Ghosts of Memory: Essays on Remembrance and Relatedness

by Janet Carsten (Editor)

Ghosts of Memory provides an overview of literature on relatedness and memory and then moves beyond traditional approaches to the subject, exploring the subtle and complex intersections between everyday forms of relatedness in the present and memories of the past.

Genres: Anthropology

272 pages, Paperback

First published July 23, 2007

Reviews

[Donna · Rating 4 out of 5]

Great reading throughout, and an immensely interesting intertwining of the concepts of memory and kinship. Michael Lambek, in his essay called “The Cares of Alice Alder” says that kinship and memory are so tightly connected that you cannot invoke one without reference to the other. He argues that you cannot talk about the relationship between kinship and memory, because they are not discrete entities. Fascinating! I think he could be right. What do you think? And then there’s this passage from Frances Pine’s chapter entitled “Memories of Movement and the Stillness of Place: Kinship Memory in the Polish Highlands”:

“The house (as a grouping of people reproduced over time, as well as, and more important than, a physical building) is…the core metaphor of kinship and belonging….Memory rather attaches to the intangible, to songs and poems, dances and rituals, or to the most tangible and permanent, to the land itself….Symbolic language and ritual, land and landscape, and kinship are woven into a complicated web which locates people in relation to each other, over space and time. More than anything else, I would argue, it is land — the named fields, pastures, and forests of the village and the slopes and peaks of the mountains beyond — which holds memory in this region. And it is through these memories of place, as well as through complex systems of work and exchange, and rituals of the house that are rooted in place, that people make and remake kinship….The land is seen and experienced as a constant presence.” [p. 107:]

This is the first of a number of books and articles I’ll be perusing over the next two to three weeks, as preparation for writing a PhD proposal that will accompany my next round of university and funding applications. Again I spend my summer writing proposals that won’t bear fruit for many months to come. I’m beginning to get the idea that this is a never-ending process. It’s only just been two months since I finished writing exams to complete my BSc…(four A’s and a B+ …. YEEEE-HAAAW!!)…and now I’m thrown full-force into planning for the research that will carry me through 2009-2013. Holy cow. Seeing that in print is a little – well – TERRIFYING! Eeek!