The Memory Phenomenon In Contemporary Historical Writing: How The Interest In Memory Has Influenced Our Understanding Of History
by Patrick H. Hutton /
2016 / English / PDF
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In this book, the author provides a comprehensive overview of the
intense and sustained work on the relationship between collective
memory and history, retracing the royal roads pioneering scholars
have traveled in their research and writing on this topic: notably,
the politics of commemoration (purposes and practices of public
remembrance); the changing uses of memory worked by new
technologies of communication (from the threshold of literacy to
the digital age); the immobilizing effects of trauma upon memory
(with particular attention to the remembered legacy of the
Holocaust). He follows with an analysis of the implications of this
scholarship for our thinking about history itself, with attention
to such issues as the mnemonics of historical time, and the
encounter between representation and experience in historical
understanding. His book provides insight into the way interest in
the concept of memory - as opposed to long-standing alternatives,
such as myth, tradition, and heritage - has opened new vistas for
scholarship not only in cultural history but also in shared
ventures in memory studies in related fields in the humanities and
social sciences.
In this book, the author provides a comprehensive overview of the
intense and sustained work on the relationship between collective
memory and history, retracing the royal roads pioneering scholars
have traveled in their research and writing on this topic: notably,
the politics of commemoration (purposes and practices of public
remembrance); the changing uses of memory worked by new
technologies of communication (from the threshold of literacy to
the digital age); the immobilizing effects of trauma upon memory
(with particular attention to the remembered legacy of the
Holocaust). He follows with an analysis of the implications of this
scholarship for our thinking about history itself, with attention
to such issues as the mnemonics of historical time, and the
encounter between representation and experience in historical
understanding. His book provides insight into the way interest in
the concept of memory - as opposed to long-standing alternatives,
such as myth, tradition, and heritage - has opened new vistas for
scholarship not only in cultural history but also in shared
ventures in memory studies in related fields in the humanities and
social sciences.