Cultural Memory and the Construction of IdentityDan Ben-Amos, Liliane Weissberg How do we remember persons, objects, events? Memory seems so personal, but, at the same time, it is shaped by collective experience and public representations. Newspapers, television, and even celebrations and festivities mark for us not only who we are, but also who we were and how we lived. Cultural Memory and the Construction of Identity brings together scholars of folklore, literature, history, and communication to explore the dynamics of cultural memory in a variety of contexts. The authors show how memory is shaped and how it operates in uniting society and creating images that attain the value of truth even if they deviate from fact. They point to the relationship between this memory and our notion of "culture." They also discuss this cultural memory on the level of everyday life. Building on research in the field, their contributions clearly show that cultural memory has become the creative invention of the past in service of both the present and an imagined future. |
Contents
Introduction | 7 |
Memory Confined | 45 |
Discourses of the Past | 99 |
The Contestation over | 176 |
You Must Remember This or Libraries | 202 |
Placing Race at Jeffersons Monticello | 231 |
Critical Memory and the Black Public Sphere | 264 |
Common terms and phrases
References to this book
A Companion to Political Geography John A. Agnew,Katharyne Mitchell,Gerard Toal No preview available - 2003 |
Ireland's Heritages: Critical Perspectives on Memory and Identity Mark McCarthy No preview available - 2005 |