scholarly journals Cultural memory and paradigms in the study of the past: philosophy, history, cultural studies

2019 ◽  
Vol 72 ◽  
pp. 03016
Author(s):  
Elena Mareeva ◽  
Anna Vorobyova
Keyword(s):  
Cultural Memory ◽  
Memory Studies ◽  
Philosophy Of History ◽  
Personal Choice ◽  
Historical Science ◽  
The Unconscious ◽  
Historical School ◽  
The Past ◽  
Classical Methodology ◽  
The Media

The study deals with the fundamental differences in understanding the past in the philosophy of history, in classical historical science, as well as in memory studies. The authors represent the features of the formation of a non-classical methodological paradigm in the interpretation of history by A. Warburg, in the German “historical school”, in the neo-Kantians of the Baden school and in the Annals school. The non-classical methodology in the study of the past is presented in the reversion from conscious personal choice to the mechanisms of the unconscious rallying of the collective in the concepts of cultural memory by M. Halbwachs and J. Assmann. The peculiarity of “mentality”, “identity” and “cultural memory” as concepts of modern non-classical discourse is revealed. It is concluded that the construction of mythological images of the past is a novation of the era of “managed democracy”, which carries elements of authoritarianism. The past, as demonstrated by memory studies, has once again become a myth that the media make good use of.

scholarly journals Television as a Hybrid Repertoire of Memory

2013 ◽  
Vol 2 (3) ◽  
pp. 52 ◽  
Author(s):  
Berber Hagedoorn
Keyword(s):  
Cultural Memory ◽  
New Model ◽  
The Past ◽  
Media Platform ◽  
The Media ◽  
Dynamic Production

In this article, television is reconsidered as a hybrid ‘repertoire’ ofmemory. It is demonstrated how new dynamic production and scheduling practicesin connection with highly accessible and participatory forms of user engagementoffer opportunities for television users to engage with the past, and how suchpractices affect television as a practice of memory. The media platform HollandDoc is discussed as a principal casestudy. By adopting and expanding Aleida Assmann’s model of the dynamics ofcultural memory between remembering and forgetting, a new model to studytelevision as cultural memory is proposed which represents the medium’shybridity in the multi-platform era.

scholarly journals Beyond trauma? Memories of Joi/y and memory play in Blade Runner 2049

2019 ◽  
Vol 12 (1) ◽  
pp. 61-73 ◽  
Author(s):  
Silke Arnold-de Simine
Keyword(s):  
Cultural Memory ◽  
Meaning Making ◽  
Memory Studies ◽  
Trauma Theory ◽  
Cultural Experience ◽  
The Past ◽  
Blade Runner ◽  
Dominant Paradigm

Cultural memory studies finds itself at an impasse: whereas ‘cultural memory’ is conceptualized as mediated, dynamic, imaginative and shaped by the present, the dominant paradigm of ‘trauma’ illuminates the hold the past has on us, casting the shadow of a melancholic subjectivity that threatens to obscure our agency as (political) subjects. This article asks what lies in store for memory studies beyond the focus on (classic) trauma (theory). Using the movie Blade Runner 2049 (US 2017; dir: Denis Villeneuve) as an illustrative example, it explores how creative and joyful forms of meaning-making through play and acts of memory inform each other in what the psychoanalyst DW Winnicott described as ‘cultural experience’.

Colonial memories and transnational mobilizations: Asia’s colonial veterans and their struggle for British citizenship, c. 1980–2015

2018 ◽  
Vol 13 (6) ◽  
pp. 1129-1143
Author(s):  
Barbara Laubenthal ◽  
Daniel Schumacher
Keyword(s):  
Hong Kong ◽  
Civil Rights ◽  
Social Movement ◽  
Cultural Memory ◽  
Political System ◽  
Memory Studies ◽  
British Society ◽  
The Political ◽  
The Past ◽  
Political Framing

This article focuses on campaigns by former colonial soldiers from Nepal and Hong Kong and their struggles for British citizenship over the last three decades. When analysing these mobilizations, we combine approaches from social movement research with insights from cultural memory studies. We use the concept of ‘relational fields’ to determine how these former colonial soldiers systematically utilized the past as a political framing device and thus revealed themselves to be not outsiders to the political system but equal players therein. We argue that their actions are best understood as a series of connected postcolonial civil rights campaigns that often reinforce rather than reverse romanticized and positivist representations of Britain’s imperial past. While in some instances colonial veterans were able to mount meaningful political interventions, our analysis shows that the veterans’ eventual acceptance into British society could only come at the price of their continued stereotyped depiction as colonial subjects.

Memory between Locality and Mobility: Diaspora, Holocaust and Exile as Reflected in Contemporary German-Jewish Literature

2020 ◽  
Vol 50 (1) ◽  
pp. 55-68
Author(s):  
Jessica Ortner
Keyword(s):  
Cultural Memory ◽  
Social Practice ◽  
Jewish People ◽  
Memory Studies ◽  
Jewish Literature ◽  
National Narratives ◽  
The Past ◽  
The Holocaust ◽  
German Jewish ◽  
Migratory Movements

Memory is not only a biological capability but also a social practice of constructing the past, which is carried out by social communities (e.g., the nation state, the family, and the church). Since the 1980s, memory studies has intertwined the concept of cultural memory with national narratives of the past that are to legitimize the connection between state, territory, and people. In the present time of growing migratory movements, memory studies has abandoned this “methodological nationalism” and turned its attention towards dynamic constructions of cultural memory. Indeed, memories cross national and cultural borderlines in various ways. The cultural memory of the Jewish people, ever since its beginning, has been defined by mobility. As the exile and forty years of wandering in the wilderness preceded the Conquest of Canaan and the building of the temple, the cultural memory of the Jewish people has always been based on the principle of extraterritoriality. The caesura of the Holocaust altered this ancient form of mobility into a superimposed rediasporization of the assimilated Jews that turned the eternal longing for Jerusalem into a secularized longing for the fatherland. This article presents examples of German-Jewish literature that is concerned with the intersection between the original diaspora memory, rediasporization and longing for a return to the fatherland. I will analyze literary writings by Barbara Honigmann and Vladimir Verlib that in a paradigmatic manner navigate between memory of the Holocaust, exile and the mythological past of Judaism, and negotiate the question of belonging to diverse territorial and mobile mnemonic communities.

scholarly journals Prosthetic memory and post-memory: cultural encounters with the past in designing a museum

2015 ◽  
Vol 17 (2) ◽  
pp. 7 ◽  
Author(s):  
Mălina Ciocea ◽  
Alexandru Cârlan
Keyword(s):  
Cultural Memory ◽  
Memory Studies ◽  
Memory Device ◽  
Cultural Encounters ◽  
National Network ◽  
The Past ◽  
Bidirectional Relationship ◽  
Museum Experience ◽  
Conducting Research

<p>This paper1 investigates the sources of representations on the communist period and the type of engagement with the past in an experiential museum, in the context of the National Network of Romanian Museums’ project for a laboratory-museum of Romanian Communism. Our analysis of focus-groups in October-November 2012 explores the public’s expectations in terms of museum experience and engagement with objects and the potential of an experiential museum to facilitate deliberation about the past. We use the conceptual framework of recent studies on postmemory (Hirsch, 2008) and prosthetic memory (Landsberg, 2004, 2009) to focus on ways of building the experiential archive needed to produce prosthetic memory. We consider that such an analysis is relevant for two interconnected problems: the bidirectional relationship between a projected museum of communism and a prospective public, and the methodological insights available for investigating this relation. With regard to the first problem, this paper makes a case for treating museums as a memory device rather than a lieu de memoire and analyses the role of the museum in relation to cultural memory. With regard to the second problem, it offers an example of conducting research on prospective publics which departs from traditional marketing approaches, adopting theoretical insights and analytical categories from specific conceptualizations in the field of memory studies.</p>

scholarly journals The Crypt: Probing the Obscure Administration of Cultural Memory

2011 ◽  
Vol 47 (2) ◽  
Author(s):  
JOHAN REDIN ◽  
PETER JACKSON
Keyword(s):  
Cultural Memory ◽  
Memory Studies ◽  
Cultural Mediation ◽  
The Past

The prescribed means to engage with the past through a variety ofculturally upheld techniques is receiving wider attention within the humanities today. This is partly due to the growing field of so-called ‘cultural memory studies’. Religion is typically evoked in these circumstances as an exemplary entry into processes of long-term cultural mediation, and the different interests permeating the maintenance and obfuscation of a time-honoured past. The article is devoted to a concept that has attracted comparatively little attention among students of cultural memory: the crypt and its various analogies to the question of remembrance without memory.

scholarly journals Blasting the past: A rereading of Walter Benjamin’s theses on the philosophy of history

2019 ◽  
Vol 30 (3) ◽  
pp. 384-398
Author(s):  
Zarko Cvejic
Keyword(s):  
Walter Benjamin ◽  
Significant Degree ◽  
Philosophy Of History ◽  
Representative Democracy ◽  
Global Politics ◽  
Political Situation ◽  
The Past ◽  
The Media ◽  
The Impact ◽  
Populist Movements

The text offers a reappraisal of Walter Benjamin?s Theses on the Philosophy of History (?ber den Begriff der Geschichte; ?On the Concept of History?) from the perspective of global politics today and its similarities with the socio-economic and political situation in Europe and the Americas during the 1920s and 30s; more specifically, the impact of crises on the erosion of trust in liberal representative democracy and the concomitant rise of mostly rightwing populist movements and their strongmen leaders, aided to a significant degree by the media, ?old? and ?new? alike. The purpose of the text is to draw lessons from Benjamin?s vision of materialist historiography for our current political predicament.

scholarly journals Carnival Anthropocene: Myth and Cultural Memory in Monique Roffey's Archipelago // Antropoceno Carnaval: El mito y memoria cultural en Archipelago de Monique Roffey

2018 ◽  
Vol 9 (2) ◽  
pp. 41-55
Author(s):  
C. Parker Krieg
Keyword(s):  
Climate Change ◽  
Cultural Memory ◽  
Political Engagement ◽  
Memory Studies ◽  
Natural World ◽  
The Novel ◽  
The Past ◽  
The Social ◽  
The World

      This essay examines the role of myth in and as cultural memory through a reading of the novel, Archipelago (2013), by the Trinidadian-British author Monique Roffey. Against conceptions of the Anthropocene as a break from the past—a break that repeats the myth of modernity—I argue that Roffey’s use of cultural memory offers a carnivalesque relation to the world in response to the narrative’s account of climate change trauma. Drawing on Bakhtin’s classic study of the carnival as an occasion for contestation and renewal, as well as Cheryl Lousely’s call for a “carnivalesque ecocriticism,” this essay expands on the recent ecocritical turn to the field of Memory Studies (Buell; Goodbody; Kennedy) to illustrate the way literature mediates between mythic and historical relations to the natural world. As literary expressions, the carnivalesque and the grotesque evoke myth and play in order to expose and transform the social myths which govern relations and administrate difference. Since literature acts as both a producer and reflector of cultural memory, this essay seeks to highlight the literary potential of myth for connecting past traumas to affirmational modes of political engagement. Resumen     Este ensayo examina el papel del mito en y como memoria cultural analizando la novela Archipelago (2013), escrita por la autora trinitense-británica Monique Roffey. Frente a la idea del Antropoceno como una ruptura con el pasado—una ruptura que repite el mito de la modernidad—este trabajo argumenta que el uso de la memoria cultural de Roffey ofrece una relación carnavalesca con el mundo en respuesta al trauma del cambio climático detallado en la novela. Basando mi argumento en la teoría clásica de Bakhtin sobre el carnaval como una ocasión para la contestación y la renovación, así como la llamada de Cheryl Lousely por una “ecocrítica carnavalesca,” este ensayo amplía el reciente giro de la ecocrítica hacia el campo de los estudios de memoria (Buell; Goodbody; Kennedy) para ilustrar cómo la literatura media entre las relaciones míticas e históricas con el mundo natural. Como expresiones literarias, lo carnavalesco y lo grotesco evocan el mito y el juego para revelar y transformar los mitos sociales que gobiernan las relaciones y gestionan la diferencia. Ya que la literatura actúa tanto como productora y como espejo de la memoria cultural, este ensayo busca destacar el potencial literario del mito para conectar traumas del pasado con modos de compromiso político más afirmativos.

scholarly journals Os modos de memoria transnacionais e o estudo da novela galega da memoria

2019 ◽  
Author(s):  
Diego Rivadulla Costa
Keyword(s):  
Civil War ◽  
Public Sphere ◽  
Cultural Memory ◽  
Historical Context ◽  
Memory Studies ◽  
Recent Past ◽  
The Past ◽  
Year 2000

This work takes as reference the paradigm of the transnational modes of remembering, as proposed by Cultural Memory Studies, to approach the case of Galician novel about the Civil War and Francoism published since the year 2000, in the context of the revival of the past in the Spanish public sphere. After explaining the theory of modes of remembering, the chapter reviews the characteristics of antagonism, cosmopolitanism and agonism to analyse to what extent Galician writers have adopted these discourses in their stories of the recent past. The study concludes that there is a growing agonistic memory that investigates the perpetrator and the complexity of the historical context.

Taking an eventful historic turn down the cultural memory lane

2020 ◽  
Vol ahead-of-print (ahead-of-print) ◽  
Author(s):  
Nicholous M. Deal ◽  
Milorad M. Novicevic ◽  
Albert J. Mills ◽  
Caleb W. Lugar ◽  
Foster Roberts
Keyword(s):  
Cultural Memory ◽  
Design Methodology ◽  
Common Ground ◽  
Memory Studies ◽  
Positioning Theory ◽  
Historical Research ◽  
Organization Studies ◽  
Organizational History ◽  
Content Type ◽  
The Past

Purpose This paper aims to find common ground between the supposed incompatible meta-historical positioning of positivism and post-positivism through a turn to mnemohistory in management and organizational history. Design/methodology/approach Drawing on the idea of creative synthesis and positioning theory, the authors interject concepts from cultural memory studies in historical research on business and organizations to encourage management historians and organization theorists interested in joining the dialogue around how the past is known in the present. Using notions of “aftermath” and “events,” the idea of apositivism is written into historical organization studies to focus on understanding the complex ways of how past events translate into history. The critical historic turn event is raised as an exemplar of these ideas. Findings The overview of the emergence of the controversial historic turn in management and organization studies and the positioning of its adherents and antagonists revealed that there may be some commonality between the fragmented sense of the field. It was revealed that effective history vis-à-vis mnemohistory may hold the potential of a shared scholarly ethic. Originality/value The research builds on recent work that has sought to bring together the boundaries of management and organizational history. This paper explains how mnemohistory can offer a common position that is instrumental for theorizing the relationships among the past-infused constructs such as organizational heritage, legacy and identity.

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