Thoughts from Jan Assmann, Cultural Memory and Early Civilisation (2011)
Connective Structure - binds people together by providing a 'symbolic universe' (Berger and Luckmann) - 'a common area of experience, expectation and action whose connecting force provides them with trust and orientation' - links yesterday with today by giving form and presence to influential experiences and memories, incorporating images and tales from another time into the background of the onward moving presence, bringing with it hope and continuity. Aspect of culture that underlies MYTHS and HISTORIES, in which the normative and narrative elements create a basis of belonging and identity.
Ritual Coherence - the repetition that is the basic principle behind all connective structures. Repetition serves to re-presentify tradition and memory.
Ritual - all contain these 2 elements of repetition and re-presentification: if the rituals are more rigid, they are more repetitive. If there is more freedom of individual expression then they allow greater re-presentification in present context - these are the two poles between which the dynamic process that gives WRITING its all important function in the connective structure of culture.
Writing - it is through this that the dominance of repetition gradually gives way to that of re-presentification -- ritual gives way to coherence. A New connective structure emerges out of this - one which consists not of imitation and preservation but of interpretation and memory.