Special Issue: The Immanent Past
Edited by Kevin Birth
Mr. Bean cutout decorating a Cooper Mini parked in front
of the remains of a seventeenth-century structure.
Eisenach, Germany 2002. Photo Credit: Jason James
In the study of history and memory, there is tension between two
different perspectives on the presence of the past. One perspective views
representations of the past as produced by present concerns and desires.
From this point of view, representations of the past are contextual,
provisional, and subject to being shaped, if not wholly determined, by the
exercise of power. The other perspective, reminiscent of Freud’s approach
to how past experience is encoded in the unconscious, views representations of the past as prompted by present struggles to come to terms with the specters that return in forms such as memories, ruins, and preserved texts. These two perspectives produce an uneasy relationship between a phenomenological approach to remembering and a constructivist approach to history.
This volume seeks to explore this conceptual tension. It asks how
is the past immanent? In so doing, it emphasizes the social and cultural
processes through which the past exists in the present and the efforts to
engage with this present existence. Each paper in this collection looks at a
different dimension of this problem—narratives of self, memories of colonial
violence, ruins and their restoration, monuments, and the relationship
between history as heritage and tourist attractions as history. As Geoffrey
White affirms in his epilogue, this volume addresses the need to bridge the
perspectives of constructivism, political economy, phenomenology, and
psychology in the examination of the cultural and social significance of the
intersection of memory and history.
TABLE OF CONTENTS
The Immanent Past: Culture and Psyche at the Juncture of
Memory and History by Kevin Birth
Past Times: Temporal Structuring of History and Memory
by Kevin Birth
Malagasy and Western Conceptions of Memory: Implications for
Postcolonial Politics and the Study of Memory by Jennifer Cole
Undoing Trauma: Reconstructing the Church of Our Lady in Dresden
by Jason James
Grave Matters: Emergent Networks and Summation in
Remembering and Reconciliation by Kyoko Murakami and
David Middleton
Memory as Wealth, History as Commerce: a Changing Economic
Landscape in Mexico by Elizabeth Emma Ferry
Epilogue: Memory Moments by Geoffrey White
