This book is a collection of essays devoted to the representation and politics of memory in cultural texts. How individuals and communities use memory to navigate the current global situation is the subject of many of the essays collected in this volume, while other essays contextualize these strategies by examining functions and interrogations of memory in earlier geopolitical environments. Taken as a whole, they form a multifaceted exploration of how various forms of memory are discursively constructed and negotiated in literature, art, media, or other cultural modes of representation. The collection addresses a wide array of texts and cultural contexts.

Wilfried Raussert is Chair of North American Studies and Inter-American Studies at the University of Bielefeld. He is Executive Director of the International Association of Inter-American Studies. Bond Love is postdoctoral fellow at the University of Bielefeld and teaches North American Studies. Julia Andres and Stephen Joyce are doctoral students at the University of Bielefeld and teach in the field of North American and Interamerican Studies.

Leseprobe

* Julia Andres, Stephen Joyce, Bond Love, Wilfried Raussert, and Alethea R. Wait: Introduction * Julia Andres: Tú eres mi otro yo - Your Story is my Story. Caramelo: Strands of Memory woven into a Universal Pattern * Ridvan Askin: Mneme, Anamnesis and Mimesis: The Function of Narrative in Paul Ricoeur¿s Theory of Memory * Marcel Fromme and Alethea R. Wait (with Carolin Kirchhof): Re-Membering the Terrorist Spectacle: Medial Discourses, the Shaping of History and Collective Cultural Memory in the Wake of 9/11 * Marcus Hartner: The Limits of Postmodern Analysis: Penelope Lively¿s Moon Tiger and its Academic Response * Stephen Joyce: The Sea of Memory: Cultural Memories and Postmemories of the Japanese Occupation in Korean American Literature * Olaf Kaltmeier: Heritage Cities and the Trauma of Coloniality: Postcolonial Conflicts about Space, Identity, and Memory in Historic City Centers in the Americas * Bond Love: a¿oeSo I will have to see hima¿: Resisting Cultural Memory in William Faulkner?s Go Down, Moses * Laszlo Muntean: Working Through Ground Zero * Wilfried Raussert: Call Me Ishmael: Melville as Archaeologist of Body and Text * Annette Rukwied: Between Obligation and Empowerment: Negotiating Cultural Memory, Past and Present:Luis J. Rodríguez, Always Running. La Vida Loca. Gang Days in L.A. (1993), Luis Alberto Urrea, Nobody¿s Son: Notes from an American Life (1998),Oscar Casares, Brownsville (2003)