scholarly journals Performative Memory

2021 ◽  
Vol 13 (2) ◽  
Author(s):  
Jacob Maze
Keyword(s):  
Cultural Memory ◽  
Memory Studies ◽  
Memory Formation ◽  
New Concepts ◽  
Systematic Framework

Though scholars in memory studies often deal with different aspects of cultural memory, it is rare to find any systematic framework to which memory adheres to and which would explain the emergence and maintenance of memories in general. In this article, I use the concepts of Judith Butler’s theory of performativity, namely interpellation, subject constitution, repetition, sedimentation, citationality and subversion, to show how she could provide a procedural account of memory formation. To illustrate how this might work, I look at how Turkey has chosen to commemorate the failed coup of July 2016 by interpreting some examples of such memory through Butler’s theories. In doing so, I show that Butler, rather than introducing new concepts to the field, offers a systematic framework that can relate scholars to one another by transposing their concepts onto Butler’s theory.

Friction, Fragmentation, and Diversity

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Kirsti Salmi-Niklander ◽  
Sofia Laine ◽  
Päivi Salmesvuori ◽  
Ulla Savolainen ◽  
Riikka Taavetti
Keyword(s):  
Oral History ◽  
Case Studies ◽  
Cultural Memory ◽  
Memory Studies ◽  
Cultural Representations ◽  
Protest Movements ◽  
Everyday Interaction ◽  
Legal Processes

This collection focuses on difficult memories and diverse identities related to conflicts and localized politics of memories. The contemporary and history-oriented case studies discuss politicized memories and pasts, the frictions of justice and reconciliation, and the diversity and fragmentation of difficult memories. The collection brings together methodological discussions from oral history research, cultural memory studies and the study of contemporary protest movements. The politicization of memories is analyzed in various contexts, ranging from everyday interaction and diverse cultural representations to politics of the archive and politics as legal processes. The politicization of memories takes place on multiple analytical levels: those inherent to the sources; the ways in which the collections are utilized, archived, or presented; and in the re-evaluation of existing research.

scholarly journals “Okay ladies, now let’s get in formation!”: Music Videos and the Construction of Cultural Memory

2017 ◽  
Vol 1 (1) ◽  
pp. 88-98 ◽  
Author(s):  
Laura M. F. Bertens
Keyword(s):  
Cultural Studies ◽  
Lived Experience ◽  
New Orleans ◽  
Case Studies ◽  
Cultural Memory ◽  
Memory Studies ◽  
Music Videos ◽  
Close Reading ◽  
Limited Length ◽  
Diverse Audience

Abstract This paper explores strategies for constructing and perpetuating cultural memory through music videos, using Beyonce’s Formation (2016) and Janelle Monae’s Many Moons (2008) and Q.U.E.E.N. (2013) as case studies. The medium’s idiosyncrasies create unique ways of communicating and remembering, explored here within a framework of Cultural Studies and Memory Studies. Easy dissemination and the limited length of most videos ensure a large, diverse audience. The relative freedom from narrative constraints enables the director to create original imagery, and most importantly, the medium allows an intricate blending of performance and performativity; while the videos evidently are performances, they are strongly performative as well, not only with respect to gender and ethnicity but in significant ways also cultural memory. A close reading of Beyonce’s video Formation shows how she explicitly does the cultural memory of the New Orleans flooding. The videos by Monae are shown to produce counter-memories, relying heavily on the strategy of Afrofuturism. As such, these densely woven networks of visual symbols become palimpsests of black lived experience and cultural memory, passed on to millions of viewers.

Pamięć Juliusza Słowackiego

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Olaf Krysowski ◽  
Natalia Szerszeń
Keyword(s):  
Collective Memory ◽  
Cultural Memory ◽  
Memory Studies

The book, which shows the works of Juliusz Słowacki from the perspective of cultural memory, belongs to memory studies. It aims to follow the relations between memory, reminiscence and commemoration, as well as to describe the relations and interdependencies between individual and collective memory, memory, biography and history in the poet’s works. The authors, in an innovative and multi-faceted manner, reconstruct ideas, formulas and notions, which develop a sui generis philosophy of memory in Słowacki’s works.

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.

‘Unimpaired remembrance reigns’

2021 ◽  
pp. 62-82
Author(s):  
Craig Lamont
Keyword(s):  
Cultural Memory ◽  
Memory Studies ◽  
Scottish Enlightenment

This chapter examines the cultural afterlife of the Scottish Enlightenment, which was laid out in more detail in chapter 2. Beginning with a study of Tobias Smollett’s cultural memory, the frame widens and the question of how well Glasgow’s Enlightenment has been remembered is considered. To do this, theories of memory studies are used to underpin readings of paintings, buildings, institutions, and statues.

Afterword

First Vision ◽  
2019 ◽  
pp. 259-262
Author(s):  
Steven C. Harper
Keyword(s):  
Shared Memory ◽  
Cultural Memory ◽  
Memory Formation ◽  
Shared Knowledge ◽  
Latter Day Saints ◽  
Joseph Smith ◽  
Church Curriculum

By 2015, Latter-day Saints were beginning to consolidate a more resilient cultural memory of Smith’s vision based on unabashed selection, relation, and repetition of Smith’s accounts in church curriculum. Curriculum a generation earlier had avoided any potential first vision controversies. Richard Bushman’s biography of Joseph Smith had been banned, not his interpretation of Smith’s accounts was the curriculum, having been officially selected, related, and repeated via media that was much more likely than a lecture or a textbook to modulate memory formation in young Latter-day Saints. The consolidation of their shared memory will take time. So will the recursion process by which elements are added or subtracted and new memories form. Within a generation, relatively few saints will remember any of the earlier versions of their shared knowledge. This book will preserve those memories.

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