Cultural Memory, Memorials, and Reparative Writing

Cultural Memory, Memorials, and Reparative Writing examines the ways in which memory furnishes important source material in the three distinct areas of critical theory, memoir, and memorial art. The book first shows how affect theorists have increasingly complemented more traditional archival research through the use of "academic memoir."  This theoretical piece is then applied to memoir works by Caribbean writers Dionne Brand and Patrick Chamoiseau, and the final case study in the book interprets as memorial art Kara Walker's ephemeral 80,000 pound sugar sculpture of 2014. Memory as method; memory as archive; memorial as affect: this book looks at the interplay between archival sources on the one hand, and the affective memories, both personal and collective, that flow from, around, and into the constantly shifting record of the past. 

List of contents

Chapter 1: A Brief Introduction.- Chapter 2: In Theory: Memory as an Affective Archive.- Chapter 3: Memoir and Memory-Traces.- Chapter 4: Cultural Memory, Affect, and Countermonuments.- Chapter 5: Coda: On Memory and Memorial.

About the author

Erica L. Johnson is Professor of English at Pace University in New York.  She is the author of books including Caribbean Ghostwriting (2009), and co-editor of Memory as Colonial Capital (2017) and The Female Face of Shame (2013).

Summary

Cultural Memory, Memorials, and Reparative Writing examines the ways in which memory furnishes important source material in the three distinct areas of critical theory, memoir, and memorial art. The book first shows how affect theorists have increasingly complemented more traditional archival research through the use of “academic memoir.”  This theoretical piece is then applied to memoir works by Caribbean writers Dionne Brand and Patrick Chamoiseau, and the final case study in the book interprets as memorial art Kara Walker’s ephemeral 80,000 pound sugar sculpture of 2014. Memory as method; memory as archive; memorial as affect: this book looks at the interplay between archival sources on the one hand, and the affective memories, both personal and collective, that flow from, around, and into the constantly shifting record of the past. 

Product details

• Authors: Erica L Johnson, Erica L. Johnson
• Publisher: Springer, Berlin
• Languages: English
• Product format: Hardback
• Released: 01.01.2019
• EAN: 9783030020972
• ISBN: 978-3-0-3002097-2
• No. of pages: 112
• Dimensions: 147 mm x 13 mm x 217 mm
• Weight: 288 g
• Illustrations: XI, 112 p. 5 illus., 4 illus. in color.
• Series: Palgrave Studies in Affect Theory and Literary Criticism; Palgrave Studies in Affect Theory and Literary Criticism
• Subjects: Humanities, art, music > Linguistics and literary studies > General and comparative literary studies; C, Nordamerika (USA und Kanada), Literatur: Geschichte und Kritik, Geschichtsschreibung, Historiographie, Historiography, Memory Studies, Literature, Cultural and Media Studies, Literature: history & criticism, Literary theory, Literature—Philosophy, America—Literatures, North American Literature, Kara Walker, Equal Justice Initiative, racism in the Americas