Description
Book SynopsisThis book provides an introduction to the concept of cultural memory, focusing on the 'arts' of its construction, particularly various media such as writing, images, bodily practices, places and monuments. The analysis also addresses the interaction of cultural memory with individual memory and the ways in which cultural memory supports or subverts social and political identity constructions.
Trade Review'Aleida Assmann brings startling originality, brilliant explanation, and conceptual rigor to the difficult and sprawling terrain of memory. This is a classic, pathbreaking work to which readers will remain long indebted.' Peter Fritzsche, University of Illinois
'This is a pathbreaking study of a category that now is commonplace in both undergraduate and graduate studies in the humanities and social sciences. Until now, there has been nothing like it available in English. It is essential reading to understand why memory has displaced class, race, and gender as the signature category of our generation.' Jay Winter, Yale University
'An unsurpassed starting point for the understanding of the human as, in Nietzsche's words, an animal who remembers.' The Times Literary Supplement
Table of ContentsIntroduction; Part I. Functions: 1. Memory as ars and vis; 2. THE sECULARIZATION oF mEMORY - MEMORIA, FAMA, HISTORIA; 3. The battle of memories in Shakespeare's histories; 4. Wordsworth and the wound of time; 5. Memory boxes; 6. Function and storage: two modes of memory; Part II. Media: 7. Metaphors, models, and media of memory; 8. Writing; 9. Image; 10. Body; 11. Places; Part III. Storage: 12. Archives; 13. Permanence, decay, residue - problems of conversation and the ecology of culture; 14. Memory simulations in the wasteland of forgetfulness - installations by modern artists; 15. Memory as 'leidschatz'; 16. Beyond the archive; 17. Conclusion: the arts of memory.
