Forgetting Futures - On Meaning, Trauma, and Identity

Forgetting Futures reignites the debate about the crisis of memory and the search to understand the relationship between past and present, remembering and forgetting. In the book Petar Ramadanovic presents an elegant critique of the most significant concepts of memory, from Plato to Nietzsche, as he challenges the prevalent, Aristotelain understanding of memory as mere repeated presentation of the past in the present. Ramadanovic skillfully examines the power of traumatic memory in history. Through an analysis of Cathy Caruth and a ground breaking revisionist interpretation of Toni Morrison's Beloved he shows how the memory of the Holocaust and slavery has shaped American identity. This unique study of memory places trauma, identity, and race under the intellectual microscope resulting in a book of great use for literary and cultural studies scholars, and educated readers seeking to learn more about the relationship between history and memory.

List of contents

Part 1 Forgetting Chapter 2 Forgetting:Theaetetus and Phaedrus Chapter 3 From Time to Time: Nietzsche's Active Forgetting and Blanchot's Writing of the Diaster Chapter 4 The Order of Memory: Versions of the Simonides Legend Part 5 Futures Chapter 6 When to "die in freedom" is Written in English: Cathy Caruth's Unclaimed Experience Chapter 7 In the Future: Reading for Trauma in Toni Morrison's Beloved Chapter 8 The Ghost:Beloved Again

About the author

By Petar Ramadanovic

Product details

• Authors: Petar Ramadanovic, Ramadanovic Petar
• Publisher: Ingram Publishers Services
• Languages: English
• Product format: Hardback
• Released: 12.11.2001
• EAN: 9780739102756
• ISBN: 978-0-7391-0275-6
• Dimensions: 168 mm x 247 mm x 17 mm
• Weight: 449 g
• Subjects: Humanities, art, music > Linguistics and literary studies > General and comparative literary studies; USA, memory, Cultural Studies, PSYCHOLOGY / Personality, HISTORY / United States / General, LITERARY CRITICISM / American / General, PSYCHOLOGY / Cognitive Psychology & Cognition, SOCIAL SCIENCE / Anthropology / Cultural & Social, The self, ego, identity, personality, Psychology: the self, ego, identity, personality, United States of America, USA, Literary studies: general, Cognition and cognitive psychology, History of the Americas