Cultural Memory Studies: An International And I...
Amazon.com
Find in a library
All sellers
_OC_InitNavbar("child_node":["title":"My library","url":" =114584440181414684107\u0026source=gbs_lp_bookshelf_list","id":"my_library","collapsed":true,"title":"My History","url":"","id":"my_history","collapsed":true,"title":"Books on Google Play","url":" ","id":"ebookstore","collapsed":true],"highlighted_node_id":"");A Companion to Cultural Memory StudiesAstrid Erll, Ansgar NünningDe Gruyter, 2010 - Literary Criticism - 441 pages 0 ReviewsReviews aren't verified, but Google checks for and removes fake content when it's identifiedThis handbook represents the interdisciplinary and international field of "cultural memory studies" for the first time in one volume. Articles by renowned international scholars offer readers a unique overview of the key concepts of cultural memory studies. The handbook not only documents current research in an unprecedented way; it also serves as a forum for bringing together approaches from areas as varied as sociology, political sciences, history, theology, literary studies, media studies, philosophy, psychology, and neurosciences. "Cultural memory studies" - as defined in this handbook - came into being at the beginning of the 20th century, with the works of Maurice Halbwachs on mémoire collective. In the course of the last two decades this area of research has witnessed a veritable boom in various countries and disciplines. As a consequence, the study of the relation of "culture" and "memory" has diversified into a wide range of approaches. This handbook is based on a broad understanding of "cultural memory" as the interplay of present and past in sociocultural contexts. It presents concepts for the study of individual remembering in a social context, group and family memory, national memory, the various media of memory, and finally the host of emerging transnational lieux de mémoire such as 9/11.
Cultural Memory Studies: An International and I...
Scholars disagree as to when to locate the moment representation "took over". Nora points to the formation of European nation states. For Richard Terdiman, the French revolution is the breaking point: the change of a political system, together with the emergence of industrialization and urbanization, made life more complex than ever before. This not only resulted in an increasing difficulty for people to understand the new society in which they were living, but also, as this break was so radical, people had trouble relating to the past before the revolution. In this situation, people no longer had an implicit understanding of their past. In order to understand the past, it had to be represented through history. As people realized that history was only one version of the past, they became more and more concerned with their own cultural heritage (in French called patrimoine) which helped them shape a collective and national identity. In search for an identity to bind a country or people together, governments have constructed collective memories in the form of commemorations which should bring and keep together minority groups and individuals with conflicting agendas. What becomes clear is that the obsession with memory coincides with the fear of forgetting and the aim for authenticity.
It is because of a sometimes too contracted conception of memory as just a temporal phenomenon, that the concept of cultural memory has often been exposed to misunderstanding. Nora pioneered connecting memory to physical, tangible locations, nowadays globally known and incorporated as lieux de mémoire. He certifies these in his work as mises en abîme; entities that symbolize a more complex piece of our history. Although he concentrates on a spatial approach to remembrance, Nora already points out in his early historiographical theories that memory goes beyond just tangible and visual aspects, thereby making it flexible and in flux. This rather problematic notion, also characterized by Terdiman as the "omnipresence" of memory, implies that for instance on a sensory level, a smell or a sound can become of cultural value, due to its commemorative effect.[citation needed]
Memory can, for instance be contained in objects. Souvenirs and photographs inhabit an important place in the cultural memory discourse. Several authors stress the fact that the relationship between memory and objects has changed since the nineteenth century. Stewart, for example, claims that our culture has changed from a culture of production to a culture of consumption. Products, according to Terdiman, have lost 'the memory of their own process' now, in times of mass-production and commodification. At the same time, he claims, the connection between memories and objects has been institutionalized and exploited in the form of trade in souvenirs. These specific objects can refer to either a distant time (an antique) or a distant (exotic) place. Stewart explains how our souvenirs authenticate our experiences and how they are a survival sign of events that exist only through the invention of narrative.
Historian Guy Beiner argued that "studies of cultural memory tend to privilege literary and artistic representations of the past. As such, they often fail to engage with the social dynamics of memory. Monuments, artworks, novels, poems, plays and countless other productions of cultural memory do not in themselves remember. Their function as aides-mémoire is subject to popular reception. We need to be reminded that remembrance, like trauma, is formulated in human consciousness and that this is shared through social interaction".[4]
As a contrast to the sometimes generative nature of previously mentioned studies on cultural memory, an alternative 'school' with its origins in gender and postcolonial studies underscored the importance of the individual and particular memories of those unheard in most collective accounts: women, minorities, homosexuals, etc.
Traumatic transmissions are articulated over time not only through social sites or institutions but also through cultural, political, and familial generations, a key social mechanism of continuity and renewal across human groups, cohorts, and communities. The intergenerational transmission of collective trauma is a well-established phenomenon in the scholarly literature on psychological, familial, sociocultural, and biological modes of transmission. Ordinary processes of remembering and transmission can be understood as cultural practices by which people recognize a lineage, a debt to their past, and through which "they express moral continuity with that past."[5] The intergenerational preservation, transformation, and transmutation of traumatic memory such as of genocide tragic historical legacy can be assimilated, redeemed, and transformed.[6]
Recent research and theorizing in cultural memory has emphasized the importance of considering the content of cultural identities in understanding the study of social relations and predicting cultural attitudes. In 2008, the first issue of quarterly journal Memory Studies concerning subjects of and relating to cultural memory was published by SAGE.
Jan Assmann in his book "Das kulturelle Gedächtnis", drew further upon Maurice Halbwachs's theory on collective memory.[7] Other scholars like Andreas Huyssen have identified a general interest in memory and mnemonics since the early 1980s, illustrated by phenomena as diverse as memorials and retro-culture. Some might see cultural memory as becoming more democratic, due to liberalization and the rise of new media. Others see cultural memory as remaining concentrated in the hands of corporations and states.[citation needed]
Cultural Memories is the publishing project of the Centre for the Study of Cultural Memory at the Institute of Languages, Cultures and Societies, University of London. The Centre is international in scope and promotes innovative research with a focus on interdisciplinary approaches to memory.This series supports the Centre by furthering original research in the global field of cultural memory studies. In particular, it seeks to challenge a monumentalizing model of memory in favour of a more fluid and heterogeneous one, where history, culture and memory are seen as complementary and intersecting. The series embraces new methodological approaches, encompassing a wide range of technologies of memory in cognate fields, including comparative studies, cultural studies, history, literature, media and communication, and cognitive science. The aim of Cultural Memories is to encourage and enhance research in the broad field of memory studies while, at the same time, pointing in new directions, providing a unique platform for creative and forward-looking scholarship in the discipline.
This article aims to show the complex interplay between game conventions and dominant discourses of Polish cultural memory in representations of civilian experience in three Polish war-themed games (two video games and one board game) depicting the Warsaw Uprising of 1944. The examples are: the third-person shooter Uprising44: The Silent Shadows (DMD Enterprise, 2012), the family-oriented, cartoonish board game Mali Powstańcy [Little Insurgents] (Miłuński, 2009), and the first-person shooter Enemy Front (CI Games, 2014b), which has several levels set in the Warsaw Uprising.
The phantomic half-existence of civilians contributes to discourses showing the Warsaw Uprising as only a military affair, marginalizing the non-combatant experience, and underlining the heroic agency of the player character in accordance with dominant game conventions and Polish mnemonic hegemony. The other two games analyzed in this article repeat this pattern to some extent, but add other discursive dimensions worth examining in terms of their relations with cultural memory.
Little Insurgents is a family-friendly (recommended from age 8) game intended to maintain the heroic mode of remembering the Warsaw Uprising, a failed military struggle that claimed the lives of over 200 thousand people. As such, it represents a peculiar intersection of game conventions and memory discourses. The game employs richer intermedial dynamics than Uprising44, starting with the very title. It clearly refers to the famous monument of the Little Insurgent (Mały Powstaniec) designed by Jerzy Jarnuszkiewicz and erected in Warsaw in 1983: The figure depicts a small boy in too big a helmet, wielding a machine gun. The monument commemorates the child participants of the uprising. While the figure is sometimes regarded as symbolic, since typically people under age 14 could not be assigned to combat tasks during the Warsaw Uprising (Kowalik, 2015), the underage participants of the uprising are an important motif in Polish cultural memory, often present in school programs (Napiórkowski, 2016, p. 299) and prominent in remembrance practices of contemporary Polish scouting organisations which see the Gray Ranks, underground scouting from the period, as a part of their heritage (Kazek, 2014). 041b061a72