we all come to know each other by asking for accounts, by giving accounts, by believing or disbelieving stories about each other's pasts and identities. (..) we identify a particular action by recalling at least two types of context for that action (..) - the narrative of one life is part of an interconnecting set of narratives.

Every recollection, however personal it may be, (..) exists in a relationship with a whole ensamble of notions which many others possess; (..) the idea of an individual memory, absolutely separate from social memory, is an abstraction almost devoid of meaning.

//Paul Connerton, How Societies Remember