Memory and political change
By: edited by Aleida Assmann, Linda Shortt
Publisher: Palgrave Macmillan
Published: 2012
Place of publication: New York
Language: eng
Number of pages: 223
ISBN-13: 9780230301993; 9780230302006
Subjects: Collective memory; Democratization in literature; Regime change in literature; Case studies; Collective memory in literature; Regime change; Memory; Democratization; Political violence; Political violence in literature; Memory in literature
Description: While it is well-known that memory is open to constant changes and transformations, this book adopts an innovative approach, emphasizing memory's role as a powerful agent of change. While political systems may change comparatively quickly, the social and cultural processes of adaptation and transformation take considerably longer. This volume explores memory as both a medium of and an impediment to change, offering an inroad into the problems, mechanisms and patterns involved in the complex processes that accompany the transition from authoritarian to democratic structures. Written by authors from different cultural and disciplinary backgrounds, the essays chart the terrain andsupply well-documented case studiesto extend knowledge on the relationship between social and political memory and the transition process.
Notes: Includes index.
Table of contents: title: Introduction; title: Part I. Transgenerational transmission. Replacement children: the transgenerational transmission of traumatic loss; the emotional legacy of the Nazi past in post-war Germany; title: Part II. Instruments of change. To remember or to forget: which way out of a shared history of violence?; between pragmatism, coercion and fear: chosen amnesia after the Rwandan genocide; from domestic to international instruments for dealing with a violent past: causes, concomitants and consequences for democratic transitions;; title: Part III. Re-imagining the past for the future. Re-imagining East Germany in the Berlin Republic; GDR memory and the transitional generation; South African transition in the literary imagination: Nadine Gordimer, J.M. Coetzee, Malika Lueen Ndlovu; commemorating the other side of the colonial frontier in Australian literature of reconciliation; title: Part IV. Resistance to change. Deep memory and narrative templates: conservative forces in collective memory; the myth of the self: the Georgian national narrative and guest for Georgianness; memory across cultures.