Changing time experience, changing memory: An inter-generational perspective

Our age is undergoing a major change in the experience of time. This is a far-reaching phenomenon which affects the lives of institutions just as much as those of individuals and social groups. Young people and adults are equally involved in this process, but it is especially the latter who emphasise its potential social risks. For instance, adults tend to stigmatize the inability of young people to construct a historical representation of the past: a representation endowed with breadth and depth and able to foster a meaningful relation with the present and the future. They also complain about the poverty of the younger generation’s memory. It is important to be aware, however, that neither are adults extraneous to the process currently changing the ways in which the past, present and future are represented. Adults, too, experience the distinctive temporal contradictions of late modernity, including the difficulty of transmitting experience and memory between generations. The findings of two surveys conducted in Italy, the first on the relationship between memory and the teaching of history, the second on the redefinition of memory (and project) by young people, directly testify to this major transformation of the relationship with time, and to the potential conflicts accompanying it.