This theme within the Arkoun Atlas points to the way a community preserves its self-images, reorganizes the past, and gives the present a meaning that goes beyond immediate facts. Memory here is not a neutral record, and the imaginary is not symbolic ornamentation; rather, both are fields that contribute to the construction of religiosity, identity, reception, and the boundaries of what can be thought. This theme therefore helps organize the material that examines how religion takes shape in collective consciousness, and how myth and history, symbol and interpretation, nostalgia and critique, intersect.
This trajectory appears clearly in The Human Formation of Islam, where the formation of Islam is linked to memory, time, mythologization, and meaning, as well as to the transformations that shape religiosity within society. It also emerges in When Islam Awakens through the discussion of myth and its entanglement with history, and of the belief-oriented imaginary in the construction of legitimacy. In Readings in the Qur’an, the symbolic dimension of Qur’anic discourse becomes visible, along with how it is received through recitation, transcription, and interpretation. Toward a Comparative History of the Monotheistic Religions likewise opens a broader horizon for understanding religious memory within the historical comparison of religions.
Among the concepts close to this theme are: the imaginary, historicity, discourse analysis, and tradition. These concepts make it possible to read memory as an active structure in the formation of meaning, rather than as mere psychological or narrative background.
The reading paths linked to it begin with Text and History, and meet A Quick Introduction to Arkoun in order to understand the place of symbol and memory in the project as a whole. Monotheistic Religions and Comparison also illuminates this theme when memory moves beyond the Islamic field alone to a wider domain in the history of religions.