Discourse, hegemony, and the public sphere: A theoretical framework for the empirical modelling of memory

Despite nearly three decades of interdisciplinary research in the field of memory studies (Pentzold and Lohmeier, Reference Pentzold, Lohmeier, Pentzold and Lohmeier2023), communication studies still lack answers to why certain events, narratives, frames, or symbols enter collective memory while others are forgotten. How do shared memories emerge from the ‘deliberate accounts provided by individual and collective public actors’ (Tenenboim-Weinblatt and Baden, Reference Tenenboim-Weinblatt, Baden and Mazzoleni2016, 4) and persist in society? A related question concerns the tension between individual memory and collective memory: how do these memories constitute themselves as distinct entities and interact with or influence each other (Keightley et al., Reference Keightley, Pickering, Bisht, Maurantonio and Park2019)?

‘The design of a conceptual toolbox for cultural memory studies is still at a fledgling stage’, notes Erll (Reference Erll, Erll, Nünning and Young2008), who, drawing on Confino (Reference Confino, Erll, Nünning and Young2008, 78), observes that: ‘Memory studies is currently “more practiced than theorized”’ (Erll, Reference Erll, Erll, Nünning and Young2008, 2; see also Schmidt, Reference Schmidt, Erll, Nünning and Young2008). Various conceptual and analytical approaches from disciplines such as psychology, cognitive science, and neuroscience have aimed to address this ‘open flank’ in memory research (see e.g. Laikhuram, Reference Laikhuram2023). In the social sciences, sociologically informed memory research has recently engaged with the theorisation of collective memory processes and their interplay with individual memory (see e.g. Sebald and Wagle, Reference Sebald and Wagle2016; Sebald et al., Reference Sebald, Berek, Chmelar, Dimbath, Haag, Heinlein, Leonhard and Rauer2023). One ongoing challenge, however, remains the development of an integrated theoretical framework that, on the one hand, contributes to a deeper understanding of collective memory phenomena – their emergence, persistence, and dissolution – and, on the other hand, can be rendered productive for empirical research.

Without claiming to have discovered a definitive solution, this article seeks to illuminate the formation of a social canon of memory from a communication studies perspective, with due regard to the reciprocal relationship between individual and collective memory. It aligns with a constructivist–poststructuralist view that the past is always ‘refracted’ through the present and thus mutable (consider the keyword presentism), whether through deliberate use for current needs or through influences of cultural sociality and order (Olick and Robbins, Reference Olick and Robbins1998, 128). However, such memory narratives are not infinitely malleable, as Schudson (Reference Schudson1989, Reference Schudson1993) has shown, but they are surprisingly resilient (see also Schwartz, Reference Schwartz1991, Reference Schwartz1996; Olick and Levy, Reference Olick and Levy1997). The article thus also draws on extended hegemony research (Nonhoff, Reference Nonhoff2006, Reference Nonhoff and Nonhoff2007, Reference Nonhoff and Marttila2019), which posits that processes of (re)presentation are shaped and stabilised by public hegemonic forces, structures, and dominant ideologies (Molden, Reference Molden2016; Olick and Robbins, Reference Olick and Robbins1998, 108).

Against this background, the article aims to develop a conceptual–analytical framework that not only contributes to theorising the emergence and persistence of shared memory but also serves as a practical toolkit for empirical research in communication studies and related fields. First, it scrutinises two key concepts: individual memory and collective memory. The former shapes ‘individual experiences, interpersonal relations, the sense of responsibility, and the image of our own identity’ (Assmann, Reference Assmann, Goodin and Tilly2006, 212), while the latter refers to ‘collectively shared representations of the past’ (Kansteiner, Reference Kansteiner2002, 181). Collective memory can include shared narratives within small groups or memory artefacts (such as books and films), museums, as well as historical master narratives that outlive contemporary witnesses (Harris et al., Reference Harris, Paterson and Kemp2008, 215). Despite their foundational role in memory studies, the concepts of individual and collective memories have been repeatedly criticised. Collective memory, for instance, is seen as ‘too vague’ (Assmann, Reference Assmann2008, 55) and ‘merely a broad, sensitizing umbrella, and not a precise operational definition’ (Olick, Reference Olick, Erll, Nünning and Young2008, 158).

Two further criticisms have emerged: first, the terms ‘individual’ and ‘collective’ imply distinct, self-contained, and dichotomous entities; second, they suggest a hierarchical structure or topological sorting. This article assumes that individual and collective memory are discursively intertwined and therefore gleichursprünglich – co-original and mutually constitutive (Nonhoff and Gronau, Reference Nonhoff, Gronau, Keller, Schneider and Viehöver2012). Individual memories are generated through discursive interpellation from the surrounding environment (in the broadest sense: the collective), but are at the same time the ‘site of decision-making’ in this process – memories are not merely malleable material shaped passively by discursive trends (Nonhoff, Reference Nonhoff2006, 209).

Kansteiner (Reference Kansteiner2002) notes that ‘collective memory studies have not yet sufficiently conceptualized collective memories as distinct from individual memory’ (180). As demonstrated in the first part of this article, this theoretical gap has since been addressed by numerous scholars. Building on this body of work and embracing the interdisciplinary nature of memory studies, this article incorporates approaches from hegemony and discourse theory alongside the concept of the public sphere. These theoretical insights are ultimately synthesised into a model, using the case of the hegemonic imperative of memory in Germany as an example.

Exploring the individual–collective memory nexus: A literature review

The literature presents divergent views on the ontological nature of collective memory. Erll (Reference Erll, Erll, Nünning and Young2008) describes it as a metaphor: ‘The concept of “remembering” (a cognitive process which takes place in individual brains) is metaphorically transferred to the level of culture’ (4; see also Gedi and Elam, Reference Gedi and Elam1996). Sontag (Reference Sontag2003) dismisses the idea as ‘a spurious notion’ (85), stating, ‘All memory is individual, unreproducible – it dies with each person. What is called collective memory is not a remembering but a stipulating’ (86). Similarly, Koselleck asserts, ‘True memory is independent from the so-called collective memory, and my position in regards to this is that my memory depends on my experience and nothing else’ (in Sebastián and Fuentes, Reference Sebastián and Fuentes2006, 113).

In this section, the article examines selected works fundamental to the acknowledgement of collective memory, albeit with different epistemological and methodological approaches. While some memory scholars view individual and collective memory as distinct entities, an increasing number of studies have explored the ‘interplay, interaction, interdependence and fusion’ of the two types of memory (Hoskins, Reference Hoskins2016, 351). It should be noted that there are additional concepts in memory studies closely intertwined with individual and collective memory. Among them are communicative memory, which emphasises the social character of memory as an orally shared yet ephemeral narrative, and cultural memory, the latter understood as durable memory represented in cultural artefacts, following Assmann (Reference Assmann2011). While these concepts are not central to this article, they are briefly referenced in the subsections that follow.

It was, as is well known, Halbwachs and Coser (Reference Halbwachs and Coser1992) who decisively shaped modern research on collective memory (Russell, Reference Russell2006) through three core ideas: (1) the social conditionality of individual memory, (2) the development of collective memory within intermediate groups (family, generations, and classes), and (3) the extension of the concept to the cultural memory production of a society (Marcel and Mucchielli, Reference Marcel, Mucchielli, Erll, Nünning and Young2008, 142). Halbwachs and Coser (Reference Halbwachs and Coser1992) argue that the social frames of reference (cadres sociaux) of an individual’s environment contextualise individual memories and convey the content of collective memory. Halbwachs states, ‘There are no recollections which can be said to be purely interior, that is, which can be preserved only within individual memory’, and then concludes, ‘Indeed, from the moment that a recollection reproduces a collective perception, it can itself only be collective’ (169). Examples of similar approaches linking memory and socioculturality can be found in the works of Freud, Bartlett, Mannheim, and Benjamin from the early 20th century (Erll, Reference Erll, Erll, Nünning and Young2008, 8).

Halbwachs’s legacy includes the ambiguity of ‘how the dynamics of collective memory work’, as his analysis overlooks the ‘dialectical tensions between personal memory and the social construction of the past’ (Misztal, Reference Misztal2003, 54; see also Gedi and Elam, Reference Gedi and Elam1996). The thesis of this article – the co-origin of individual and collective memory (Gleichursprünglichkeit) – is conspicuously absent from Halbwachs’s work. The relationship between individual memory and collective memory cannot be definitively hierarchised. Individual–psychological memory, phenomenologically acquiring symbolic, communicative, and interpretative content through interaction with the environment, and collective–social memory, embodied as shared memories within a group or society (e.g. Nora’s, Reference Nora1999 lieux de mémoire), are interdependent. Both exist in a dialogical relationship rooted in interaction, precluding an essentialist individual or collective memory (Pentzold et al., Reference Pentzold, Lohmeier and Birkner2023).

Following Olick (Reference Olick1999), Halbwachs ‘indicates at least two distinct, and not obviously complementary, sorts of phenomena: socially framed individual memories and collective commemorative representations and mnemonic traces’ (336). Olick (Reference Olick1999) differentiates between collected memory (‘the aggregated individual memories of members of a group’; 338) and collective memory (‘symbols and their systems of relations [that] have a degree of autonomy from the subjective perceptions of individuals’; 341). Keightley et al. (Reference Keightley, Pickering, Bisht, Maurantonio and Park2019) use Olick’s binary conception as the basis for their ‘interscalar analysis’, integrating memory processes across micro, meso, and macro levels to bridge individual and collective memory. Their model of interscalarity, a heuristic as they emphasise, examines memory practices across spatial and temporal dimensions. Sebald (Reference Sebald, Sebald and Wagle2016) suggests parallel and sequential information processing to connect collected and collective memory, as they affect both forms of memory equally. Further, Brown and Hoskins (Reference Brown and Hoskins2010) propose a ‘new memory ecology’ that, as in the work of Keightley et al. (Reference Keightley, Pickering, Bisht, Maurantonio and Park2019), links the micro, meso, and macro levels to illuminate the sensemaking in memory processes, which results from both personal experience and culturality (Hoskins, Reference Hoskins2016, 354). In another approach, Middleton and Brown (Reference Middleton and Brown2005) seek to bring individual memory and collective memory into dialogue through the concept of experience.

In summary, while the dynamic and reciprocal relationship between individual and collective memory has been increasingly theorised in the social and human sciences, the question of how certain meso- or macro-level narratives prevail and persist among the myriad micro-level memories within society remains underexplored, as does how to approach it empirically.

Discourse and hegemony as categorical preconditions for the social construction of memory

Schwartz (Reference Schwartz1996) identifies the 1960s and 1970s as the cultural breeding ground for three major, interwoven philosophical currents in memory studies: multiculturalism, postmodernism, and hegemony theory. While these currents have since become well established in other disciplines within the interdisciplinary field of memory studies (e.g. Molden, Reference Molden2016), they remain marginalised in communication studies even decades later. In this way, communication studies have paid comparatively little attention to the significance of these philosophical movements of the 1960s and 1970s – including Foucault’s archaeological and genealogical approaches (Hutton, Reference Hutton1993) – even though they played a key role in reviving Halbwachs’s foundational work on memory. As Olick and Robbins (Reference Olick and Robbins1998) note: ‘His apparently presentist position was seen as anticipating postmodernism’ (108). This article follows the 20th-century philosophical tradition, situating memory in the tension between discourse and hegemony theory. Similar to Olick and Levy (Reference Olick and Levy1997, 922), who examine how the remembered past constrains the present, it advocates a nuanced understanding of presentism, distinguishing between discursive constraints (‘the power of the present over the past’) and hegemonic constraints (‘the power of the past over the present’).

Discourse: From individual memory to subjectivised memory

‘History as a retrospectively composed and meaningful narrative’, state Heer and Wodak (Reference Heer, Wodak, Heer, Wodak, Manoschek and Pollak2003), ‘is always a construction, a fiction’ (12).Footnote ¹ This view is widely accepted, as is the importance of language in constructing meaning retrospectively (Berger and Luckmann, Reference Berger and Luckmann1990). As Olick (Reference Olick1999) emphasises, ‘Perhaps the clearest demonstration of the genuinely collective nature of remembering is the degree to which it takes place in and through language, narrative, and dialogue’ (343). Although language as a medium of remembering is not always explicitly theorised, it is often implicitly seen as performative, not merely descriptive. Eder (Reference Eder, Eder and Spohn2005), for instance, supports this view: ‘Remembering has a performative function: talking about what one remembers establishes a specific social relation with those addressed’ (205).

This article pushes past the performativity of language by conceptualising memory as a discursive process. It also extends beyond Assmann’s (Reference Assmann2011) definition of communicative memory, which primarily focuses on the intergenerational transmission of personal memory but largely overlooks the processual nature of memory as something that is continually (re)constructed through communication. Following Foucault (Reference Foucault1972), language serves as a formal condition for possible statements that shape a discourse of memory: ‘Knowledge is not only communicated but created through its mode of organization’ (Hutton, Reference Hutton1993, 111). While language, understood as linguistic structures, adheres to a finite set of rules, theoretically, an infinite number of performances can occur (Foucault, Reference Foucault1972). In contrast, a discourse contains only a finite number of statements. From the sociology of knowledge perspective, discourses are ‘socio-historically situated “practices”’ and ‘not the development of ideas or lines of argumentation’ (Keller, Reference Keller2011, 46). For this article, the analysis of memory discourse examines both the rules shaping statements and the reasons behind specific modes of remembering.

According to this argument, the process of reconstructing social memory is not arbitrary: the ‘practice of remembering is subject to distinct rules of remembering, which in turn firm up over generations, change, and are also time and again negotiated anew between generations’, notes Rosenthal (Reference Rosenthal, Sebald and Wagle2016, 33), who adopts a social constructivist view. Foucault refers to these rules as discursive practices – rules of linguistic performance underlying statements that shift with time and space. Discourse analysis aims to uncover this hidden discursive regularity that leads to ‘exclusions and choices’ (Foucault, Reference Foucault and Bouchard1996, 199). ‘The manner of reviewing the past and the manner of speaking about the situations experienced in the past’, adds Rosenthal (Reference Rosenthal, Sebald and Wagle2016), ‘are constituted for the most part through rules that are effective without the subjects being aware of them’ (43).

Here, too, this article departs from established concepts such as communicative memory and cultural memory, both of which focus primarily on the reproduction of the past by emphasising the content of memory and its transmission. In contrast, a discursive approach to memory addresses the production of meaning and the underlying power relations – it asks not merely what is remembered, but why it is remembered in one way and not another (Obradović, Reference Obradović2017). ‘Discourse is the power to be seized’ (Foucault, Reference Foucault and Young1981, 52–53), meaning that memory is the battlefield of the present for this article (see Fiedler Reference Fiedler2022). According to Foucault (Reference Foucault1978), power is unspecific; it is immanent in every relationship and unfolds only in the ‘plurality of resistances’ (96). Central here is the struggle for control over the interpretation of memory processes, ‘which have their own distinct norms and procedures as to what constitutes “truth” and “falsity”’ (Brown and Reavey, Reference Brown and Reavey2017, 173). The metaphor of the battlefield is often literal, as shown by research on how hegemonic representations of the past maintain and reproduce (violent) conflict (Paez and Liu, Reference Paez, Liu and Bar-Tal2011; Sangar et al. Reference Sangar, Rosoux, Bazin and Hébert2023).

The intertwining of power and knowledge becomes evident in the process of subjectivation, that is the discursive shaping of the individual (Weir, Reference Weir2009), meaning that there is no Archimedean point from which the self is constituted and no practice of the self is beyond discourse (Foucault, Reference Foucault1982, 778). Drawing on Middleton and Brown (Reference Middleton and Brown2005), this idea can be adapted to memory processes as follows: ‘We may be tempted to consider our recollections as uniquely personal thoughts without realizing our dependency on the collective frameworks in which they are articulated’ (228). Landsberg’s (Reference Landsberg2004) concept of ‘prosthetic memory’ also aligns, describing memory appropriated in sites of experience (e.g. museums and cinemas) not as authentic memory but as a kind of proxy memory that is constructed and appropriated (that is subjectivised).

The ambivalence of the subject in discourse theory shows that freedom is possible within subjectivation, as the subject is both ‘subjugated and creator’ (Nonhoff and Gronau, Reference Nonhoff, Gronau, Keller, Schneider and Viehöver2012, 128). Fentress and Wickham (Reference Fentress and Wickham1992), for instance, warn that collective memory runs the risk of becoming a ‘concept of collective consciousness curiously disconnected from the actual thought processes of any particular person’, viewing the individual as ‘a sort of automaton, passively obeying the interiorized collective will’ (ix). Waldschmidt et al. (Reference Waldschmidt, Klein, Korte and Dalman-Eken2008) note that when offered subjectivation positions ‘contradict everyday experiences, this can evoke different reactions: rejection or aversion, resistance, adaptation or … creative responses’ (330). Appropriately, Bosančić (Reference Bosančić2019) describes subjectivation as a two-way process: discourses present identity models as ‘discursive callings’ to which subjects must respond and position themselves through their ‘self-relations and practices’ (88).

If we follow Nonhoff and Gronau (Reference Nonhoff, Gronau, Keller, Schneider and Viehöver2012), the conceptual pair ‘subject and discourse’ reflects the conceptual pairs of other social theories, especially ‘if the passage of time is added as a further component’ (109). For instance, consider Bourdieu’s (Reference Bourdieu1984) notion of ‘practice and structure’, on which the concept of habitus is based, or Giddens’s (Reference Giddens1984) ‘agency and structure’. All are united by the idea that action and structure are in a continuous reciprocal relationship. Similarly, mnemonic subjects are constituted both through non-discursive practices and through discourse, each of which exerts structural and regulatory effects.

In conclusion, this article proposes subjectivised memory as an alternative to individual memory and, in a sense, to communicative and cultural memory. On the one hand, subjectivised memory denotes the individual’s subjection to a symbolic (mnemonic) order of knowledge, which is manifested in the statements of the memory discourse and in discursive mnemonic practices, depending on the specific historical and social contexts. On the other hand, subjectivised memory is characterised by its contingent nature, which enables the subject to remember in various ways – that is to appropriate, reinterpret, reject, or resist mnemonic statements and practices within the boundaries of discourse, or to produce new subject positions. This second aspect addresses the constitution of mnemonic subjects, paraphrasing Reckwitz (Reference Reckwitz, Gugutzer, Klein and Meuser2017), as a process of ‘subjugation to become socially recognised as autonomous subjects – equipped with interests, reflexivity, the desire for self-realisation, etc.’ (Reckwitz, Reference Reckwitz, Gugutzer, Klein and Meuser2017, 126).

The public sphere: Public communication as a categorical prerequisite for discursive hegemonies

To complete the theoretical framework that underpins the conceptual–analytical approach of this article, the discussion concludes by drawing on the concept of the public sphere. Mnemonic hegemonies, understood here as the political–discursive predominance of a memory paradigm, are no longer conceivable without public communication. In the pre-mass media era, coercion, repression, and violence were essential for establishing a hegemonic project within society. One need only think of the hegemonisation of Christianity in Europe, beginning in the 4th century CE and extending over many centuries, which involved the development of repressive apparatuses such as bans on pagan cults, missionary activity, the later persecution of heretics and so-called witches (early forms of the public sphere), as well as the Crusades. In contrast, winning hearts and minds relies primarily on public communication in today’s democratically legitimised societal systems (Gerhards and Schäfer, Reference Gerhards and Schäfer2006). Fraser (Reference Fraser1990) characterises this transformation in the public sphere as a ‘shift from a repressive mode of domination to a hegemonic one’ (62). Then, as now, a dominant segment of the population can exert control over the rest through public means, albeit by different methods, today – no longer (or not exclusively) through violence, but through mechanisms of (apparent/superficial) consensus, coercion, and pressure.

If the concept of the public sphere is approached less normatively – unlike in the sense proposed by Habermas (Reference Habermas1989) – and instead understood as an intermediary system of communication (Gerhards and Neidhardt, Reference Gerhards and Neidhardt1990), then it must necessarily be selective at the levels of information intake (input), processing (throughput), and dissemination (output); otherwise, the intermediary communication system would be dysfunctional. This view applies even in the era of digital and networked technologies, where algorithms sort and prioritise vast amounts of information, albeit in a highly individualised manner, thereby accelerating the ‘fragmentation’ of the public sphere (Marcinkowski, Reference Marcinkowski and Donsbach2008).

Selection, synthesis, distinction, and legitimation occur through language, knowledge, or symbolic capital – what Fraser (Reference Fraser1990) calls ‘informal impediments to participatory parity that can persist even after everyone is formally and legally licensed to participate’ (63). The formation of hegemony depends both on who gains a hearing within public discourse and on who is able to publicly articulate and circulate their interpretative frameworks (Gerhards and Schäfer, Reference Gerhards and Schäfer2006). Thus, public opinion becomes ‘dominant’ – ‘an opinion that has prevailed in the arenas of public opinion formation’ (Gerhards and Neidhardt, Reference Gerhards and Neidhardt1990, 12).

There is no doubt that the mass-mediated public sphere is the ‘most powerful public arena’ for enforcing hegemonies (Gerhards and Schäfer, Reference Gerhards and Schäfer2006, 27). People are more likely to adopt historical images, symbols, and mnemonic narratives from the media than from official historiography (Friedmann Friedman, Reference Friedman, Grabbe and Schindler2008): ‘Mass media have begun to construct sites … in which people are invited to enter into experiential relationships to events through which they themselves did not live’ (Landsberg, Reference Landsberg2004, 113).

Even before the global rise of Web 2.0, Kansteiner (Reference Kansteiner2002) argued that memory studies should align more closely with communication and media studies in order to address key research problems in the field. At that time, scholars were already questioning whether communicative memory takes place ‘exclusively’ within everyday interpersonal relationships, given its continual reliance on public and mass-mediated sources that have long since transcended individual lifeworlds (Keppler, Reference Keppler and Welzer2001). Van Dijck (Reference Van Dijck2007) introduced the term ‘mediation of memory’, which ‘may add to a better understanding of the mutual shaping of memory and media’ (21). If we follow Hoskins (Reference Hoskins2011), a pre-mediated memory appears to be no longer conceivable in the present age: ‘If the new metaphors of technology and media are struggling to grasp the speed and the scale of the mediatization of memory, it is much too late to put memory back into its box’ (29). The wealth of scholarship on media outlets as key sites of mnemonic knowledge production points to the growing canonisation of communication and media studies in memory research (e.g. Garde-Hansen, Reference Garde-Hansen2011; Neiger, Reference Neiger2020).

Zelizer (Reference Zelizer2008) specifically highlights the ‘centrality of journalism as an institution of mnemonic record’ (79). Legacy media are still regarded as key guardians of mnemonic authority and interpretive power; they are capable of both constructing and dismantling hegemonies (cf. Hoxha et al., Reference Hoxha, Andresen, Paschalidis and Fiedler2024). However, traditional journalism is increasingly under pressure from digital media, which now act as alternative constructors of mnemonic publics. As a result, journalism’s exclusive status as a hegemonic site of (re)production and memory storage is increasingly challenged. This ‘variety of publics’ (Fraser, Reference Fraser1990, 68) does not coincide with the media themselves, but is constituted through and within legacy media, digital media, and other communicative spheres (see Imhof, Reference Imhof2011), shaping the structure of stratified societies. These publics may compete with one another, with some consistently privileged over others. Ultimately, this constitutes a cultural struggle for public attention that is aimed at discursively anchoring hegemony within the public sphere.

According to Nonhoff (Reference Nonhoff2006), two ‘meta-conditions’ are required for this to succeed – i.e. ‘preconditions for the discursive fulfilment of other preconditions’ (176). The first is discursive competence, defined as ‘the ability of subjects to increase the perceptibility of articulations beyond the immediate environment in which they occur and to enable them to achieve a far-reaching discursive presence’ (Nonhoff, Reference Nonhoff2006, 176). Discursive competence extends beyond individual skills – and, to add to Nonhoff, individual resources – to encompass their ‘network of relationships with discursive practice’ (Nonhoff, Reference Nonhoff2006, 177).Footnote ⁴

From a communication studies perspective, discursive competence can be most effectively extended by incorporating the concept of media logic (see Meyen et al., Reference Meyen, Thieroff and Strenger2014), including the specific logics of the internet and digital platforms. Cultural capital (e.g. rhetorical skills), social capital (e.g. establishing and maintaining contacts in the public relations and media industries), or economic capital (e.g. financial resources to purchase advertising space) are no longer sufficient on their own to render a discursive mnemonic formation hegemonic. These forms of capital must also be strategically deployed in ways that align with the operational logics – each itself a discursive practice – of traditional media, online channels, and digital platforms. What becomes hegemonic in public discourse – or resists such status – is also subject to the conditions of media production. Hegemonies must therefore be analysed in light of mass-mediated structures of meaning-making, which are themselves shaped by media logics (Karidi, Reference Karidi2017).

Second, Nonhoff (Reference Nonhoff2006) identifies organised structure as a meta-condition, which corresponds to a ‘complex coordination effort’: in order ‘to enhance discursive visibility’, it is necessary ‘to combine different preconditions of visibility time and again, which in turn requires the coordination of various individuals both within and in relation to the respective discursive context’ (177).Footnote ⁵

Discursive positions must be reiterated regularly. Continuous (public) follow-up and connective communication are required to disseminate hegemonic projects across multiple discourses and to stabilise them as hegemonies. At the same time, discursive proliferation unfolds across diverse spheres of public life – political, economic, legal, urban, cultural, and civil society. A hegemonic public sphere is therefore conceived here in holistic terms: it is not only generated through mass-mediated communication, which, under conditions of digitalisation and platformisation, has undoubtedly contributed to the fragmentation of the public sphere. Rather, a hegemonic paradigm also manifests materially and symbolically in physical public spaces: in monuments and memorial plaques or commemorative and symbolic rituals such as remembrance days and state ceremonies. These forms of hegemonic public memory, embedded in spatial and institutional structures, can offer a certain degree of persistence and continuity that resists or counterbalances any tendency towards fragmentation.

Building blocks for an empirical modelling of memory

The triad of discourse theory, hegemony theory, and public sphere theory in this article is not merely intended to ‘theorise’ the interrelationship between individual and collective memory. As outlined in the introduction, the proposed theoretical framework is designed to contribute to an understanding of how and why certain narratives, collective symbols, events, and other elements of the past succeed in establishing themselves as master narratives – that is, become hegemonic – while others fade into oblivion.

Nonhoff (Reference Nonhoff2006) developed his hegemony analysis using the example of the hegemonisation of the social market economy in Germany. His methodology is therefore not originally a theory of memory studies. More generally, it should be noted that hegemony theory is a form of critical social theory which, drawing on Nonhoff’s approach, is adapted here to theorise processes of remembrance. At first glance, mnemonic hegemonies resemble other hegemonic public discourses; however, there are at least four key differences.

First, such discourse claims to represent people’s lived reality (Trimçev, Reference Trimçev2017), including generations of contemporary witnesses and their descendants – what Hirsch (Reference Hirsch1997) refers to as postmemory – whose recollections may diverge from the hegemonic memory paradigm. Second, this also applies to those who embody a different social culture of norms and values than those inscribed in the hegemonic memory discourse. Ultimately, the struggle over the power to define and interpret memory is always about the ‘moral imperatives’ of a society, which ‘form the basic parts of the normative order’ (Irwin-Zarecka, Reference Irwin-Zarecka2017, 9).

This view leads to the third point: Following Assmann (Reference Assmann2011), hegemonic memory can be described as the cement of society, ideally enjoying broad consensus. ‘A society’s primary need’, writes Sangar (Reference Sangar2015), ‘is its cohesive reproduction, which implies that there must be a stock of memories whose contents and “lessons,” that is, their normative implications, are shared by all the majority of the individuals, regardless of their membership in specific social groups’ (72). Finally, memory discourses – whether already established as hegemonies or still in the process of becoming hegemonic – are essential to both individual and collective identity formation (Olick and Robbins Reference Olick and Robbins1998). ‘Memory functions in every act of perception, in every act of intellection, in every act of language’, as Terdiman (Reference Terdiman1993, 9) summarises. For these reasons, the need for the public legitimisation of a hegemonic memory paradigm is likely to be particularly crucial compared to other hegemonic public discourses.

To understand how a discursive mnemonic formation develops into a hegemonic memory paradigm, this article outlines the stages of mnemonic hegemonisation, illustrated with empirical data drawn from the author’s discourse and subjectivation analyses in communication studies (Fiedler Reference Fiedler2021, Reference Fiedler2022, Reference Fiedler2023; Fiedler et al., Reference Fiedler, Rawski, Świrek and Traunspurger2023). A comprehensive methodological discussion lies beyond the scope of this article, but the examples presented here should be understood as heuristics for illustrating the model and/or as hypotheses that call for further empirical testing.

Laclau and Mouffe (Reference Laclau and Mouffe2001) never translated their theory of hegemony into applied empirical research. It is this gap that Nonhoff (Reference Nonhoff2006, Reference Nonhoff and Nonhoff2007, Reference Nonhoff and Marttila2019) seeks to fill by proposing a systematic approach to the analysis of discourses under the banner of hegemony analysis, grounded in their theoretical framework. His approach to deconstructing the process of hegemonisation is both inverse and reconstructive, as it ‘considers the strategies of constituting hegemony from the perspective of an already constituted hegemony’ (Nonhoff, Reference Nonhoff2006, 210) – that is, he effectively works backwards. At the heart of hegemony analysis, as Nonhoff (Reference Nonhoff and Nonhoff2007) puts it, lies ‘the dissection of what can be described as hegemonic strategy into several strategemes, which in turn can be understood as particular forms of relating discursive elements and which can, as such, be traced in empirical discourse material’ (174).Footnote ⁶ In order to concisely summarise this sequence of deconstructing mnemonic hegemonisation – a process extensively elaborated in Nonhoff’s (Reference Nonhoff and Marttila2019) work – hegemony analysis is here conceptualised as a modular system consisting of five successive components (see Figure 1).

Figure 1.

Modules for the analysis of mnemonic hegemony.

Source: Own illustration based on Nonhoff’s (Reference Nonhoff2006, Reference Nonhoff and Marttila2019) work.

Modules 4 and 5: What strategies are pursued to enforce demands?

Since the types of discursive relations and the so-called strategemes in Nonhoff’s hegemony analysis are directly related (see Figure 1), they are addressed together in this section. Laclau (Reference Laclau2005) defines discourses as ‘any complex of elements in which relations play the constitutive role’ (68). Central to this understanding is the concept of the node (Laclau and Mouffe, Reference Laclau and Mouffe2001), around which articulations in a discourse are clustered, thereby lending the discourse structure and stability. Discursive mnemonic formations also rely on such nodal points, as Confino (Reference Confino1997) demonstrates in the context of German nation-building in the 19th century: the integration of various regional memories into a national identity was only possible because the national idea was mediated through local categories (Olick and Robbins Reference Olick and Robbins1998, 118).

Building on these theoretical assumptions, Nonhoff (Reference Nonhoff and Nonhoff2007) proposes that, rather than attempting to analyse the overwhelming multitude of discursive elements within political discourse, one should instead focus on identifying types of discursive relations, which are far more manageable. The manner in which these elements are related to one another is part of what Nonhoff (Reference Nonhoff and Nonhoff2007) refers to as a hegemonic strategy. Importantly, he does not conceive of this as a master plan devised by an autonomous, calculating subject, especially since subjects cannot step outside of discourse but are always embedded within it. Rather, he views strategy as ‘the process of linking discursive elements across time’, evolving through ‘the contingent interplay of multiple strategic plans and intentions’ (Nonhoff, Reference Nonhoff and Marttila2019, 78–79). Given that hegemonic strategies ‘often involve complex arrangements of discursive elements’, Nonhoff (Reference Nonhoff and Marttila2019) argues that it is ‘analytically useful to conceptually subdivide them’ into what he terms strategemes (79).

According to Laclau (Reference Laclau2005), there are, strictly speaking, only two types of relations: substitution and combination (see Figure 1). Within hegemony theory, substitution (a) refers to a relationship in which an empty signifier represents the universal, though, as previously mentioned, only ostensibly and never completely. Accordingly, module 5 includes strategeme (I): representation. Footnote ⁹

Under combination (b), Nonhoff distinguishes four types of relations. Equivalence (b1a) refers to the discursive connection between two discursive elements that are similar (but not identical). Implicit in this relation of equivalence is a boundary drawn against other discursive elements that are different – this is the relation of difference (b1b). Equivalence and difference must therefore be understood together and are both reflected in strategeme (II): the articulation of equivalences between different demands made with regard to the universal. What Laclau and Mouffe (Reference Laclau and Mouffe2001) describe as social antagonisms – discussed earlier in this article – correspond to what Nonhoff (Reference Nonhoff and Nonhoff2007) calls a relation of contrariety (b2) between two equivalent chains. The associated strategeme (III), the antagonistic division of discursive space, thus refers to the relations between different elements that do not belong to the same symbolic space.

The fifth and final type of discursive relation, superdifference (b3), corresponds to the basic strategeme (IV): the super-differential demarcation. This relationship does not refer to a boundary in the sense of a social antagonism, but rather to discursive areas deemed ‘irrelevant’ or entirely distinct (Nonhoff, Reference Nonhoff and Marttila2019, 73).

Figure 2 illustrates the discursive structure of a mnemonic hegemony using the example of the Holocaust memory imperative in Germany. The discursive relations and underlying demands depicted are derived from the author’s discourse and subjectivation-analytical studies (in particular Fiedler, Reference Fiedler2021, Reference Fiedler2022; Traunspurger et al., Reference Traunspurger, Beneker, Fiedler, Siapera, Fiedler and Andresen2025). They are to be understood as a heuristic device and require further empirical validation.

Figure 2.

Hegemonic structure of the Holocaust remembrance imperative in Germany.

Source: Own illustration based on Nonhoff’s (Reference Nonhoff and Marttila2019, 90) work.

As Figure 2 shows, the discursive space is divided by two chains of equivalence – elements of demand and absence (strategeme III: antagonistic division) – in which the respective elements are placed into a relation of equivalence (strategeme II; see b1a in Figure 1), while not being identical (they remain differential; see b1b in Figure 1). For the sake of clarity, not all equivalences are shown as connecting lines.

In the chain of equivalence in Figure 2, which articulates the demands aimed at stabilising the hegemony (that is the memory imperative), the top row contains ideals and values that can be associated with the realisation of the universal, supplemented in the middle by signifiers referring to memory-political ideals, and at the bottom by concrete memory-political measures.

In contrast, the lower chain of equivalence in Figure 2 formulates the absence to be overcome. Some – but by no means all – of the elements in this chain stand in a direct discursive relation of contrariety to the upper chain of demands, such as tolerance/intolerance or admission of guilt/denial.

As a form of mnemonic hegemony, the Holocaust memory imperative claims to represent (strategeme I) the discursive elements shown in the upper chain of equivalence, particularly the ideals/values and the associated signifiers. Put simply, remembrance of the Holocaust stands in for tolerance, admission of guilt, acceptance of responsibility, and so on. However, because the imperative functions as a symbolic universal, it constitutes an empty signifier (as explained in module 2), and this representation is therefore only an apparent one. The container term Holocaust can now be filled with a wide range of meanings and invoked for various purposes.

A super-differential boundary (strategeme IV) might consist in justifying Germany’s foreign and geopolitical interests vis-à-vis autocratic states through discursive distancing, thus defining a distinct discursive field that claims to have ‘nothing to do’ with the Holocaust memory imperative.

Nonhoff (Reference Nonhoff2006) developed his analysis of hegemony to examine offensive hegemonic strategies, in which one hegemony replaces another. However, as the case of the already established Holocaust remembrance imperative shows, hegemony analysis can equally be applied to defensive-hegemonic strategies – those aimed at preserving a discursive hegemonic formation. Such strategies must place greater emphasis on relations of difference and do so ‘in all their diversity and breadth’ (Nonhoff, Reference Nonhoff2006, 239).Footnote ¹⁰

The core strategemes and the basic strategeme shown in Figure 1 are deductively derived from the hegemony theory of Laclau and Mouffe (Reference Laclau and Mouffe2001). In contrast, the additional and secondary hegemonic strategemes were developed inductively by Nonhoff (Reference Nonhoff2006) from his empirical analysis of hegemony in the context of the German social market economy. Unlike the core and basic strategemes, these inductive strategemes are not necessarily present in all forms of hegemonic practice and are briefly outlined here (see Nonhoff, Reference Nonhoff2006, 233–234):

The supplementary hegemonic strategemes aim to increase the reach of a hegemonic formation. Strategeme V – the gradual constitution of greater leeway for interpreting the symbolic equivalent of the universal, seeks to enhance the resonance – and thus the potential for subjectivation – of a hegemonic demand by loosening the semantic attribution of a given discursive element. Strategeme VI, the (re)articulation of subject positions for politico-societal forces, emphasises that hegemonic strategies often aim to recruit such forces (e.g. political parties and associations) and, accordingly, formulate subject positions specifically for them.

Strategeme VII, the occasional but deliberate breach of the antagonistic line of division, highlights the contingency of hegemonic formations. For a hegemony to succeed, it may at times be necessary to shift the boundary that separates the ‘good’ from the ‘bad’ in relation to subject positions or other discursive elements. To illustrate this strategeme, Nonhoff (Reference Nonhoff2006, 234) refers to the historical example of the Röhm Crisis in 1934, during which the German upper bourgeoisie and its affiliated businesses were offered a subject position within the National Socialist chain of equivalence, whereas other subject positions – particularly those emphasising the ‘left-wing’ or ‘socialist’ aspects of National Socialism – were subsequently excluded from that chain.

The secondary hegemonic strategemes – including the strategeme of true championship (VIII) and the strategeme of true meaning (IX) (see Figure 1) – are, according to Nonhoff (Reference Nonhoff and Marttila2019), typically employed when a hegemony is already well established, ‘and when, as a consequence, it becomes controversial what it is that “in fact” defines this formation’ (80). A prominent example of this can be found in the debate over the singularity of the Holocaust during the so-called Historikerstreit of 1986/87. This debate centred both on the question of the true meaning of Holocaust remembrance and on the identification of those subjects who are ‘actually’ committed to this symbolic universal – the memory imperative – or, in Nonhoff’s words, ‘the true advocates of a comprehensive demand oriented towards this universal’ (Nonhoff, Reference Nonhoff2006, 236–237).Footnote ¹¹

This article argues that empirical studies concerned with the emergence and persistence of mnemonic hegemonies should pay particular attention to the public communication blind spot in Nonhoff’s hegemony analysis – and, by extension, in the discourse theory of Laclau and Mouffe. As previously outlined, hegemony is inconceivable without public communication today. The article, therefore, proposes the (empirically testable) strategeme of the mediatisation of articulations by adapting to and navigating media logic, which has been newly added by the author to the category of supplementary hegemonic strategemes in Figure 1. This strategeme is based on the assumption that hegemonic projects – or hegemonies – must adapt to the rules of media logic in order to become or remain hegemonic. Media logic here refers to public communication driven by political and commercial imperatives that, following the primacy of market and audience orientation, manifests in the commodification of media content (Karidi Reference Karidi2017). Political discourses (including their demands) that succeed in attracting media attention – through personalisation, emotional appeals, staging, or superlativisation – thus have a significantly higher chance of achieving or maintaining hegemonic status.

Evidence supporting this assumption can be found, for example, in the transformation of the discourse of remembrance concerning National Socialism and the Holocaust in the left-liberal press, as illustrated by the case of Der Spiegel magazine (see Traunspurger et al., Reference Traunspurger, Beneker, Fiedler, Siapera, Fiedler and Andresen2025). While reporting in the early post-war years focused primarily on the German victim perspective – returning soldiers, expellees – interest increasingly shifted from the 1960s onwards toward the perpetrators and Jewish victims. From the perspective proposed here, the growing attention to the perpetrator perspective can also be interpreted as a defensive-hegemonic strategy of remembrance under the constraints of the attention economy (‘Hitler always sells’; Niggemeier, Reference Niggemeier2012, para. 4). Similarly, Der Spiegel’s Auschwitz cover stories (e.g. issues 04/1995 or 35/2014), as well as cover images of Jewish Holocaust survivors (e.g. ‘The Last Witnesses’; Der Spiegel 05/2015), point to an increasing personalisation and emotionalisation of the hegemonic discourse of remembrance.