Discursos de las memorias colectivas. Reflexiones metodológicas acerca de la reconstrucción del recuerdo en grupos de discusión

Abstract

The present text aims to contribute to the reflection about the uses of focus groups as methodological instruments that permit the reconstruction of collective memories. The main challenges in reading and systematizing the discourses produced from the research practice constitute the main topics of discussion in this research. Since 2004 over 50 discussion groups have been facilitated both in Portugal and Spain in order to try to understand which memories were invoked and how the memories of different layers of the population were elaborated in relation to the dictatorships and transitions. Specifically, the "lived memories" (actors socialized in the dictatorial experience who witnessed the transition to democracy) and the "mediated memories" (actors who reconstructed the past using testimonials or social representations of the dictatorship/transition) were object of comparison. This article shows that the reconstruction of the past through the dialogues produced in the discussion groups is an epistemologically challenging task whereby the researcher is called upon to articulate the accounts produced with the historical reality where meaning was first produced, in a hermeneutic process of historical consciousness.