Present Pasts: Urban Palimpsests and the Politics of Memory

by Andreas Huyssen

Memory of historical trauma has a unique power to generate works of art. This book analyzes the relation of public memory to history, forgetting, and selective memory in Berlin, Buenos Aires, and New York—three late-twentieth-century cities that have confronted major social or political traumas. Berlin experienced the fall of the Berlin Wall and the city’s reemergence as the German capital; Buenos Aires lived through the dictatorships of the 1970s and 1980s and their legacy of state terror and disappearances; and New York City faces a set of public memory issues concerning the symbolic value of Times Square as threatened public space and the daunting task of commemorating and rebuilding after the attack on the World Trade Center. Focusing on the issue of monumentalization in divergent artistic and media practices, the book demonstrates that the transformation of spatial and temporal experience by memory politics is a major cultural effect of globalization.

Genres: Theory, Philosophy, History, Nonfiction, Sociology, Research, Politics

192 pages, Paperback

First published January 15, 2003

About the author

Andreas Huyssen is the Villard Professor Emeritus of German and Comparative Literature at Columbia University, where he taught beginning in 1986. He is the founding director of the university's Center for Comparative Literature and Society and one of the founding editors of the New German Critique.

Reviews

[Mollie Martin · Rating 3 out of 5]

Interesting to dip into but also not sure I understood what I was reading

[Maria Ferrandez · Rating 3 out of 5]

Some sections are very interesting and thought-provoking, especially the introduction and the first chapter. However, due to its nature as a collection of essays written at different times on different issues concerning memory and memorializing, the feeling that one gets is that the result is somewhat disjointed. Yet, some of the ideas are really interesting, and make it worthwhile to read the book.

[Sumallya Mukhopadhyay · Rating 3 out of 5]

Present Past: Urban Palimpsest and the Politics of Memory Andreas Huyssen
Andreas Huyssen looks into the domain of historical memory to argue that in the era of cultural globalisation monuments, buildings, government palaces, museum and parks represent the material traces of historical memory. The fact that in the 19th and in the first half of 20th century, nation-states looked to construct monuments, artefacts and memorials in order legitimize and give meaning to the state building process—politically, socially and culturally—has been radically transformed in the wake of, what critics call, memory boom. The emergence of memory as a key cultural and political concern gained currency with the rise of Holocaust Studies. Since then, it has been a revisionist political process initiated by governments to acknowledge the injustice done to certain communities, tribes and sects. The resultant outcome had been a proliferation of various monuments, memorials and parks that adorn various cities in the world. Huyssen discusses Berlin against the backdrop of the Second World War to read cities as texts that are being continuously written and rewritten to accommodate its past. Theoretically, it is quite impossible to saturate monuments and museums with memories since these structures embody the images of the past.at the same time, however, monuments and museums lose their significance as they become mere tourist spots that embellish the city, rather they strengthening public consciousness against a wrong done.

[Alicia · Rating 4 out of 5]

Politics of memory chapter was so good

[Emily · Rating 4 out of 5]

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