Memory Unbound: Tracing the Dynamics of Memory Studies

302 Pages·2016·2.522 MB·English

by  Lucy Bond (editor), Stef Craps (editor), Pieter Vermeulen (editor)

Memory Unbound

M U
EMORY NBOUND
Tracing the Dynamics of Memory Studies
(cid:2)(cid:3)
Edited by
Lucy Bond, Stef Craps, and Pieter Vermeulen
berghahn
N E W Y O R K • O X F O R D
www.berghahnbooks.com
Published by
Berghahn Books
www.berghahnbooks.com
©2017 Lucy Bond, Stef Craps, and Pieter Vermeulen
All rights reserved. Except for the quotation of short passages
for the purposes of criticism and review, no part of this book
may be reproduced in any form or by any means, electronic or
mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or any information
storage and retrieval system now known or to be invented,
without written permission of the publisher.
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Names: Bond, Lucy, 1983– editor. | Craps, Stef, 1976– editor. | Vermeulen, Pieter,
1980– editor.
Title: Memory unbound : tracing the dynamics of memory studies / edited by
Lucy Bond, Stef Craps, and Pieter Vermeulen.
Description: New York : Berghahn Books, [2017] | Includes bibliographical
references and index.
Identifi ers: LCCN 2016021777 | ISBN 9781785333002 (hardback : alk. paper)
Subjects: LCSH: Collective memory. | Memory—Social aspects.
Classifi cation: LCC HM1033 .M456 2017 | DDC 302/.1—dc23
LC record available at hkps://lccn.loc.gov/2016021777
British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data
A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library
ISBN 978-1-78533-300-2 (hardback)
ISBN 978-1-78533-301-9 (ebook)
Contents
(cid:2)(cid:3)
List of Illustrations vii
Introduction: Memory on the Move 1
Lucy Bond, Stef Craps, and Pieter Vermeulen
PART I. Transcultural Memory
1. Staging Shared Memory: Je Veux voir and L’Empreinte de l’ange 29
Max Silverman
2. Remembering the Indonesian Killings: The Act of Killing
and the Global Memory Imperative 47
Rosanne Kennedy
3. Transnational Memory and the Construction of History
through Mass Media 65
Aleida Assmann
PART II. Transgenerational Memory
4. Small Acts of Repair: The Unclaimed Legacy of the
Romanian Holocaust 83
Marianne Hirsch and Leo Spitzer
5. Fictions of Generational Memory: Caryl Phillips’s
In the Falling Snow and Black British Writing in Times
of Mnemonic Transition 109
Astrid Erll
6. The Uses of Facebook for Examining Collective Memory:
The Emergence of Nasser Facebook Pages in Egypt 131
Joyce van de Bildt
v
vi Contents
PART III. Transmedial Memory
7. Connective Memory: How Facebook Takes Charge of
Your Past 151
José van Dijck
8. Embodiments of Memory: Toward an Existential Approach
to the Culture of Connectivity 173
Amanda Lagerkvist
9. Metaphorical Memories of the Medieval Crusades after 9/11 195
Brian Johnsrud
PART IV. Transdisciplinary Memory
10. The Agency of Memory Objects: Tracing Memories of Soweto
at Regina Mundi Church 221
Frauke Wiegand
11. Cultural Memory Studies in the Epoch of the Anthropocene 242
Richard Crownshaw
12. “Filled with Words”: Modeling the September 11 Digital
Archive and the Utility of Digital Methods in the Study
of Memory 258
Jessica K. Young
Index 277
Illustrations
(cid:2)(cid:3)
1.1. Je Veux voir. Screen capture, DVD (Soda Pictures Ltd, 2010). 31
1.2. Je Veux voir. Screen capture, DVD (Soda Pictures Ltd, 2010). 34
1.3. Je Veux voir. Screen capture, DVD (Soda Pictures Ltd, 2010). 35
4.1. Sonja Jaslowitz with her parents in Cernăuți, c. 1938.
Courtesy Dr. Harry Jarvis. 84
4.2. Romania with Transnistria, 1941–1942. Based on maps
from the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum. 93
4.3. Arnold Daghani, Mikhaelowka, 1942. Collection of the
Yad Vashem Art Museum, Jerusalem, Arnold Daghani Trust. 97
4.4. Arnold Daghani, Bershad ghetto, 1943. Collection of the
Yad Vashem Art Museum, Jerusalem, Arnold Daghani Trust. 98
4.5. In a pencil drawing, Daghani depicts the death of Selma
Meerbaum-Eisinger in Michailowka from typhus in 1943.
Collection of the Yad Vashem Art Museum, Jerusalem,
Arnold Daghani Trust. 98
4.6. Drawings of Vapniarka by Moshe Leibel and Ilie, 1942–1943.
Courtesy of the Kessler Archive. 99
4.7. The Little Vapniarka Artists Book (1943), made in honor of
Dr. Arthur Kessler, an inmate who exposed the toxic Lathyrus
sativus in the soup fed to the prisoners. 100
7.1. Top: Facebook’s original interface in 2004. Bottom:
Facebook’s timeline interface in 2012. 159
vii
viii Illustrations
10.1. Kevin DeGaust, Messages scrawled in the photo gallery of the
church, 16 August 2005, http://sedativegunk.fi les.wordpress.
com/2005/08/soweto-regina-mundi-church-scrawl-in-photo-
gallery.jpg. Courtesy Kevin DeGaust. 228
10.2. Patrick Delahanty, You Are in Our Hearts, Regina Mundi
Church, 17 June 2010, http://www.fl ickr.com/photos/4-5-43-
pat/4756725924. Courtesy Patrick Delahanty. 233
10.3. Keeley Kennahan, Soweto uprising exhibit at Regina Mundi
Church, 11 October 2011, http://www.fl ickr.com/photos/
hippityhoohah/6312996665. Courtesy Swahili-Keeley
Photography. 235
10.4. Jean Liou, Fallen Heroes (Mandela & Sisulu à terre), Regina
Mundi, Soweto, Johannesburg, Gauteng, Afrique du Sud, 21
July 2012, https://www.fl ickr.com/photos/tarkastad/7615833040.
Courtesy Jean Liou. 237
12.1. Graph of Topic 29 (“Patriotism”) over time. 269
12.2. Graph of Topic 5 (“Historicizing”) over time. 271
Introduction
Memory on the Move
Lucy Bond, Stef Craps, and Pieter Vermeulen
(cid:2)(cid:3)
Memory, it is safe to say, is not what it used to be. Previously thought to be
anchored in particular places, to be lodged in particular containers (monu-
ments, texts, geographical locations), and to belong to the (national, famil-
ial, social) communities it helped acquire a sense of historical continuity,
memory has, in the last few years, increasingly been considered a fl uid and
fl exible affair. In a globalized age, memories travel along and across the
migratory paths of world citizens. In a digital age, they are forwarded from
cameras over smartphones to computers and back in unpredictable loops.
In the process, they redefi ne the relations between different generations, as
geographical and medial transfers affect the uptake of memories by people
who can no longer be said to simply inherit them. Meanwhile, the study
of memory spans and complicates the boundaries between academic disci-
plines, generating a multifaceted and evolving fi eld of research.
Memory, then, is presently conceptualized as something that does not
stay put but circulates, migrates, travels; it is more and more perceived as a
process, as work that is continually in progress, rather than as a reifi ed ob-
ject. In recent years, the transcultural or transnational circulation of mem-
ories has moved to the center of attention. Concomitantly, there has been a
marked increase of interest in how memory travels between different media,
specifi cally in the role of digital media in the production, preservation, and
transfer of memories. Moreover, as the Holocaust begins to pass out of liv-
ing memory, the question of how memories of survivors of historical trau-
mas are transmitted to, and inherited by, members of later generations has
become another area of intense inquiry. Finally, memory studies appears to
be moving toward greater interdisciplinarity or, at least, enhanced aware-
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