Memory

by Anne Whitehead

The concept of ‘memory’ has given rise to some of the most exciting new directions in contemporary theory. In this much-needed guide to a burgeoning field of a study, Anne

presents a history of the concept of ‘memory’ and its uses, encompassing both memory as activity and the nature of memoryexamines debates around the term in their historical and cultural contextsintroduces the reader to key thinkers in the field, from ancient Greece to the present daytraces the links between theorisations and literary representations of memory.

Offering a clear and succinct guide to one of the most important terms in contemporary theory, this volume is essential reading for anyone entering the field of Memory Studies, or seeking to understand current developments in Cultural and Literary Studies.

Genres: Philosophy, Nonfiction, Theory, Grad School, Criticism

194 pages, Kindle Edition

First published September 1, 2008

About the author

Anne Whitehead, author and screenwriter, was born in Sydney but spent much of her childhood in England and Papua-New Guinea. Because of a peripatetic engineer father, she was educated at eleven schools, including in Lincolnshire and Yorkshire villages, the PNG highland goldfields and coastal town of Lae, and boarding schools in Sydney and Queensland.

She is the author of Bluestocking in Patagonia and her book Paradise Mislaid was winner of the NSW Premier's Award for Australian History. She lives in Sydney.

Reviews

[Sumallya Mukhopadhyay · Rating 5 out of 5]

Memory, Anne Whitehead
Critics have often opined that the growing interest in the field of Memory Studies is a recent phenomenon, especially with the rise of Holocaust literature after the Second World War. Whitehead interrogates the validity of such generalised observation by tracing the history of the term memory in Western thought. By situating memory with a larger historical context, Whitehead examines the ways in which our understanding of memory has changed over time, and underscores the point that alongside memory, the term forgetting has a parallel history too.
The book has been carefully divided into four different but interrelated chapters. In chapter one, “Memory and Inscription,” she begins with an analysis of Plato’s conception of memory in the context of both the oral and written traditions. The texts discusses are Plato’s Theaetetus and Phaedrus as well as Jacques Derrida’s response to the latter text. While drawing a dialectic enquiry between Plato’s idea of recollection/memory with the germination of Ideas, Whitehead explores the role of memory through to the Renaissance, touching upon Aristotle, the rhetorical tradition of ancient Rome and the relationship between “memory and the book”. In chapter two, “Memory and the Self,” Whitehead examines the Enlightenment and the Romantic period and assesses how changing notions of the Self affected how the “the past” was “(re)figured in memory” during these periods in time (51). Here, she explores the work of John Locke and David Hume and provides a close reading of sections of both Jean-Jacques Rousseau’s Confessions (1782) and William Wordsworth’s “Tintern Abbey” (1798) (51, 59, 64, 75). In the third chapter, “Involuntary Memories,” Whitehead moves into the nineteenth century, exploring the development of history as a discipline and what Richard Terdiman labels as the “memory crisis” that occurred in the wake of the French Revolution (7, 85). In this chapter, she focuses on the work of Sigmund Freud, examining the role of memory in the development of psychoanalysis, as well as on Henry Bergson’s Matter and Memory (1896) and Marcel Proust’s In Search of Lost Time (c1913-1927) (88, 102, 104). In each of these books, Whitehead aims to show how the burden of memory “threatens to overwhelm the present,” an idea that underscores her discussion of memory in the twentieth-century in Chapter Four (8). With an emphasis on the work of Maurice Halbwachs, Pierre Nora, Jay Winter and James Young in the final chapter, entitled “Collective Memory,” Whitehead examines how traumatic events, particularly the Holocaust, have affected our contemporary understanding of memory and memorialization in the twentieth and twenty-first centuries.

[Spillminttea · Rating 4 out of 5]

Sebuah refleksi atas bacaan materi Memory ini adalah akhirnya mengetahui cara-cara sebuah memori mulai dari zaman Plato, ikatan antara ingatan dan literatur, hingga perkembangannya menghasilkan kemunculan pengalaman traumatis yang dikaitkan oleh memori kolektif di abad 20. Dalam chapter 1, kita akhirnya mengetahui tentang klasifikasi ingatan terbagi 2 yaitu ingatan oral dan ingatan tertulis. Namun, Derrida dan Plato ternyata bertentangan terkait proses kerja memori yang dimana mengatakan bahwa sebagai manusia kita butuh penanda agar dapat memunculkan ingatan yang terpendam di masa lampau terutama untuk bertahan hidup, salah satunya kegiatan membaca dan menulis. Selanjutnya, pada chapter 2, mengenal identitas seseorang/diri sendiri dapat langsung diketahui melalui tulisan-tulisan, yang secara indirectly memisahkan seseorang dengan dirinya. Di sini sangat ditekankan tentang refleksi-refleksi akan dirinya. Dan ketika ia membaca ulang akan hadir kembali ingatan itu atas susunan waktu yang mereka buat dan didistribusi ke khalayak generasi selanjutnya sebagai perkembangan pengetahuan yang dikemukan oleh Wordsworth. Pada chapter 3, bahwa trauma itu bisa dinarasikan atau direpresentasikan, yang dikuatkan dengan kemunculan ilmu hipnosis dan psikoanalisis (hasil perpaduan Sokrates dan Plato). Pada chapter 4, trauma yang didelegasikan menjadi memori institusi (nation memory), bahwa trauma itu memang tidak bisa diperbaiki, dan medium ‘mimpi’ sebagai area yang tidak bisa diganggu gugat oleh dorongan eskternal diri kita.
Pertanyaan saya atas keempat chapter tersebut adalah, pertama, apakah sebetulnya Plato adalah cara yang paling benar untuk mengubur sesuatu yang buruk seandainya Derrida tidak mengevaluasi pernyataannya tentang penanda dan petanda untuk mengembalikan sebuah ingatan terutama kemunculan medium tulis-menulis? Pertanyaan kedua, tulisan-tulisan yang hadir sebagai komunikasi untuk masa datang atas hasil refleksi diri meskipun generasi selanjutnya tidak mengalami, adalah sebuah keselamatan tragedi-tragedi yang terjadi atas nama kolektivitas? Nyatanya, justru semakin kompleks insiden baik-buruk terjadi, dari sekian banyak refleksi yang selalu serupa tapi tidak sama pada setiap individu. Pertanyaan terakhir, apakah praktik melupakan seperti kesimpulan di akhir buku, merupakan cara terbaik agar terhindar dari trauma atau memunculkan trauma tanpa didiagnosis amnesia?

[Eliza]

read a portion of this in 2014, continuing in 2021.

[Stephanie · Rating 4 out of 5]

Good overview of the history of the idea of memory.

[Katrinka · Rating 4 out of 5]

Good introduction to the *philosophy*-- and not the science-- of memory.