Reflections on memory and the geographical space from a historical-materialist perspective

Abstract

This article comes from an interdisciplinary reflection about the relationship between memory and geographic space. Based on a bibliographic survey analysed through a historical-materialist perspective, we defend the view that the objective things created by humans through  work, and the space that is constituted by the set of these objects, absorb the social meanings and incorporate the collective memories. They work as the great references of individual and collective memory. However, when approached as commodities, man-made things and geographical space cease to be these references, leading to the conclusion that there is a separation between the particularity of the object/space-as-memory and the generality of the object/space-as- commodity.