Mediation of memory: towards transdisciplinary perspectives in current Memory studies: preface to the special issue of Trames.
Vosu, Ester ; Koresaar, Ene ; Kuutma, Kristin 等
DOI: 10.3176/tr.2008.3.01
1. Introduction
Memory has become one of the buzzwords in today's humanities
and social sciences. Concepts like 'collective memory'
(Halbwachs 1950), 'lieux de memoire' (Nora 1989, 1996, 1998),
'cultural memory' (Bal et al. 1999), 'social memory'
(Fentress and Wickham 1992, Misztal 2003), and many others catch our
attention in the titles of recently published books and articles, in
tables of contents and lists of keywords. We are witnessing an
increasing 'memory boom' (Winter 2000) in humanities and
social sciences and a new field of research--memory studies--has emerged
and develops rapidly. Under these circumstances we should, more than
ever, pose ourselves the question--what do we mean by
'memory'? Is memory an object of study, a unit of research, or
is it a theoretical perspective through which we investigate other
phenomena? What are the differences between the concepts of memory and
history or memory and tradition? In which aspects do processes of
individual memory and collective memory correlate, and in which they
diverge? How far can we extend the sub-concepts related to memory like
remembering, forgetting, or trauma? And how can individuals'
remembering be juxtaposed to the construction of social memory? What is
the agency of language or artefacts in producing memory, in reflecting
the experience of temporality? What kind of potential, individual and
collective, cultural or political, does the inversion of temporal order extend in narratives of memory?
The current special issue aims to raise some of these questions
while implementing an interdisciplinary perspective on particular
phenomena that arise from these explorations, in order to consider
different aspects of memory with particular focus on cultural memory.
2. From the memory boom to critical contemplations
Taking into account the abovementioned developments,
'memory' has become an excessively used and 'abused'
concept, in humanities and social sciences, to the extent that
'memory's' meaning and heuristic value become almost
unclear (see Berliner 2005, Klein 2000, Fabian 1999). Misuses of memory
seem to stem from the feeling that it may be easier to avoid providing
an adequate account of memory rather than to risk providing an
insufficient definition. In the field of anthropology Johannes Fabian
warns against the 'dangers of overextension' of the concept of
memory in the 'current boom of memory, whereby memory becomes
indistinguishable from either identity or culture' (Fabian
1999:51). It appears that the concept of memory is undergoing
developments similar to those that the concept of culture recently
underwent (cf. Fox and King 2002). We, as the authors of this
introduction, recognize that whereas it is probably impossible to
provide an exhaustive definition of memory, it is nevertheless
necessary, in the ongoing academic boom of memory research, to continue
the discussion on the possibilities and limitations of memory as an
object and as a method.
One of the first significant critiques of 'the memory
boom' by historian Kerwin Lee Klein (2000:128) pointed out that
memory has become a 'metahistorical category', something like
a Foucauldian field of discourse, referring to both individual and
collective practices of remembering. However, it does not mean that
memory is becoming a more abstract object, quite the opposite--we
witness "the new materialization of memory to the status of a
historical agent, and we enter a new age in which archives remember and
statues forget" (Klein 2002:136). Wulf Kansteiner has argued that
the cumulative research on collective memory has not yet established a
clear conceptual or methodological basis for the cultural study of
collective memory processes. The characteristics of individual memory
are too eagerly attributed to collective memory, ignoring that memory in
group processes does not function the same way as it does in individual
mind, and collective memory as an object of study needs therefore
appropriate methods for its analysis. "Collectives are said to
remember, to forget, and to repress the past, but this is done without
any awareness that such language is at best metaphorical and at worst
misleading about the phenomenon under study" (Kansteiner 2002:
185). A similar argument has been made by cultural psychologist James
Wertsch who contends that collective memory is not a thing in itself but
refers to many different acts of remembering, shaped by overarching social forces and cognitive frameworks such as narrative (cf. Wertsch
2002). We should also look at how narratives and the implemented poetic
devices mediate remembrance, and how these narratives of memory
implement temporal collapse to contest the representation of history.
Thus we move between the conceptualisation of memory and the production
of its objects, from individuals' remembering to the construction
of social memory. The tensions between the abstractions embedded in
individual or collective memory are tacitly traceable in the three part
division of the contributions in the current volume.
Social historian Jay Winter asserted that we need "a more
rigorous and tightly argued set of propositions about what exactly
memory is, and what it has been in the past" (Winter 2000:13). By
the same token, the complex relations between the concepts of memory and
culture, memory and history, memory and tradition, or memory and
heritage should be re-considered. What happens if we replace the concept
of history or tradition with that of memory?
These arguments reflect an essential conceptual predicament related
to the discourse of memory. It implies the inherent link of past
cultural practices, presumably transferrable in time and with inscribed value, to the present investigation or politics of representation--an
intricate relation of 'the past in the present' often argued
by theorists of memory studies. Anthropologist David Berliner points to
the intriguing resemblances between the concepts of tradition and
cultural memory, and accordingly between memory and culture, so
prominent in some approaches (Berliner 2005:202).
The replacement of the previously established terms like history or
tradition with that of memory in various contexts can be considered to
be part of the fashionable trend in academia, which occasionally serves
merely stylistic purposes, but we may claim that it reflects at the same
time certain substantial epistemological shifts in various disciplines.
(1) 'Lived experience' and 'subjectivity' (Misztal
2003:100) in relation to "fantasy, ... invention, the present,
representation and fabrication" (Radstone 2000:6) are the novel
central questions that distinguish current memory studies from the
previous research on memory.
The more recent critique on the uses and abuses of memory has
shifted its focus from methodological and conceptual concerns to the
importance and necessity of memory work, particularly in the context of
ethics (testimony and archive, forgetting and forgiving, ideology--who
decides which events will be remembered and how) (Ricoeur 2004, Margalit
2002, cited in Rossington and Whitehead 2007:11-12).
The memory boom is not a homogeneous process, though. There are
different cultural contexts which have fed it, and different
phenomena/events have inspired scholars to choose memory its object of
study. Radstone notes that "the contemporary explosion of scholarly
research emerged within the context of a more general cultural
fascination with memory" (Radstone 2000:9). Several trends can be
brought out and researchers from different countries stress that it is
not always possible to adequately compare the reasons why the interest
and urge to study the different forms of memory have increased in these
particular countries during the last decade or so, these reasons are
occasionally too complex to compare (Kammen 1995:247-251, Erll
2005:2-3).
By no means is the memory boom itself free from ideology, from
legitimising and favouring certain issues and ignoring others.
Kansteiner draws attention to the interrelation between memory studies
and identity politics, while pointing out that historically the crises
of memory have tended to coincide with crises of identity: "memory
is valorized where identity is problematized" (Kansteiner
2002:184).
Although the concept of the boom refers to a synchronic dimension,
we cannot but concur with the position that memory means different
things at different times (Radstone 2000), therefore our understanding
of this phenomenon also needs to be diachronic and dynamic. Here we find
our rationale in presenting to the reader yet another collection of
studies on memory by pointing to the necessity of a nuanced
investigation into the comparably versatile instigators of those booms
(plural intended). These booms have undertaken manifold courses while
being triggered by different experiences which depend on particular
socio-cultural and historical contexts. These in turn depart from
geographical differences and distinct memory experiences--we are aware
of dissimilarities governing the memory booms in the US or in Europe,
for one, but we may also point out the colonial constraints and
contingencies in Australia, which deviate from the memory boom
experienced in Estonia. Thus the elaboration on the manifold process
renders versatile insights into experience and temporality, apparent
also in the contributions below.
Nevertheless, the memory boom has turned from its former cumulative
phase to a more critical one, and even though it seems to be hard to
find unified concepts, theories and methodologies for talking about
memory in cultural disciplines, critical awareness of the present
predicament can certainly lead us further.
3. Memory studies: inter and transdisciplinary challenges
Memory studies has currently become an umbrella term embracing all
research (both in the humanities and social sciences) that defines its
object as 'memory'. Memory studies like several other new
analogous in-between-disciplines (performance studies, urban studies,
gender studies etc.) have recently emerged after the interdisciplinary
shifts in academia. Memory studies is not limited to any existing
discipline traditionally holding the right to study memory (psychology,
history, philosophy etc.). Instead, memory studies has risen from and
around the 'travels of the concept' (Bal 2002), uniting
multiple disciplines and creating a 'field study' (Young
2000:126) concentrated around one concept--memory. The complexity of the
situation rises from the bi-directional nature of memory--it can be both
an object of and a tool for research.
Numerous interdisciplinary conferences (2) dedicated to the issue
of memory have been organised lately. The current publication presents
contributions that were initiated by the international conference Memory
from Transdisciplinary Perspectives: Agency, Practices, and Mediations
(3) that was held in Tartu, Estonia, in January 2007. (4) This
conference provided a meeting ground for scholars from the humanities
and social sciences, who convened to map the present situation in memory
studies, and to undertake a critical re-examination of the employed
theoretical or methodological premises. The potentials for
transdisciplinary research on the topic of memory were approached in the
final discussions of the conference, and these deliberations have also
inspired to a certain extent the arguments presented in the current
issue. (5)
In February 2008 a similar event was organised by The New School
for Social Research in New York, USA. The conference was titled Is an
Interdisciplinary Field of Memory Studies Possible? The convenors argued
that different scholars doing memory research share during such meetings
the need for new paradigms and analyses that would bridge and support
the diverse disciplines of memory studies (6).
In January 2008 a brand new journal, Memory Studies, was launched
(Sage Publications) with a statement that the field of memory studies is
driven 'by problem or topic, rather than by singular method or
tradition' that facilitates the critical forum for negotiations
between different disciplinary assumptions (Hoskins et al. 2008:5).
Memory studies can still be considered rather a set of
multidisciplinary territories than a newly integrated web of inter or
transdisciplinary collaboration (7) (Roediger and Wertsch 2008:9,
Misztal 2003:7). Memory studies is a developing field involving various
disciplinary traditions and it has been argued that it therefore needs
more systematic theoretical foundation (i.e., the development of novel
concepts), as well as more disciplinarity in view of more elaborated
empirical research in the future (Roediger and Wertsch 2008:19).
Whether this tendency towards greater disciplinary unity in memory
studies, and greater terminological coherency related to memory between
different researchers justifies itself remains to be seen. It is
nevertheless clear that we cannot draw on traditional methodological
frameworks when studying memory from a broader perspective. Yet, on the
other hand, the previous disciplinary knowledge cannot be totally
ignored. The transdisciplinarity of memory studies is not wholeheartedly welcomed by all scholars in the field. Susannah Radstone (2008:32) finds
the move towards transdisciplinarity to be disturbing, because "the
travelling concepts related with memory (e.g. trauma) may become applied
too rapidly to diverse phenomena including texts, practices and
cultures" and consequently these concepts "may appear to
explain more than they actually do". In Radstone's opinion,
memory research would be "most productively practiced within the
disciplines from which media and cultural studies borrow, rather than
within the transdisciplinary space of 'memory studies'"
(Radstone 2008:35).
These discussions by Wertsch and Radstone indicate that the
perception of the course to where memory studies should head can be as
diverse and varied as the field of memory studies itself proposes to be.
On the one hand, it is argued that the solution lies in developing a
disciplinary framework that could be used to develop a conceptual
apparatus, simultaneously differentiated and yet shared, being
unequivocally understandable. On the other hand, the heterogeneous
nature of memory studies and the importance of the contributions of
different disciplinary traditions are acknowledged, as this allows the
representatives of different disciplines to reciprocate in their
shedding of light to the prospects of memory as an object and a method.
For the authors of the present introduction to the following case
studies, the transdisciplinary perspective in memory studies lies not in
pursuing universal concepts or developing a universal methodology, but
in studying concrete phenomena, which may give rise to shared problems
for further research on common grounds. We have articulated the emergent
research problems by trying to avoid disciplinary binders, however, this
does not mean that disciplinary methodologies could not provide an
important contribution to a more comprehensive understanding of a
particular phenomenon in further research. In other words,
transdisciplinary memory studies should seek for research questions
amongst complex elusive problems (either new or old), from the subject
matters that are determined by the overlap of multiple disciplines
(Young 2000:126). For such a transdisciplinary research project, we
argue that scholars should employ careful critical reflexivity towards
the disciplinary frameworks applied (including concepts, definitions of
memory, etc.). Such collaboration may lead to transdisciplinary concepts
and a more complex understanding of the researched phenomenon as a
whole.
In the current issue, the transdisciplinary approach to memory,
suggested to our readers by the editors who have collated these
particular contributions, draws upon the investigation of how memory is
mediated. Although none of the articles include explicitly
transdisciplinary studies, the mediation-perspective allows us, as
editors, to observe connections and points of contact for the different
treatments that follow.
The problem of mediation of memory is ambiguous in research on
memory, however. Memory has a double position here--memory can be dealt
with as a medium (between the past, the present and the future) and it
can be observed as something that is mediated in culture by means of
different mediums (both material and immaterial, both technological and
'traditional'). Memory as a medium has two roles, which have
been pointed out both by Yuri Lotman (2000) and Aleida Assmann (1999).
Approaching memory as an object, they differentiate on the operational
level of memory between the 'informative' and 'storage
memory', and the 'creative' and 'functional
memory', respectively. These distinct types of memory are
characterised by different temporal and spatial relations. If we focus
on memory as something that is mediated in culture by different mediums,
we are talking about what is included in functional memory, i.e. what is
relevant and needs mediation in culture. Here the relationships between
memories and the representational level of memory are involved. On the
one hand, these memories are intricate productions of different
narratives and genres (Chamberlain and Thompson 1998, Radstone 2000:11),
on the other, memories are embedded in specific historical experience,
i.e. they are memories belonging to an individual who, having had the
experiences, at a later date simultaneously remembers and applies the
memory. Kansteiner (2002) has argued that too much attention has been
paid to the mediation of memory via discursive and visual objects, to
the production of the objects of memory, and too little to the
'consumers of memory' as a heterogeneous community. From the
perspective of this issue the mediation of memory involves multiple
agents, individual and collective, human and inhuman, in their
interrelations in the 'memory work'. The questions which the
authors of the following articles strive to answer are: How do different
mediums influence memory and remembering? How is the medium for
remembering, in its turn, influenced by what is being remembered or who
does the remembering? What are the relations between the levels of
representations and operations of memory, or in other words, what are
the connections between the mediation of memories and the dynamics of
remembering? What are the entanglements of memory and temporal inversion
in representing the interaction between past and present?
4. Narratives and memory: time and (articulated) mediations of
contested truth
An eternal question permeating the discussion of memory is its
relation to reality, the degree of mediation in the process of
remembering and the eventual 'products' of memory. This angle
calls for a deeper look at the emergent agency of memory, and to
investigate its mediating capacity as well as the act of mediation in
the context of representation. The functional context of mediation is
particularly relevant in discussing (or conceptualising) the problems of
access to external reality. Therefore, contributions in the first set of
this volume do not so much investigate how memory operates, but rather
conceptualise the moments entangled in mediation from three distinct
disciplinary perspectives: that of folkloristics, cinema in cultural
studies, and history studies. Their approaches are not homogeneous,
taking into account different 'technologies' of memory
involved, but appear nevertheless linked by the related conceptual basis
in their deliberation.
The unifying principle for these studies revolves around the
narrative and temporal texture of memory, perceived as an articulation
or representation of the past. The authors have taken a look at the
discursive figurations of memory as representation, not so much of what
is remembered but rather the conceptual or political contingencies of
recalling. It has been stated by many of those who have provided
substantially to the analysis of memory in cultural context that it
means different things at different times (cf. Radstone 2000). The
current contributors address experience, reality, time, narrative, and
language as inherent notions involved in the act of remembering, but
also in the process of recalling.
The foundational premise for all three articles rests on the
mediation of memory by narratives in intricate involvement with
temporality. Memories are presented to us in narrative structure, while
narrative is the central means whereby humans come to understand
temporality--we learn to organise time through the experience of
narratives, both fiction and historical (Ricoeur 1980). Narrative as a
mediation of memory is embedded in the dialogic moment of telling, which
in turn implies the mediation of language. Language is a medium for
remembrance, which nevertheless cannot be taken for granted as a lucid
medium but opaque and arbitrary in its application of linguistic or
poetic device.
These texts explore time and memory, time and narrative,
anachronism and allegory, memory and fantasy, intentional selection and
political entanglements, the collapse of time in representations. The
subject relations extend from individual mental processes to collective
perceptions. The proposed analyses imply the perspective of both
individual and social memory, but do not particularly articulate the
tensions between the individual and collective perspectives. The
problems raised concern the articulation of 'truth' about the
past, or the moment for reversing the established 'truths' and
re-investigating 'realities' experienced. These inquiries
address another aspect in the mediating agency of memory, by questioning
its transparency and foregrounding memory's complex relation to
'actuality' (cf. Radstone and Hodgkin 2003:7). The basic
understanding of time in these settings contends with the postmodern
claim that time is a historical construct, and there exists no linear,
progressive temporality. All three authors find inspiration in the
explicit collapse of time in their narratives discussed as
representations of memory.
In his article, Seppo Knuuttila elaborates on the issue of
narrative and the expression of the experience of time, by investigating
the conceptual potential of tropes--the figures of speech where the mode
of thought or usage diverges from norm. While focusing on anachrony to
describe the discrepancy between the order of events in a story or in
their presentation, he explores how the articulation of memory and
imagination makes it possible to 'travel' in time, and also
reverse the position of truth. By contending that in folkloristics
memory is always articulated through a text, he discusses anachronism as
a temporal figure of speech, a trope similar in use to metaphor,
metonymy and irony, when posing the question: how the articulations of
imagination and memory work. "Anachronism ... always manipulates
the course and structures of time." Knuuttila examines inversion in
temporality, the manipulation with its logic as a trope: "a
consciously chosen means of expression through which relations between
the past, present and future are organized". Intentional discord between temporal or spatial order in narrative expression reflect the
uniqueness of individual experiences and the relative truth in
remembering past events. Anachronisms as temporal tropes have a
potential in collapsing the past and present, while this reversible
projection in time renders a potential for critical, humorous, or
didactic expression. According to Knuuttila, the most important research
subject in contemporary folklore studies is the relative
conceptualisation of the experienced past, which is 'always
anachronistic' in the simultaneous articulation of memory and
imagination, which "produce or affirm the actual meanings about the
past." Potentially, the focus of interpretation would be on the
textual articulation of time, memory, imagination and context.
Felicity Collins has found her productive figure of speech in
allegory, analysing the representational capacity of narrative via film,
a national cinema's allegorical reworking of colonial documents and
popular frontier iconography into scenes of violence. Her relation of
narrative and memory investigates the complicated representation of
truth in the reflection of past traumatic experience that addresses the
political concerns of today. She focuses on memory and selection in the
context of the emotional burden of remembering (Todorov 2001), the
choices made in the interaction of disappearance or preservation of
memories (cf. Rohdewald in this volume), and the complex representation
of truth about the colonial past in the elements of historical past
retained in public memory. To this she juxtaposes intentional
(fictional) 'surfacing' of repressed (erased) memories. By
looking at the historical memory, allegorical truth and colonial
violence in Australia, she asks how historical fiction can tell the
truth about the past. The point of departure likewise dovetails to the
perception of the time/space compression in postmodern context and in
the implementation of modern technologies which collapse temporal order,
as proposed already in the critical insights by Walter Benjamin. Cinema
and television are the twentieth century's most powerful arbiters
of historical memory. Collins is likewise inspired by Benjamin's
defence of allegorical expression as an antidote to myth in her proposal
to implement 'film allegory as a perceptual mode' in
remembering or repudiating established myths of colonial history. She
argues that "allegorical modes of historical fiction have the
capacity to produce new forms of public memory and subjectivity that
conventional historiography fails to recognise."
Collins asks if the self-reflexive history film could teach
historians a different mode of remembering modernist, traumatic or
holocaustal events, when the postwar shift from 'storytelling'
to 're-telling, re-membering' as the site of
'authentic' engagement between subjectivity and the past
becomes combined with the cinematographic temporal inversion. Media
temporality suffuses historical reality because of its
'misremembering', 'misinterpreting', the continual
collapsing of narratives. She aligns it with a new 'traumatic'
formation of the postmodern, incomplete subject, whose lacunary relation
to history and memory provides the apprehensive and empathetic link with
the fragmented, dialectical structure of allegory. Here the author sees
the potential for understanding historical fiction "as an antidote
to rather than instance of myth-making." Allegorical intention in
fiction (film) provides a revisionist moment in order to supplement an
existing media iconography of colonial times, and would repudiate the
tendency to dismiss historical fictions as myth.
Thus the allegory of violence can be used against national myth as
its re-interpretation, in order to supplement historical
'traces', rather than represent 'holocaustal'
events. "In the recent constellation of films that re-figure the
on-going catastrophe of colonial violence in Australia, historical
allegory is performing the paradoxical feat of aligning history's
victors with the point-of-view of the defeated, producing a new, ethical
form of subjectivity with a bi-cultural sense of nationhood as one among
several horizons of identity." The cinematographic texts or
narratives "work as dis-placements and re-memberings, in media
temporality, of traumatic, unrepresentable, unmourned historical
events."
The third contribution in this set by Stephan Rohdewald concurs
with the discussion of mediated representation of past as a narrative of
national memory. He departs from another potential of temporal collapse
in the presented narrative where the intentional inversion of time and
place is implemented with a political purpose of creating a celebrative,
coherent 'narrative' as a foundational premise for
teleological national memory. The author interprets Pierre Nora's
seminal concept of lieux de memoire with a semantic extension: places of
memory are to be understood metaphorically--they are not confined to
physical places, but include personalities, events, buildings and
memorials, institutions and terms. Rohdewald proposes to discuss the
production and reproduction of social groups with shared remembrance via
the iconographic transformations of "culturally formed, societally
binding figures of memory" when drawing inspiration from both
Halbwachs' and Assmann's conceptions alluding to narrative and
figures of speech. He contends that past 'levitates and
fixates' into 'symbolic figures' while they become in the
framework of national movements important points of crystallisation of
national identities. Rohdewald finds particular significance in the
process that he calls 'sacralisation of nationalism' and
focuses on expressively Christian elements, on national religious
figures of memory in nominally orthodox societies to investigate
religious and cultural history as central aspects of political history.
He extends to a transnational setting in a comparative exploration of
the instrumentalisation and mediation of these figures of memories
through the angle of histoire croisee: concentrating on interdependency,
linkage and interconnectedness. Pointing to the secularisation of the
saints in the 19th century when (re)negotiating (or reinventing)
competitive memories of those 'national' figures, the author
traces the changes concerning the temporal horizon, the
conceptualisations initiated by and formulated around these figures, and
the forms of collective identity. For this functional change of
remembrance of religious figures of memory, or the ideologies they
represent, their role and significance can be recast, especially in the
context of societal crises, and thus negotiating new narratives of
national memory where time and experience collapse in the process of
reinterpreted mediation.
5. Mediation of memory on stage: displays in theatre and museum
Theatre due to its spatial organisation and museum due to its
purpose have both been productive sites of memory, while film and
laboratory present somewhat more recent examples. Together these loci can be defined as stages on which memory is set for display (either by
particular directors of by a collective imagination), for performances
and further reflexion and observation. A stage may be both an imaginary
cultural framework and a particular materialised site that has a
capacity to transform everything in its frame (either real or imaginary)
into signs possessing double meaning (see Eco 1977). From the articles
by Liina Unt, Anneli Saro, and Stuart MacLean we can learn that these
stages for memory (landscapes, theatre and film productions, museum
exhibits and laboratories) as well as objects set for display (actors,
stereotypes, landmarks, exhibits) become signs that stimulate both our
cultural and personal memory, that mediate between collective and
individual pasts.
Theatre and film, although by different means of expression, are
collective forms of art and thereby function as a stage for mediating
and (re)creating cultural/collective memory via adapting popular
narratives, either real or fictional events and characters from the
past. An interesting example of the cinematographic representations of
colonial violence in Australian cinema as allegorical modes of
historical fiction has been presented by Felicity Collins in this
volume, who argues that film allegory has the capacity to produce new
forms of public memory and subjectivity. In Estonia, the construction of
cultural selfhood has always been extensively based fictional
texts--literature, theatre productions, and films later on. The analysis
proposed by Anneli Saro on the stereotypes depicted in the cinema and
theatre productions of the popular Estonian school novel Kevade (Spring,
penned by the national classic Oskar Luts in 1913-1914) provides an
example of the dynamics of cultural memory related to certain artistic
textual space that is capable of both storing information from the past
and at the same time re-creating it (cf. Lotman 2000:18). Today Spring
has become rather a locus for collective cultural memory, an association
of various texts that collocate the original novel, its multiple
re-interpretations both on stage and on screen, as well as its numerous
meta and intertextual commentaries. The rural lifestyle depicted in
Spring prevailed until the 1950s, therefore even today elderly Estonians
may reminisce of their schooldays by referring to Spring. Furthermore,
the protagonists from the novel have become common denominators for
regular school mischief or for boys and girls in one's class--each
class is said to have their Toots (the most mischievous boy in class) or
Teele (the class beauty). Thus, fictional characters and events play as
important role in shaping peoples' 'personal cultural
memory' (van Dijck 2004a) as the real ones. Commonly shared
stereotype images created by the arts (theatre, film) can become as
significant as those based on real events, and therefore the visual
arts, especially theatre and film, appear to be powerful designers of
cultural memory.
In a similar vein, the familiar Estonian landscapes that Liina Unt
discusses in her article, become material 'condensers' (cf
Lotman 2000:18, 111) and a medium of cultural memory that have been
appropriated and absorbed into different pasts and different
socio-cultural periods. Cultural landscapes often carry strong symbolic
meanings for a community and sometimes function as national emblems in
quite similar way as national religious figures (cf. Rohdewald in this
issue) or national stereotypic characters and their embodiments (cf.
Saro in this issue). Yet, engagement with the past of the landscape does
not simply emerge from an encounter with material references, as it
requires certain acts performed by people in this place (Lowenthal
2007:636, Tilley 2006:14). Landscape as a stage for (inter)action (in
contrast to landscape as a scenery, a pictorial image) becomes the
processual place of collective recall and remembrance. For that reason
open air performances that use certain landscapes as a stage for theatre
performances can likewise serve as mediators between the past of the
landscape and the present of the actors and audience alike, providing
the experience of embodied interaction with the landscape-related
memories. Open-air performances have a capacity to both reinforce and
transform our perceptions and memories related to familiar landscapes.
Unt asserts that quite different fictional strategies can be used for
actualising or reinventing the landscape-related memory--sometimes it
entails a symbolic return to the site of either fictional or historical
events, sometimes it denotes the construction of fictional memory about
a particular location. Landscapes have served as heterogeneous
'sites of memory' (Nora 1989) for various periods in the
Estonian past, but statistics of the last five years provided by Liina
Unt show that certain landscapes (mainly the historical
'countryside' and 'wild nature') and sites (manors,
castles and ruins, farmhouses) are preferred over the others (Soviet
landscapes and landmarks are almost neglected as well as landscapes
created during the 1990s). This is in line with the post-Soviet
discourse of remembering, which sought its roots both in the flourishing
pre-World War II farms (cf Koresaar 2002, Palang et al 2004) and in the
'pristine' Estonian nature, and likewise in an attempt to
restore its membership in the European cultural space through the
veneration of Balto-Germanic manor culture. In consequence, current
open-air productions provide excellent material for studying the
relationship of Estonians to their landscape heritage, in order to
analyse what persists and what changes in how people perceive or
estimate these landscapes.
Unt's discussion of a recent open-air production Vargamae
kuningriik (Kingdom of Vargamae, 2006) indicates the complexity of a
particular landscape Vargamae - that is loaded with cultural memories,
where fictional and real pasts have become inextricable. Vargamae
kuningriik was performed in the farmlands (including both fields and
forests) of a seminal Estonian national classic Anton Hansen Tammsaare,
whose five-volume novel Tode ja oigus (Truth and Justice, written in
1926-33), has been an identity creating text for several generations of
Estonians. Although the reception canon of the novel has been
concentrated first and foremost on its main characters, the images of
Vargamae (prototypic setting of events in the novel) and its landscapes
symbolise the successful cultivation of the hard Estonian soil. Vargamae
kuningriik provided a significant example of the strong integration of
the fictional meanings related to Tammsaare's novel with the actual
past of the novelist's home-farm, which has in turn become a stage
for semi-fictional memory as a museum. Together these associations in
cultural memory create a common receptional basis for the Estonian
audience. For a director of a play, as well as for those arriving as
audience, the concurrent encounters with Vargamae can be considered as
acts of 'commemoration ceremonies' (Connerton 1989) where
cultural memory, created by fictional characters and events together
with symbolic landscapes, is constantly performed by various generations
of actors and spectators. (8) Thereby the processual quality of both
landscape and cultural memory becomes evident.
A different aspect of landscape dynamics is actualised in the study
by Stuart McLean, who asserts that landscapes change in accordance with
the change in our knowledge of them. His example is the peat bog
landscape close to the village of Grauballe in Jutland, Denmark, that
has been transformed from the 'wild nature' to a sacral landscape where ritual executions and immolations are believed to be
performed. In McLean's case it was the bog body of the Grauballe
Man, 'archived' by the bog for centuries and (re)discovered by
scientists in the past century, which has actualised different aspects
of cultural memory related with the bog.
Thus, in order to be mediated, memory should be materialised either
in material objects or in particular embodiments or images. Every nation
has in its culture certain typical or stereotypical fictional figures
coming from the arts or other cultural spheres like religion or
folklore, that have achieved great symbolic significance for various
generations. In collective memory both orthodox martyrs (see Rohdewald
in this issue) and embodiments of stereotype fictional characters in
theatre and film (see Saro in this issue) function as a medium of
cultural continuity which transmits cultural memory between generations.
From a different perspective, the remains of a body--the Grauballe
Man--'recall' different information related to the Iron Age
(see McLean in this issue). Anneli Saro's example of Spring
demonstrates how one fictional text (including its adaptations) mediates
particular stereotype images related to cultural memory and thereby to 8
In the summer of 2008, stage productions based on four of the books in
Tammsaare's series will be performed there, to celebrate the 90th
anniversary of the Estonian republic. collective identity. Theatre and
film as audiovisual media present particular embodiments of certain
characters that sometimes become stereotype images in collective memory.
The strong visual canon and 'common cultural consensus' (Tudor
1973:131) of how the main characters of Spring should be depicted was
created by the movie Spring (1969). Successful casting together with
regular reruns on Estonian television has created a 'nostalgia
film' that supports 'selective re-remembering' of a
particular historical period (Jameson 1991:279-296--ref. in Grainge
2003:190-191). Although Spring has not been adapted for the screen after
the successful 1969 production, it has been staged several times in
Estonian theatres were actors' bodies have both recycled and
re(created) stereotypes in cultural/collective memory associated with
certain characters and their previous enactments. Saro shows how
stereotypes in theatre may achieve the status of an agent linking
individual corporeal and collective memory. Although it is not easy for
an actor to brake a widely-accepted/legitimate stereotype and establish
a new one, on the other hand, the embodiments and interpretations by
certain popular and beloved actors become 'haunting' (Carlson
2003) in the audience's memory for years until the new generation
of theatregoers will discover their own favourites amongst younger
actors. Theatre is a live medium that provides the audience with unique
opportunities to encounter fictional worlds that consist both of real
bodies and imagined characters and events, where stereotypes from the
past are constantly recalled, recycled and reformed. In conclusion,
observing stereotypes in theatre and film, one can see both the dynamics
and continuity of stereotypic characters for a nation and their varied
embodiments.
Museums that were once meant to structure the 'storage
memory' (Assmann 1999), and to archive cultures in their integrity,
have currently become a 'collective memory medium' (Erll
2004). Thereby modern museums, in collaboration with laboratories, have
turned from previously closed 'archives' to more public open
spaces where memory is explored, produced and performed with the help of
new media technologies. Stuart McLean's case study of the Grauballe
Man demonstrates how the remains of a body, with the help of new
technologies and chemicals, gain new 'memories' time after
time. If the earlier laboratory tests could indicate the exact burial
time, then now they can provide us with information on his last meal
("porridge gruel made from corn, along with the seeds of more than
60 herbs and grasses and traces of the poisonous fungus ergot").
Furthermore, the fragile remains have been transformed for examination
purposes into a virtual body with the help of CT scanning and 3-D
computer generated reconstructions that make it possible to investigate
various body parts of the Grauballe Man, including his skin, muscles and
tendons. These discoveries are displayed in a museum to encourage an
interactive relation with the exhibit by the museum visitors, and to
stimulate their sensory imagination and shared corporeality with the
displayed body. The Grauballe Man becomes a sign of the Iron Age, not
just a simple body, but the body that has both mediated us something
from the ancient past while being simultaneously a product of the
present.
6. Material objects and technologies: non-human agencies in memory
mediation
An act of memory is in fact a series of activities--inscribing or
recording, interpreting, narrating, recalling etc--that may involve a
number of memory products. One of the most interesting sites of memory
production has been and continues to be the sphere of material culture.
Several articles in this issue deal with the material memory in
connection with particular practices, identities and agency in everyday
life. Objects are seen as agents in the construction of memory rather
than external instruments that mould our past: objects are mediated
memories, material inscriptions of (historical) experiences that are
always filtered through discursive conventions, social and cultural
practices, and technological tools (van Dijck 2004a:261-262, cf also
Erll 2005:102f). Marketta Luutonen, Berk Vaher and Anna Reading
demonstrate this dynamic aspect of cultural memory in interaction with
the creation of individual identities in the everyday cultural practices
of handicraft, vinyl records collecting, and camera-phone photos. To
these humanly devised objects and technologies MacLean adds--with his
example of the bog body--non-humans by traversing the customary
distinction between the natural and the social realms and showing that,
under the 'right circumstances', they can assume an agentive
role.
At the very core of these contributions there is material memory as
an act of mediation. The articles analyse how material inscriptions
mediate between individuality and collectivity, between the past and the
present. The authors' theoretical relation to objects can, in most
cases, be characterised by the concept of personal cultural memory
introduced by Jose van Dijck (2004a:262f)--a concept that places
material objects and activities related to them in the intersection of
individual and culture by emphasising the individual's creative
relationship to technological tools, socio-cultural practices and
cultural/collective memory in the formation of identity. McLean
maintains that the nature of memory is inevitably relational: his
treatment of the Grauballe Man suggests that we need to understand
memory not only as a faculty exercised by human subjects but as a
continuously unfolding heterogeneous process that involves 'human
beings, technologies, philosophies of history, architecture, chemical
reactions, animals, plants, microorganisms, landscape, geology,
climate" etc. He claims that in theorizing collective memory we
should pay more attention to its collective aspect by considering both
the role of non-human agencies in the shaping of (human) histories, as
well as to the relationship between preservation and transformation in
the constitution of collective memory.
Some theorists state that memory materialises primarily through the
technologies, which are used for producing mediated objects (cf. van
Dijck 2004b: 358f). In Luutonen's approach, a traditional woollen knitted garment involves memories of the process of its making, the
history of tradition, with certain ideas but also connotative emotional
and physical reactions to the material nature of the garment. Vaher in
his turn refers to the (sonic) past of the exotic distance arising from
the materiality of vinyl records. Reading's analysis on the use of
mobile phones addresses the transformation of memory in the digital age
by conceptualising the usage of a 'wearable' mobile phone as a
(private) bodily practice (even an extension of the body) that is
simultaneously part of a (public) space of multimedia network. The
'new materiality' of mobile technology is connected to the
transformation of individual and cultural mnemonic practices. Thus, in
addition to their material aspect, the technologies can also be
appropriated as social and cultural tools for inscribing memory and
identity. On the other hand, according to McLean, the technologies (in
his case the research laboratory and the museum display) are not the
only agents of memory at work here: for instance, also chemical
processes unfolding invisibly below the surface of an object preserve
and transform it and consequently play a role in the construction of
memory.
The cases studied by these authors express another aspect of the
politics of identity in their relation to material memories, if compared
to the previously discussed contributions by Collins, Rohdewald or Saro
in this issue. For example, Vaher shows that in a cultural practice like
vinyl hunting, the initial 'motive is allimportant' (Pearce
1994:158-159): record collecting is essentially a culture of dissent,
"a way of reasserting one's agency in the consumerist society
through expanded consciousness of the complexities of the forgotten
cultural past". Vaher combines two important aspects in the
practice of collecting vinyl records: the music that has a mnemonic
function in itself and vinyl records as collectibles that enable a
special access to the past connected to the technological awareness (cf.
van Dijck 2006:364).
In Reading's study, however, the predominant question is how
the gendered usage of mobile technology in everyday life transcends the
established boundaries between public and private memories. She shows
among other things that, in terms of memory, the camera-phone is being
used to traverse the gendered contradictions of space and time in the
post-industrial society, where children are often cared for by women
other than the mother. Mobile images are used as a form of public
testimony in relation to the more private world of parenting and
childcare.
In Luutonen's treatment the identity-politics aspect is more
veiled, but traceable in the choices and motives of the consumers and
producers of handicraft items. Her approach rests on the background
conception that craft contains inherently contesting aesthetics, the
images of which emerged in the 19th century as a reaction to the
products of the industrial revolution and an attempt "to restore a
dignity and respectability of labour, to oppose the separation of art
and politics, morality and religion" by becoming 'art in
society' (Shanks 1994:107-108). We may add here the criticism of
the modern consumer society, the 'green' world view and other
ideologies pointing to the predicament of the modern world. In
Luutonen's interpretation, the handmade sweaters in the wardrobe of
modern Finnish people carry a message of traditional closeness to nature
combined with the contemporary ecological world view,
'old-fashioned' masculinity and, in a certain way, of timeless
Finnishness (cf. Saro about the stereotypes of Estonianness in cultural
memory), which is represented by handicraft belonging to the socalled
folk art.
Individual choices made on the basis of cultural knowledge that
extends much further than the individual's experience support
Luutonen's interpretation of how craft conveys memories. We can
take a step further by referring to how the material memory relies on
and also acts as a generic resource of cultural remembrance. This
relates to the concept of genre memory, which is based on the
understanding of the path-dependency of memory, meaning that images of
the past not only reflect on what is remembered and in which
circumstances, but are 'pathdependent products' (Olick 1999)
of earlier memory work. In the interpretation provided by Berk Vaher,
exotic vinyl hunting can be seen as an extension of earlier exotic
practices, namely of 'ethnographic surrealism'. In
Luutonen's analysis the meaning attached to a hand-knitted
pullover--be it an 'anonymous' ethnographic item or one
created by a designer--is embedded in the perception of the place these
objects have in (popular) tradition and in the (ethnic) realm of memory.
The similar seems to emerge from McLean's analysis of how
contemporary mythical and supernatural associations around a bog body
from the Iron Age celebrate the recent achievements of archaeologists in
deciphering its secrets.
The complexity of materiality, technologies, socio-cultural
practices, as well as personal and collective identities in the problem
of memory can be summed up by using the concept of the realm of
memory--a place where '[cultural] memory crystallises and secretes
itself' (Nora 1989:7). In this issue, more than one article aligns
with Nora's concept of the realm of memory, in a rather monumental
sense, without directly conceptualising it: historical experience
(Collins), historical figures (Rohdewald), national tradition--either in
the form of ethnic stereotypes, 'nationalised' landscape or
revived folk art (Saro, Unt and Luutonen). Nora's approach has
aroused abundant criticism both because of his dichotomy between memory
and history, cultural pessimism and his longing for the lost
'real' collective memory (politics and cultural despair), but
also for his Frenchcenteredness. Yet it has been highly appreciated as a
novel perspective for writing cultural history as the history of memory,
which makes his work indispensable (cf. among others Tai 2001, Leith
1999, Winter 1997). Anna Reading suggests in her analysis of the
implementation of camera-phones that we need to re-conceptualise
personal and cultural memory by taking into account the mobile digital
technologies of the 21st century. To counterbalance the argument
resulting from Nora's train of thought that social milieus of
memory will fade away and the only site of memory will be the body, she
claims that the mobile phone's potential to link the body with a
digital network refers to the generation of a new 'technosocial
milieu'. However, Reading refers to the culture-specificity and
ambivalence of memory mediation practices in the digital era, shows that
the inability of an individual to adapt to technology (or the relative
expensiveness of technology) may at the same time interfere with the
development of such milieu.
This in turn takes us back to practices and technologies and their
role in the history of memory: on the one hand the development of
digital media does not affect the fact that in the digital era memory is
embodied in and mediated by artefacts just like before. On the other, we
may concur with van Dijck that "the very notion of embodiment and
materiality need upgrading in order to account for memory's
morphing nature as well as its hybrid conceptualisation" (van Dijck
2004b:351).
Acknowledgements
The preparation of this issue was carried out within the auspices
of the statetargeted project 'Complexity of Cultural Communication
and Methodological Challenge of Cultural Research' (University of
Tartu) and Estonian Science Foundation, Grant No. 6687, as a
co-operation within the Research Centre of Culture and Communication at
the University of Tartu. The editors thankfully acknowledge the generous
assistance of Tiina Kirss during the preparation of this issue and
exhaustive language editing by Marcus Denton. We are grateful to the
keynote speakers and all the participants of the conference Memory from
Transdisciplinary Perspectives: Agency, Practices, and Mediations (held
at the University of Tartu in January 2007) for their lively cooperation
and contribution. The conference was generously supported by the
University of Tartu, the Estonian Academy of Sciences, the British
Council in Estonia, the Estonian Science Foundation, the City Government
of Tartu, and the Estonian Cultural Endowment.
References
Assmann, Aleida (1999) Erinnerungsraume. Formen und Wandlungen des
kulturellen Gedachtnisses. Munchen: Beck.
Bal, Mieke (2002) Travelling concepts. Toronto: University of
Toronto Press.
Bal, Mieke, Jonathan V. Crewe, and Leo Spitzer, eds. (1999) Acts of
memory: cultural recall in the present. Hanover, N.H., London:
University Press of New England [for] Dartmouth College.
Bennett, Tony, Crossberg, Lawrence, and Meaghan Morris, eds. (2005)
New keywords: a revised vocabulary of culture and society. Malden,
Mass., et al.: Blackwell Publishing.
Carlson, Marvin (2003) The haunted stage: the theatre as memory
machine. Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press.
Chamberlain, Mary and Paul Thompson, eds. (1998) Narrative and
genre. London and New York: Routledge.
Berliner, David (2005) "The abuses of memory: reflections on
the memory boom in anthropology". Anthropological Quarterly 78, 1,
197-211.
Connerton, Paul (1989) How societies remember. Cambridge: Cambridge
University Press.
van Dijck, Jose (2004a) "Mediated memories: personal cultural
memory as object of cultural analysis". Continuum 18, 2, 261-277.
van Dijck, Jose (2004b) "Memory matters in the digital
age". Configurations 12, 349-373.
van Dijck, Jose (2006) "Record and hold: popular music between
personal and collective memory". Critical Studies in Media
Communication 23, 5, 357-374.
Eco, Umberto (1977) "Semiotics of theatrical
performance". TDR: The Drama Review 21, 1, 107117.
Erll, Asrtid (2004) "Medium des kollektiven Gedachtnisses--ein
(erinnerungs-) kulturwissenschaftlicher Kompaktbegriff". In Media
and Cultural memody. Medien und kulturelle Erinnerung 1. Medien der
kollektiven Gedachtnisses.
Konstruktivitat--Historzitat--Kulturspezifitat, 3-22. Asrtid Erll and
Ansgar Nunning, eds. Berlin and New York: Walter de Gruyter.
Erll, Astrid (2005) Kollektives Gedachtnis und Erinnerungskulturen.
Stuttgart, Weimar: J. B. Metzler.
Fabian, Johannes (1999) "Remembering the other: knowledge and
recognition in the exploration of central Africa". Critical Enquiry
26, 49-69.
Fentress, James and Chris Wickham (1992) Social memory. Oxford:
Blackwell.
Fox, Richard G. and Barbara J. King, eds. (2002) Anthropology
beyond culture. Oxford: Berg.
Grainge, Paul (2003) Memory and popular film: inside popular film.
Manchester, New York: Manchester University Press.
Halbwachs, Maurice ([1926] 1950) The collective memory. Trans. F.
J. and V. Y. Ditter. London: Harper Colophon Books.
Hoskins, Andrew, Amanda Barnier, Wulf Kansteiner, and John Sutton (2008) "Editorial". Memory Studies 1, 1, 5-7.
Jameson, Fredric (1991) Postmodernism, or, the cultural logic of
late capitalism. Durham, NC: Duke University Press.
Kammen, Michael (1995) Review of "Frames of remembrance. The
dynamics of collective memory by Iwona Irwin-Zarecka". History and
Theory 34, 3, 245-262.
Kansteiner, Wulf (2002) "Finding meaning in memory: a
methodological critique of collective memory studies". History and
Theory 41, 179-197.
Klein, Kerwin Lee (2000) "On the emergence of memory in
historical discourse". Representations 69, 127-150.
Koresaar, Ene (2002) "The farm as the symbol of the state:
metaphorical depiction of the nation and the state in the childhood
memories of older Estonians". In Lives, histories and identities:
studies on oral histories, life- and family stories, 169-187. Tiiu
Jaago, ed. Tartu: Tartu University Press.
Leith, James A. (1999) "Review of Pierre Nora, Realms of
memory: the construction of the French past." H-France, H-Net
Reviews, April. URL: http://www.h-net.org/reviews/showrev.
cgi?path=24348924277817 [Accessed online in 12.04.2007].
Lotman, Yuri (2000) Universe of the mind: a semiotic theory of
culture. Transl. by Ann Shukman. Bloomington, Indianapolis: Indiana
University Press.
Lowenthal, David (2007) "Living with and looking at
landscape". Landscape Research 32, 5, 635656.
Misztal, Barbara A. (2003) Theories of social remembering. Mainhead
and Philadelphia: Open University Press.
Margalit, Avishai (2002) The ethics of memory. Cambridge, MA, and
London: Harvard University Press.
Nora, Pierre (1989) "Between memory and history: Les Lieux de
Memoire [1984]". Representations 26, 7-25.
Nora, Pierre (1996, 1998) Realms of memory: rethinking the French
past. 3 Vols. English ed. L. Kritzman, transl. Arthur Goldhammer, New
York: Columbia University Press.
Olick, Jeffrey K. (1999) "Genre memories and memory genres: a
dialogical analysis of May 8, 1945 commemoration in the Federal Republic
of Germany". American Sociological Review 64, 3, 381-402.
Palang, Hannes, Helen Soovali, Anu Printsmann, Tiina Peil, Valter
Lang, Marge Konsa, Mart Kulvik, Helen Alumae, and Kalev Sepp (2004)
"Estonian cultural landscapes: persistence and change". In
Estonia: geographical studies, 155-170. J. M. Punning, ed. Tallinn:
Estonian Academy Publishers.
Pearce, Susan M. (1994) "The urge to collect". In
Interpreting objects and collections, 157-159. Susan M. Pearce, ed.
London and New York: Routledge.
Radstone, Susannah (2000) "Working with memory: an
introduction". In Memory and methodology, 1-22. Susannah Radstone,
ed. Oxford and New York: Berg.
Radstone, Susannah (2008) "Memory studies: for and
against". Memory Studies 1, 1, 31-39. Radstone, Susannah and
Katharine Hodgkin, eds. (2003) Regimes of memory. London and New York:
Routledge.
Ricoeur, Paul (1980) "Narrative time". Critical Inquiry
7, 169-176.
Ricoeur, Paul (2004) Memory, history, forgetting. Transl. by
Kathleen Blamey and David Pellauer. Chicago and London: The University
of Chicago Press.
Roediger, Henry L. and Wertsch, James V. (2008) "Creating a
new discipline of memory studies". Memory Studies 1, 1, 9-22.
Rossington, Michael and Anne Whitehead, eds. (2007) Theories of
memory: a reader. Baltimore: The Johns Hopkins University Press.
Shanks, M. (1994) "Crafts". In Interpreting objects and
collections, 107-108. Susan M. Pearce, ed. London and New York:
Routledge.
Strathern, Marilyn (2005) "Anthropology and
interdisciplinarity". Arts and Humanities in Higher Education 4, 2,
125-135.
Tai, Hue-Tam Ho (2001) "Remembered realms: Pierre Nora and
French: National memory". The American Historical Review 106, 3,
<http://www.historycooperative.org/journals/ahr/106.3/
ah000906.html>. [Accessed online in 10.04.2008].
Tilley, Christopher (2006) "Introduction: identity, place,
landscape and heritage". Journal of Material Culture 11, 1/2, 7-32.
Todorov, Tzvetan (2001) "The uses and abuses of memory".
In What happens to history: the renewal of ethics in contemporary
thought, 11-22. Howard Marchitello, ed. New York and London: Routledge.
Tudor, Andrew (1973) Theories of film. New York: Viking Press.
Wertsch, James V. (2002) Voices of collective remembering.
Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Williams, Raymond (1976) Keywords: a vocabulary of culture and
society. London: Fontana.
Winter, Jay (1997) "Review of Pierre Nora, ed, Realms of
Memory: Rethinking the French past (Vol. I: Conflicts and
divisions)." H-France, H-Net Reviews, October, URL: http://
www.h-net.org/reviews/showrev.cgi?path=18624876860175 [Accessed online
in 10.04.2008].
Winter, Jay (2000) "The generation of memory: reflections on
the memory boom in contemporary historical studies". Bulletin of
the German Historical Institute (Washington, DC) 27, 69-92.
Young, Katherine (2000) "Transdisciplinarity: postmodern buzz
word or new method for new problems". In Transdisciplinarity:
recreating integrated knowledge, 125-134. Margaret Sommerville and David
J. Rapport, eds. Oxford, UK: EOLSS Publishers Co. Ltd.
Addresses:
Ester Vosu, Ene Koresaar, Kristin Kuutma
Institute of Cultural Research and Fine Arts
University of Tartu
Ulikooli 18
50090 Tartu
Estonia
Ester Vosu
Tel.: +372 737 5654
E-mail: ester.vosu@ut.ee,
Ene Koresaar
Tel.: +372 737 5214
E-mail: ene.koresaar@ut.ee,
Kristin Kuutma
Tel.: +372 737 5654
E-mail: kristin.kuutma@ut.ee,
Ester Vosu, Ene Koresaar, Kristin Kuutma
University of Tartu
(1) A characteristic example of this epistemological shift in the
humanities and social sciences is the emergence of the new
keyword--memory--in handbooks, disciplinary encyclopaedias and
dictionaries. For example, Raymond Williams's (1976) classic
Keywords enlisted concepts like 'history', 'myth',
and 'ideology', but not 'memory'. A more recent
edition New Keywords: A Revised Vocabulary of Culture and Society
presents 'memory' next to 'history' and
'heritage' (Bennett et al 2005:214-215).
(2) Cultural Memory and Cultures in Transition, Vilnius, 2006; The
State of Social Memory Studies, Virginia, USA, 2005; Cultures of Memory,
Memories of Culture, Cyprus, 2004; Cultural Memory Conference,
University of Warwick, UK, 2003, Memory from Transdisciplinary
Perspectives: Agency, Practices, and Mediations, Tartu, 2007.
(3) The conference was organized by the Research Centre of Culture
and Communication, University of Tartu, Estonia. See conference website
http://www.ut.ee/memory2007. (Visited May 13, 2008.)
(4) Keynote speakers of the conference included James V. Wertsch,
Susannah Radstone, David Berliner, Paul Bouissac, Seppo Knuuttila, and
Tiina Kirss.
(5) Several speakers argued that one feasible option for a
transdisciplinary research project could be a case-centred study. As a
possible perspective for transdisciplinary memory research, they raised
the question of how World War II is remembered. This draws attention to
one nexus of current memory research in the humanities and social
sciences. Furthermore, participants of the final discussion observed
that different approaches in memory studies should co-operate to study a
specific aspect or event or act of remembering; e.g. to combine the
practice of cultural research with neuropsychology. Such concrete
transdisciplinary co-operation would unite scholars from different
fields, to create collaborative relations while drawing on previous
achievements, and to establish a fresh environment for discovering the
potential embedded in varied disciplinary expertise.
(6) See conference website http://www.nssrmemoryconference.com.
(Visited April 29, 2008.)
(7) Strathern (2005:127) defines multi-disciplinarity as the
alignment of skills from different disciplines; interdisciplinarity may
involve a common framework shared across disciplines to which each
contributes its bit; transdisciplinarity brings disciplines together in
contexts where new approaches arise out of the interaction between them,
but to a heightened degree.
