Memory and the history of nursing "on stage"

EDITORIAL

Memory and the history of nursing "on stage"

Marcos Antônio Gomes Brandão

Pós-Doutora em História da Enfermagem. Escuela de Enfermería - Universidad de Valladolid. Professora Associada do Departamento de Enfermagem Fundamental da Escola Anna Nery/UFRJ. Membro Fundador do Núcleo de História da Enfermagem Brasileira. Pesquisadora CNPQ-São João de Meriti-RJ- Brasil - Email: [e-mail]

Memory, as a phenomenon that refreshes the memoirs or remembrances, is subject to questions of subjectivity, selectivity and instances of power. Thus, the process of reconstructing the past is subject to the undulation of successive reinterpretations associated to the representations of the present and the power struggles that determine what will be remembered or forgotten through the manipulation and control of memory.

Accordingly, the historiographical research creates the need to learn about the interests of the present that guide the dialectic of remembering or forgetting. A provision-incorporation system, or habitus, the fact that memory, in permanent evolution, is sanctified by the relics of history that celebrate memory and by the authorized spokespersons who produce the discourse around events, characters, times and places, contribute to the different forms of the conception of the past.

In Brazilian nursing, one of the strategies used by the different schools of nursing to select and update the memories worthy of being seized and transmitted to future nurses was the institutionalization of emblems and rituals of the profession. In this invented tradition process - in Hobsbawm's words - memory is perpetuated and converted into a symbolic good of the group, that transmitted as a heritage through celebrations, through the proliferation of commemorative statues, or by identifying monuments in public spaces, provides a sense of unity to the group of nurses, and as a consequence, a sense of filiation or membership. Therefore, memory, individual or collective, is socially constructed and it represents a symbolic capital of the individual or group as it carries out the perpetuation or control of memories.

Therefore, the symbiosis of memory and professional identity refers to the awareness of the need to preserve memory. It is the thread that binds generations with each other, giving a sense of antiquity, ubiquity and continuity. Thus the group acquires the means to perpetuate itself beyond the finitude of individuality and institutions through the effect that symbolization and immortalization have by means of objects such as portraits or statues that immortalize the represented person; buildings; written material - what is said and what is silenced -all of these elements that transmit the story worth telling to posterity.

Thus, studies that rely on historical relics of the past are essential to the survival of different social groups. The historical experience of a group or society is its positive reference, a tangible alert that provides benefits for the projects of the present, avoiding blind transactions or trials. In this context, historical documents, the place of memory, must be interpreted in conformity with the situations that produce, disseminate and preserve them, in order to enable the construction of a historical version that is consistent and persuasive.

Publication Dates

• Publication in this collection
  16 Aug 2010
• Date of issue
  Sept 2010