Acts of Memory: Cultural Recall in the Present / Edition 1

by Mieke Bal, Jonathan Crewe, Leo Spitzer

Overview

Acts of Memory presents 15 tightly integrated essays that illustrate the active role of individual and cultural memory in tying the past to the present. Memory, or memorialization, is a cultural activity occurring in the present that offers history another kind of source or document; one that provides insights into the past as it lives on today. The authors, in fields ranging from philosophy and history through literature and media studies, illustrate how memory serves many purposes, between conscious recall and unreflected re-emergence, between nostalgic longing for what is lost to polemical use of the past to reshape the present. Their essays coalesce around three topics: the need for memory and testimonial facilitation of memory, primarily in the case of historical and individual trauma; the site-specific nature of acts of memory, especially in geopolitically conflicted situations; and the potential contributions of acts of memory when facing the difficulties and needs of the present. "Neither remnant, document, nor relic of the past, nor floating in a present cut off from the past, cultural memory, for better or worse, binds the past to the present and future. It is that process of binding that we explore in this volume" writes Mieke Bal.

CONTRIBUTORS: Carol B. Bardenstein, Susan J. Brison, Ann Burlein, Katharine Conley, Lessie Jo Frazier, Gerd Gemünden, Marianne Hirsch, Andreas Huyssen, Irene Kacandes, Mary Kelley, Marita Sturken, Ernst van Alphen, and the editors

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780874518894
Publisher:	Dartmouth College Press
Publication date:	12/01/1998
Edition description:	New Edition
Pages:	268
Product dimensions:	6.00(w) x 9.00(h) x 0.80(d)

About the Author

MIEKE BAL is Professor of Theory of Literature, University of Amsterdam and author of Double Exposures: The Subject of Cultural Analysis (1996). JONATHAN CREWE is Professor of English and Comparative Literature at Dartmouth College and author of Trials of Authorship (1990). LEO SPITZER is Kathe Tappe Vernon Professor of History at Dartmouth and author of Hotel Bolivia: The Culture of Memory in a Refuge from Nazism (1998).

What People are Saying About This

James E. Young

“This collection of essays brings together a fascinating group of reflections on the forms and consequences of memory across several cultures and in several media—from Germany to South Africa, from autobiography to trauma in cutting-edge art. Extremely intelligent and insightful, these pieces make clear just how far the present work on cultural memory can extend, just how important memory-studies have become for all disciplines.”

Geoffrey Hartman

Contains many useful and very timely essays on the importance of public and cultural memory. Its range from Germany and the U.S. to Israel and Chile should commend it to an international audience.