National memory

Historically national communities have drawn upon commemorative ceremonies and monuments, myths and rituals, glorified individuals, objects, and events in their own history to produce a common narrative.

[2] They can get challenged and augmented by a range of interest groups, fighting to have their histories acknowledged, documented and commemorated and reshape national stories.

It reflects the abandonment of the traditional channels and modes of transmission of the past and the desacralisation of such primary sites of initiation as the school, the family, the museum, and the monument: what was once the responsibility of these institutions has now flowed over into the public domain and been taken over by the media and tourist industryHowever, national history being passed on by the culture industry, such as by historical films, can be seen as serious threats to the objective understanding of a nation's past.

Identity crisis can occur in a country due to large-scale negative events such as crime, terroristic attacks (on a national or international scale), war, and large changes made over a short period of time.

[4][14] This crisis can also occur during periods of economic political uncertainty, which can lead to citizens becoming uncertain of and questioning their own identities or losing them altogether.

[12] It has been proposed that the unthinkable ought not to be unmasked but that instead what made it thinkable should be reconstructed and that the difficulty of discussing the non-places or the bad places of national memory make it necessary to include forgetfulness and amnesia in the concept.

Atomic bombing memorial in Hiroshima. The remains a building with the skeletal structure of a dome at the top sits among modern Japanese buildings and green space.
The atomic bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki by the United States military at the end of WWII has shaped Japanese national memory throughout the 20th and 21st Centuries.
A large pickup truck has three clearly visible flags mounted onto it. The modern US flag, the Confederate Battle flag, and a Confederate National flag.
Conflicting versions of national memory can be seen in this image, as the modern United States flag is flown alongside a Confederate National flag and a Confederate Battle flag. These flags represent the legacy of two armies that were historically in direct conflict with one another during the American Civil War. Despite two of these flags representing an enemy of the United States, they are all flown together with the intention of communicating the owner's modern patriotism.