Theories of Memories. A Reader

Michael ROSSINGTON and Anne WHITEHEAD [dir.], Theories of Memories. A Reader, Edinburgh, Edinburgh University Press, 2007, 328 p.ISBN 978 0 7486 2502 4

SUMMARY

Theories of Memories provides a comprehensive introduction to the rapidly expanding field of memory studies. It is a resource through which students will be able both to broaden their knowledge of contemporary theoretical perspectives and trace the development of ideas about memory from the classical period to the present.

The Reader is organised into three parts:

Part I, Beginnings, is historical in scope. Its three sections, Classical and Early Modern Ideas of Memory; Enlightenment and Romantic Memory, and Memory and Late Modernity lay out the key psychological, rhetorical, and cultural concepts of memory in the work of a range of thinkers from Plato to Walter Benjamin.

Part II, Positionings, identifies three major perspectives through which memory has been defined and debated more recently: Collective Memory; Jewish Memory Discourse; and Trauma.

Part III, Identities, examines the key role of memory in contemporary constructions of identity under the headings Gender; Race/Nation; and Diaspora.

CONTENTS

Preface

Acknowledgements

List of Illustrations

Introduction by Michael Rossington and Anne Whitehead

Part I: Beginnings

1 Classical and Early Modern Ideas of Memory, ed. by Jennifer Richards

Introduction by Jennifer Richards

1.1 Plato: from Theaetetus and Phaedrus

1.2 Aristotle: De Memoria et Reminiscentia

1.3 Cicero: from De oratore (On the Ideal Orator)

1.4 [Cicero]: from Ad Herennium

1.5 Mary J. Carruthers: from

1.6 Frances A. Yates: from The Art of Memory

2 Enlightenment and Romantic Memory, ed. by Michael Rossington

Introduction by Michael Rossington

2.1 John Locke: from An Essay Concerning Human Understanding

2.2 David Hume: from A Treatise of Human Nature

2.3 Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel: from Philosophy of Mind, Being Part Three of the Encyclopedia of the Philosophical Sciences

3 Memory and Late Modernity, ed. by Michael Rossington and Anne Whitehead

Introduction by Michael Rossington and Anne Whitehead

3.1 Karl Marx: The Eighteenth Brumaire of Louis Bonaparte

3.2 Friedrich Nietzsche: On the Uses and Disadvantages of History for Life

3.3 Henri Bergson: from Matter and Memory

3.4 Sigmund Freud: A Note on the ‘Mystic Writing Pad’

3.5 Walter Benjamin: 'On the Image of Proust'

Part II: Positionings

4 Collective Memory, ed. by Michael Rossington

Introduction by Michael Rossington

4.1 Maurice Halbwachs: from The Collective Memory

4.2 Pierre Nora: from Between Memory and History: Les Lieux de Mémoire

4.3 John Frow: from Time and Commodity Culture: Essays in Cultural Theory and Postmodernity

5 Jewish Memory Discourse, ed. by Anne Whitehead

Introduction by Anne Whitehead

5.1 Yosef Hayim Yerushalmi: from Zakhor: Jewish History and Jewish Memory

5.2 Jack Kugelmass and Joseph Boyarin: from From a Ruined Garden: The Memorial Books of Polish Jewry

5.3 James E. Young: from The Texture of Memory: Holocaust Memorials and Meaning

6 Trauma, ed. by Anne Whitehead

Introduction by Anne Whitehead

6.1 Lawrence Langer: from Memory’s Time: Chronology and Duration in Holocaust Testimonies

6.2 Cathy Caruth: from Trauma and Experience

6.3 Dominick LaCapra: from History in Transit: Experience, Identity, Critical Theory

Part III: Identities

7 Gender, ed. by Kate Chedgzoy

Introduction by Kate Chedgzoy

7.1 Anna Reading: from The Social Inheritance of the Holocaust: gender, culture and memory

7.2 Marianne Hirsch and Valerie Smith: from Feminism and Cultural Memory: An Introduction

7.3 Annette Kuhn: from Family Secrets

8 Race/Nation, ed. by Pablo Mukherjee

Introduction by Pablo Mukherjee

8.1 Benedict Anderson: from Imagined Communities: Reflections on the Origin and Spread of Nationalism

8.2 Étienne Balibar: from Reflections on ‘The Nation Form': History and Ideology

8.3 Paul Gilroy: from There Ain’t No Black in the Union Jack

9 Diaspora, ed. by Linda Anderson

Introduction by Linda Anderson

9.1 Victor Burgin: from In/Different Spaces: Place and Memory in Visual Culture

9.2 Avtar Brah: fromCartographies of Diaspora: Contesting Identities

9.3 Edward Said: from Out of Place

Biographical Details of Editors and Contributing Editors

Index