' Susan Sontag

collective memory, n.Definitions

collective memory