scholarly journals Cultural Memory as a Means of Understanding Transculturality

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Tea Talakvadze ◽  
Ivlita Lobjanidze
Keyword(s):  
National Culture ◽  
Social Factors ◽  
Cultural Memory ◽  
Memory Studies ◽  
Cultural Identities ◽  
Individual Identity ◽  
Traumatic Memory ◽  
Identity Studies ◽  
Trauma Memory ◽  
Depth Analysis

Memory studies have been particularly active since the second half of the 20th century and include a mix of fields of culturology, social psychology, media archeology, political philosophy, and comparative literature. Memory studies have formed the basis of both collective and individual identity studies, as well as the study of psycho-social factors in understanding traumatic memory and attempts to overcome trauma. Memory studies have activated an in-depth analysis of the construction of national and cultural identities and brought them into the context of transnational and transcultural studies.Based on the above, the purpose of this report is to provide a transcultural understanding of national culture based on the study of cultural memory, which is primarily based on the study of national identity and the analysis of the compositional nature of common / shared myths.

Like Daughter, Like Grandson: Queering Post-Traumatic Memory

2021 ◽  
pp. 175069802098201
Author(s):  
Golan Moskowitz
Keyword(s):  
Queer Theory ◽  
Queer Studies ◽  
Memory Studies ◽  
Trauma Theory ◽  
Traumatic Memory ◽  
Mother Child Relationships ◽  
Post Traumatic

Queer and trauma theory both concern internal experiences that challenge normative social frameworks. Considering the roles of queerness within trauma and memory studies opens interpretive pathways for otherwise discredited or inaccessible meanings. It also relates survivors’ receding knowledge to those currently “queered” or endangered. With a focus on childhood and mother-child relationships, this article maps intersections of memory studies, queer theory, and trauma theory, applying subsequent insights to an “autotheoretical” analysis of the author’s own transnational, post-Holocaust family across four generations. It explores the possibility through queer studies of excavating new post-traumatic meanings and relating those meanings to present contexts.

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 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 “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.

Harald Wezler som erindringsforsker: En viderefører af Halbwachs-Assmann-traditionen?

2005 ◽  
Author(s):  
Bernard Eric Jensen
Keyword(s):  
Social Factors ◽  
Cultural Memory ◽  
Social Memory ◽  
Interdisciplinary Approach ◽  
The State ◽  
Memory Research ◽  
Term Memory ◽  
Memory Work ◽  
Theoretical Approaches ◽  
Theoretical Analyses

Bernard Eric Jensen: Harald Welzer’s Approach to Memory Research An analysis of the approach to memory research found in the writings of Harald Welzer is presented. At the present time, Welzer is head of the Centre for Interdisciplinary Memory Research at Kulturwissenschaftliches Institut in Essen, Germany. He has contributed both empirical surveys and theoretical analyses to memory research during the last decade. At a first glance, Welzer’s approach appears to belong neatly within the tradition of memory research that was originally founded by the French sociologist Maurice Halbwachs, and which Aleida and Jan Assmann have been seeking to revive and develop since the 1980’s by introducing concepts such as “communicative and cultural memory” as well as “storage memory” (Speicher-Gedächtnis) and “use memory” (Funktions-Gedächtnis). On closer inspection, however, it transpires that Welzer’s approach cannot be characterised as a mere refinement of the approach taken by the Assmanns. This is partly because Welzer is attempting to develop an interdisciplinary approach, focused on the intricate relationships between biological, psychological and social factors in ongoing memory work. Apart from focussing of the work of Welzer, this article also seeks to highlight the state of “terminological anarchy” that characterises memory research at the present time, making it next to impossible to make direct comparisons between different theoretical approaches. This state of anarchy becomes transparent as soon as one begins to scrutinize the meanings of those adjectives, which nowadays are fixed to the term memory – for instance, “communicative”, “cultural”, “historical” and/or “social” memory. 

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’.

Cultural Memory and Ethnic Identity Construction in Toni Morrison’sA Mercy

2019 ◽  
Vol 50 (6) ◽  
pp. 555-568 ◽  
Author(s):  
Zhou Quan
Keyword(s):  
Native American ◽  
Cultural Memory ◽  
The Body ◽  
Traumatic Memory ◽  
The Novel ◽  
Indian Culture ◽  
Historical Monuments ◽  
Female Slaves ◽  
And Function ◽  
The Mansion

Through the lens of cultural memory, this article explores the relationships between the representation of cultural memory and the construction of ethnic cultural identity in Toni Morrison’s A Mercy. I argue that in the novel, Morrison highlights and manipulates three media of cultural memory: the architecture, the inscription, and the body, to interrogate and challenge the validity of numerous historical monuments and museums in America that are eviscerated of their complicity and function as tools in the atrocity of instituting slavery. To externalize his values, White colonizer Jacob builds a superfluous mansion, which, with the slave trade involved, actually serves as a profane monument to the slavery culture. To highlight the invalidity of the White cultural memory, Morrison crafts Florens who inscribes in the mansion the collective traumatic memory of the African female slaves, deforming the secular memorial from within. In the same fashion, culturally traumatized, Native American Lina adulterates the White culture by insinuating into it the Indigenous Indian cultural fragments and by performing the remolded Indigenous Indian culture, she sediments it into her body. By historicizing the issue of cultural memory in A Mercy, Morrison invites the reader to reconsider what makes a true American cultural memory.

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