In the last decade, a focus on memory in the human sciences has
encouraged new approaches to the study of the past. As the
humanities and social sciences have put into question their own
claims to objectivity, authority, and universality, memory has
appeared to offer a way of engaging with knowledge of the past as
inevitably partial, subjective, and local. At the same time, memory
and memorial practices have become sites of contestation, and the
politics of memory are increasingly prominent. This
inter-disciplinary volume demonstrates, from a range of
perspectives, the complex cultural work and struggles over meaning
that lie at the heart of what we call memory.
The chapters in this volume offer a complex awareness of the
workings of memory, and the ways in which different or changing
histories may be explained. They explore the relation between
individual and social memory, between real and imaginary, event and
fantasy, history and myth. Contradictory accounts, or memories in
direct contradiction to the historical record are not always the
sign of a repressive authority attempting to cover something up.
The tension between memory as a safeguard against attempts to
silence dissenting voices, and memory's own implication in that
silencing, runs throughout the book.
Topics covered range from the Basque country to Cambodia, from
Hungary to South Africa, from the Finnish Civil War to the cult Jim
Jarmusch movie "Dead Man," from the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame to
Australia. Part I, "Transforming Memory" is concerned primarily
with the social and personal transmission of memory across time and
generations. Part II, "Remembering Suffering: Trauma and History,"
brings the after-effects of catastrophe to the fore. Part III,
"Patterning the National Past," the relation between nation and
memory is the central issue. Part IV, "And Then Silence," reflects
on the complex and multiple meaning of silence and oblivion,
wherein amnesia is often used as a figure for the denial of
shameful pasts.
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