Ghostly Gloves, Haunted Hands: The Material Trace in Sarah Waters's Affinity and Fingersmith

2019 ◽  
Vol 9 (3) ◽  
pp. 222-241
Author(s):  
Danielle Mariann Dove
Keyword(s):  
Cultural Memory ◽  
Victorian Fiction ◽  
The Past ◽  
Sexual Boundaries ◽  
Victorian Period

Drawing on existing work on the theoretical notion of the trace in neo-Victorian fiction, this article foregrounds the material trace as an appropriate framework for examining neo-Victorian gloves. Considering the ways in which gloves take on a ghostly life and agency of their own in neo-Victorianism, this article seeks to interrogate the material and spectral traces that they leave behind in Sarah Waters's Affinity (1999) and Fingersmith (2002). It aims to show the significance of sartorial matters in these contemporary re-imaginings of the Victorian period, and to examine neo-Victorian fiction's relationship with the traces and fingerprints of the past. Locating the glove as entrenched within cultural memory as an explicitly Victorian item, this article suggests that it acts as both a marker of Victorian situatedness and a palpable entity capable of transgressing the temporal, spatial, and sexual boundaries that exist between the past and present.

The Late-Victorian ‘New Man’ and the Neo-Victorian ‘Neo-Man’

2015 ◽  
Vol 5 (2) ◽  
pp. 105-121
Author(s):  
Margaret D. Stetz
Keyword(s):  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
Literary History ◽  
Historical Fiction ◽  
Gender Relations ◽  
Victorian Fiction ◽  
New Man ◽  
Victorian Period ◽  
The New Woman ◽  
Definition Of ◽  
Victorian Age

The New Man was a crucial topic of discussion and a continual preoccupation in late-Victorian feminist writing, precisely because he was more often a wished-for presence than an actual one. Nevertheless, creators of neo-Victorian fiction and film repeatedly project him backwards onto the screen of literary history, representing him as having in fact existed in the Victorian age as a complement to the New Woman. What is at stake in retrospectively situating the New Man – or, as I will call him, the ‘Neo-Man’ – in the nineteenth century, through historical fiction? If one impulse behind fictional returns to the Victorian period is nostalgia, then what explains this nostalgia for The Man Who Never Was? This essay will suggest that neo-Victorian works have a didactic interest in transforming present-day readers, especially men, through depictions of the Neo-Man, which broaden the audience's feminist sympathies, queer its notions of gender relations, and alter its definition of masculinity.

Re-centering the Cinema Experience in a Multi-Platform, Digital Age

2015 ◽  
Vol 8 (5) ◽  
Author(s):  
E. W. Nikdel
Keyword(s):  
Physical Environment ◽  
Cultural Memory ◽  
Emotional Response ◽  
Physical Space ◽  
Film History ◽  
Cultural Activity ◽  
Film Culture ◽  
The Past ◽  
Imminent Death ◽  
Multiple Media

With the advent of online distribution and the rise of multiple media devices, claims of the cinema’s imminent death have surfaced with greater intensity than ever before. Of course, with an ever-widening array of platforms these accounts have placed a newfound emphasis on the cinema as a distinctive physical space, one that plays host to a very particular and much cherished cultural activity. This article considers the substance of these claims by tracing a very particular historical route. Firstly, be revisiting Baudry’s notion of the dispositif, this article detects the importance of the physical environment in the process of film consumption. Secondly, I relate this emphasis on the physical to the traditional notion of the cinephile, a practice that ritualises the cinema experience. Many accounts across the spectrum of film history will attest to the profound ways in which the physical experience of the cinema summons a rich emotional response. Lastly, I consider how the cinema and the collective nature of film consumption provides an authentic trace to the past and a very certain time and place in history. In turn, despite competition from cheaper and more convenient platforms, this article will endeavour to show how the cinema retains its place at the centre of contemporary film culture. KEYWORDS Cinema, dispositif, cinephilia, cultural memory.

City’s Cultural Memory: Modern Practices of Symbolizing the Past

2021 ◽  
Vol 18 (4) ◽  
pp. 352-364
Author(s):  
Natalia G. Fedotova
Keyword(s):  
Cultural Memory ◽  
Point Of View ◽  
Fundamental Aspect ◽  
Modern World ◽  
Cultural Meanings ◽  
Urban Identity ◽  
Symbolic Forms ◽  
The Past ◽  
Symbolic Resource ◽  
The City

The article is devoted to the discourse of the city’s cultural memory. The relevance of studying this topic is determined not only by the fundamental aspect associated with the episodicity of existing studies of this phenomenon. From an applied point of view, the city’s cultural memory is a symbolic resource that can be used to create an appealing image, form a sustainable urban identity, and strengthen the citizen’s sense of belonging to the city. The accumulation and objectification of cultural memory take place in symbolic forms, which makes it important to study the practices of symbolizing the urban past, the essence of which is to generate the significance of the relevant or latent layers of cultural memory for the citizens.The article presents the results of the final stage of research related to the study of the process of constructing the cultural memory of the city. The purpose of the article is to analyze modern practices of symbolizing fragments of the urban past, which mean their significance for contemporaries. Basing on the culturological cross-section of the issue, the author integrates different research contexts. The methodological basis of the article is the communicative approach that focuses on the processes of meaning formation, and the constructivist method that considers memory as a multi-layered and dynamic construct. Analyzing the practices of symbolizing the urban past by the example of Russian cities, the author of the article demonstrates how the episodes of the city’s memory are updated in the modern world, how cultural meanings become memorable for citizens. The author uses the results of previous studies and identifies the following elements of the symbolization of the urban past: a) ways of encoding fragments of the past; b) communicative trajectories of memory symbolization; c) factors of producing meanings about the collective past of the city. The obtained results open up new frontiers in understanding the processes of formation of the collective ideas about the city, and prospects for empirical research, forecasting and constructing the cultural memory of Russian cities, giving them the opportunity to change their present and future.

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 Reception of Natalie's Ramonda, Armistice Day Symbol in Serbia

2020 ◽  
Vol 14 (4) ◽  
Author(s):  
Senka Kovač
Keyword(s):  
Cultural Memory ◽  
Representative Sample ◽  
Public Discourse ◽  
First Year ◽  
World War ◽  
World War One ◽  
First Year Students ◽  
The Public ◽  
Ongoing Process ◽  
The Past

Nataliе’s Ramonda, a symbol of Armistice Day – November 11 in Serbia, is a new memorial symbol constructed and promoted by politicians in 2012. The Armistice Day was celebrated then as a national holiday in Serbia. The reception of this symbol has been explored over a five-year period, both in a public discourse and on a representative sample of first year students at the Faculty of Philosophy in Belgrade. In public discourse, as well as among students of the Faculty of Philosophy, Natalie’s Ramonda is perceived as an emblem, a badge, and most often as a symbol. It was seen as an emblem on the lapel of public and media figures, inaccessible to broad commercial promotion and sales. In public discourse and among students at the Faculty of Philosophy, Natalie’s Ramonda was perceived in several answers as a medal, and is also recognized as a flower that symbolizes the suffering of the Serbian people in World War One; symbol of the nation’s rebirth – the flower phoenix, as a mark of peace and freedom. As a newly constructed symbol of the Armistice Day in Serbia, for the past seven years, Natalie’s Ramonda has been a mediator in the public culture of remembrance and in the ongoing process, by becoming a part of cultural memory.

scholarly journals On Memory of Plates and Dishes

Fluminensia ◽  
2020 ◽  
Vol 32 (2) ◽  
pp. 117-136
Author(s):  
Krystyna Pieniążek-Marković
Keyword(s):  
Cultural Memory ◽  
Regional Identity ◽  
Literary Fiction ◽  
Western World ◽  
Individual Identity ◽  
The Past ◽  
Literary Sources ◽  
The Social ◽  
History Of ◽  
The Common

The aim of the article is to discuss how elements of food narratives meals and kitchen tools used for cooking are used in order to consolidate and shape the Croatian cultural memory, especially in the context of its Mediterranean heritage.For this reason, the texts by Veljko Barbieri, collected in the four volumes under the common and significant title Kuharski kanconijer. Gurmanska sjećanja Mediterana, are analysed. His circum-culinary narratives are a combination of encyclopaedic knowledge, references to historical and literary sources, personal memories and literary fiction. They can be easily inscribed in the Croatian (collective and individual) identity discourse since they are able to strengthen the collective (either national and supranational, or geo-regional) identity, and to construct the cultural memory. They also show Croatia's affiliation to the Western world along with its cultural-civilization rooting in antiquity, the Mediterranean region and Christianity, thus forming a part of the founding memory that develops a narrative about the very beginnings of Croatian presence on this land. The gastronomic narratives serve to create the cultural memory and this version of history which is to stabilize the social identity described by Pierre Nora and Andreas Huyssen. Through his stories, Barbieri shapes memory based on the representation of the past. In the analysed narratives, the memory carriers are dishes and plates which find reference to the oldest history of Croatia rendered by myths and other narratives. Associated with dishes, the pots enable the narrator to recall the past and the identity coded in individual dishes. They also participate in the processes of repeating, storage and remembering which generate a symbiotic relationship between man and thing. The memory carriers that is, food and plates depicted in Barbieri's culinary narratives do not convey their content in a neutral way, but construct their marked images.

scholarly journals Rola języka w uwalnianiu się z dziedzicznych traum

Politeja ◽  
2020 ◽  
Vol 17 (2(65)) ◽  
pp. 189-204
Author(s):  
Katarzyna Marcol
Keyword(s):  
Collective Memory ◽  
Cultural Memory ◽  
Social Position ◽  
Traumatic Experiences ◽  
The Past ◽  
The Social ◽  
The World ◽  
The 19Th Century ◽  
The Village

The Role of Language in Releasing from Inherited Traumas. Negotiations of the Social Position of the Silesian Minority in Serbian Banat The aim of the paper is to show the dependence between language, collective memory (also post-memory) and sense of identity. This issue is analysed using the example of an ethnic minority living in the village of Ostojićevo (Banat, Serbia) called ‘Toutowie.’ Their ancestors came in the 19th century from Wisła (Silesian Cieszyn, Poland); they left their homes because of great hunger and were looking for jobs in Banat. Narratives about the past contain traumatic experiences of the past generations transmitted in the Silesian dialect and constituting communicative memory. At the same time, a new Polish national identity is being constructed, supported by institutions and authorities; it carries a new image of the world and creates a new cultural memory. This new identity – shaped on the basis of national categories – leads to changes of its self-identification and gives the opportunity to raise its social position in the multi-ethnic Banat community.

scholarly journals The fiction of History: recalling the past and imagining the future with Caesar at Troy.

2010 ◽  
Vol 23 (1/2) ◽  
pp. 143-160
Author(s):  
Richard Alston
Keyword(s):  
Cultural Memory ◽  
Political Power ◽  
Human Mind ◽  
Historical Narrative ◽  
Cultural Trauma ◽  
Historical Account ◽  
Historical Discourse ◽  
The Past ◽  
The Future ◽  
A Site

This essay considers the nature of historical discourse through a consideration of the historical narrative of Lucan’s Pharsalia. The focus is on the manner in which Lucan depicts history as capable of being fictionalised, especially through the operation of political power. The discourses of history make a historical account, but those discourses are not, in Lucan's view, true, but are fictionalised. The key study comes from Caesar at Troy, when Lucan explores the idea of a site (and history) which cannot be understood, but which nevertheless can be employed in a representation of the past. yet, Lucan also alludes to a ‘true history’, which is unrepresentable in his account of Pharsalus, and beyond the scope of the human mind. Lucan’s true history can be read against Benjamin and Tacitus. Lucan offers a framework of history that has the potential to be post-Roman (in that it envisages a world in which there is no Rome), and one in which escapes the frames of cultural memory, both in its fictionalisation and in the dependence of Roman imperial memory on cultural trauma.

scholarly journals ‘Text as condenser of cultural memory’: intertextual space of Valerii Shevchuk’s prose

2020 ◽  
pp. 33-54
Author(s):  
Iryna Prylipko
Keyword(s):  
Cultural Memory ◽  
Continuous Process ◽  
Time And Space ◽  
The Past ◽  
The Bible ◽  
Intertextual Dialogue

The paper considers the demonstrative aspects of intertext in the prose by Valerii Shevchuk and focuses on the peculiarities of the works’ interaction with the Bible, mythology, and literature, which takes place at the level of different forms and types of intertext. Particular attention is paid to revealing the specifc ‘dialogue’ of V. Shevchuk’s works with their pretexts — hagiography, autobiographical and diary’s literature of Baroque. ɒ e examples discussed testify to the depth and ramifications of the intertextual dialogue in the writer’s prose, reveal the intellectual, philosophical, and elitist nature of his texts. A dialogue with the Bible, mythology, world and Ukrainian literature in the works by V. Shevchuk unfolds in the form of open and hidden quotations, allusions, reminiscences. These details aim at deepening the representation of ideas and themes, forming the subtexts, interpreting images. The writer creates a new artistic form — metatext — mainly through the reinterpretation of the pretexts, among which the works of the Baroque period (poetic, autobiographical, diary genres) and hagiography dominate. Transforming the pretexts at the level of contents, plot, genre, time and space, narrative, V. Shevchuk expands them with monologues, dialogues, descriptions, and details. In the process of interpreting prototexts, the writer resorts to modeling original images, in the context of which he actualizes some worldview points, reveals important moral, ethical, and philosophical problems. Allowing the perception of his work as a ‘textual game’, the writer, at the same time, does not reduce the role of intertext to the level of intellectual play. Intertext becomes a peculiar way of continuing the literary discourses of the past in a dialogue with them. They become re-read, ‘supplemented’ and thus brought once again into the continuous process of forming culture.

scholarly journals Cultural Memory and Urban Space in Shaping Cultural Identity

2019 ◽  
pp. 160-183
Author(s):  
Valentyna Bohatyrets ◽  
Liubov Melnychuk
Keyword(s):  
Urban Space ◽  
Cultural Memory ◽  
Urban Landscape ◽  
Late 20Th Century ◽  
The Past ◽  
Historical Archives ◽  
City Space ◽  
New Type ◽  
The City ◽  
Historic Cities

Nowadays, in the age of massive spatial transformations in the built environment, cities witness a new type of development, different in size, scale and momentum that has been thriving since late 20th century. Diverse transformation of historic cities under modernisation has led to concerns in terms of the space and time continuity disintegration and the preservation of historic cities. In a similar approach, we can state that city and city space do not only consist of present, they also consist of the past; they include the transformations, relations, values, struggles and tensions of the past. As it could be defined, space is the history itself. Currently, we would like to display how Chernivtsi cultural and architectural heritage is perceived and maintained in the course of its evolution. Noteworthy, Chernivtsi city is speculated a condensed human existence and vibes, with public urban space and its ascriptions are its historical archives and sacred memory. Throughout the history, CHERNIVTSI’s urban landscape has changed, while preserving its unique and distinctive spirit of diversity, multifacetedness and tolerance. The city squares of the Austrian, Romanian and Soviet epochs were crammed with statuary of royal elites and air of aristocracy, soviet leaders and a shade of patriotic obsession, symbolic animals and sacred piety – that eventually shaped its unique “Bukovynian supranational identity”. Keywords: Chernivtsi, cultural memory, memory studies, monuments, squares, identity.

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