Description
Book SynopsisThis engaging volume for the general reader explores how individuals and societies remember, forget and commemorate events of the past. The collection of eight essays takes an interdisciplinary approach to address the relationships between individual experience and collective memory, with leading experts from the arts and sciences. We might expect scientists to be concerned with studying just the mental and physical processes involved in remembering, and humanities scholars to be interested in the products of memory, such as books, statues and music. This collection exposes the falseness of such a dichotomy, illustrating the insights into memory which can be gained by juxtaposing the complementary perspectives of specialists venturing beyond the normal boundaries of their disciplines. The authors come from backgrounds as diverse as psychoanalysis, creative writing, neuroscience, social history and medicine.
Trade Review"A novelist, an anthropologist, a neuropsychologist, and a biologist, among others, have contributed essays in this volume on the meaning of memory. They investigate the physical processes involved in remembering, as well as such products of memory as literature, art, and music." Natural History
Table of ContentsIntroduction Patricia Fara and Karalyn Patterson; 1. Disturbing memories Richard Sennett; 2. 'Turning a blind eye': memories of empire Catherine Hall; 3. Memory and the making of fiction A. S. Byatt; 4. Memory in oral tradition Jack Goody; 5. Memory and psychoanalysis Juliet Mitchell; 6. When memory fails Barbara A. Wilson; 7. How brains make memories Steven P. R. Rose; 8. Memory and neural networks Terrence Sejnowski; Notes on contributors; Acknowledgements; Index.
