From lines to networks: Calendars, narrative, and temporality

The focus of the article is the analysis of a particular site of collective memory (one state’s system of national holidays condensed in a calendar) from a perspective that highlights its relational and narrative characteristics. By adopting the idea of “commemorative networks,” the article will regard commemorated events as nodes in a network, connected by ties that highlight the causal relationship between any two events as perceived by the commemorating agencies in the making of narratives of the state. This approach offers a methodologically sound complement to other perspectives that investigate the formal narrative and semiotic features of “collective memory.”