Postmemory Research Papers - Academia.edu (original) (raw)

Proponemos, en primer lugar, reflexionar en torno a tres tipos de objetos vinculados a diversos escenarios de la memoria: el objeto testimonio que funciona como un código verificativo cuya primera intención consiste en certificar el... more

Proponemos, en primer lugar, reflexionar en torno a tres tipos de objetos vinculados a diversos escenarios de la memoria: el objeto testimonio que funciona como un código verificativo cuya primera intención consiste en certificar el acontecimiento; el objeto memoria que despliega un trabajo con la memoria de tipo reflexivo-interpretativo y/o elaborativo, y el objeto emblema que se presenta y actúa en las marchas, en las conmemoraciones, en los juicios, en las protestas y demandas articuladas en las luchas por la memoria, verdad y justicia. Focalizamos luego en el examen de un conjunto de producciones culturales realizadas por los hijos de víctimas del terrorismo de Estado desplegado en torno a la última dictadura argentina (1976-1983). Estudiamos finalmente los objetos biográficos y autobiográficos ejemplificados a partir de dos muestras de la artista platense Andrea Suárez Córica, una en la que reúne objetos de su madre asesinada (El abrazo de los objetos 2020) y otra (La niña y el archivo 2019) en la que junta objetos de su propia infancia.

This book examines the legacy of Lebanon’s civil war and how the population, and the youth in particular, are dealing with their national past. Drawing on extensive qualitative research and social observation, the author explores the... more

"A kind of intersection between the public and the private can be found in the notion of postmemory proposed by Marianne Hirsch in 1997, particularly through the role of family in the identity process of the individual. According to... more

"A kind of intersection between the public and the private can be found in the notion of postmemory proposed by Marianne Hirsch in 1997, particularly through the role of family in the identity process of the individual. According to Hirsch, we can detect in the generation of postmemory, artistic and literary production that mediates between public images and narratives, and a more intimate knowledge born in the private and familiar life of each member of the postmemorial generation. If by one hand this generation finds a connection between personal stories and a colective trauma, by the other hand it is in public spaces like memorials and museums that we can find exhibitions of private photographs and personal records. In the artistic and literary work of a second and third generation of postmemory, we can ascertain a great deal of themes concerning the postmodern, the post-Auschwitz, of a fracture and discontinuity, with public images which have been widely broadcast by the media, since the Holocaust has became part of a colective memory: images of showers, overcrowded trains, tatoos, smoke and ashes. Ghosts which seem to haunt the writing and the art of this generation, who acts like a carrier of a past memory which is inevitably part of a colective and a more private memory, translated in Hirsch’s postmemory.
The aim of this presentation is to introduce an example of postmemory mirrored in the work of the photographer Daniel Blaufuks Sob Céus Estranhos (Under Strange Skies), published in 2007, that reflects upon this kind of relations, that is, the connection between colective, public and private memory in this so called “age of postmemory” (Hirsch, 2001).
"

This article deals with second-generation Holocaust literature, i.e. writings belonging to the generation born after the Holocaust and grown up in its aftermath. Specifically I dwell on two considerably different Jewish-American novels,... more

This article deals with second-generation Holocaust literature, i.e. writings belonging to the generation born after the Holocaust and grown up in its aftermath.
Specifically I dwell on two considerably different Jewish-American novels, which reflect two different natures of Holocaust inheritance and, hence, two distinct paths, featuring second- generation Holocaust literature: Thane Rosenbaum’s Second-Hand Smoke (1999) and Irene Dische’s Pious Secrets (1991). My understanding of these narratives is grounded in the cultural distinction between particularist and universalist second-generation Holocaust writers outlined by Alan Berger in Children of Job, American Second-Generation Witnesses to the Holocaust (1997). The argument that I present interprets Rosenbaum’s novel as a particularist depiction of the Holocaust legacy, whereas Dische’s book is associated to a universalist perspective towards this event and its inheritance.

The subject of the following article centers around the issue of postmemory (a term by M. Hirsch) basing on "Może Estera" (published in 2015), an autobiographical work written by Katia Petrowska, who follows her relatives’ memories... more

The subject of the following article centers around the issue of postmemory (a term by M. Hirsch) basing on "Może Estera" (published in 2015), an autobiographical work written by Katia Petrowska, who follows her relatives’ memories searching not only for her family history but also for her own identity. The main aim is both to present the experience of “the second generation” in the context of the phenomenon of postmemory and to analyze the effect of transmitted memories and on next generation representatives’ narrative and identity. Interpreting the subject of postmemory the authoress provides a theoretical background referencing, among others, the thought of M. Hirsch, K. Goertz.

Das Ende des Zweiten Weltkrieges und die Neuaufteilung des europäischen Territoriums nach dem Potsdamer Abkommen von 1945 führten für die Gebiete des vormals polnischen Galiziens und deutschen Schlesiens zu diametralen Veränderungen. Die... more

Das Ende des Zweiten Weltkrieges und die Neuaufteilung des europäischen Territoriums nach dem Potsdamer Abkommen von 1945 führten für die Gebiete des vormals polnischen Galiziens und deutschen Schlesiens zu diametralen Veränderungen. Die neuen Grenzziehungen Polens, westlich an der Oder-Neiße-Linie, östlich mit leichten Veränderungen an der so genannten Curzon-Linie, zwangen Millionen Menschen sich mit der neuen Situation des von ihnen bewohnten Territoriums auseinanderzusetzen. Die Alliierten verfolgten nach 1945 das Ziel, möglichst homogene Nationalstaaten zu schaffen, weshalb die Polen aus den vormals polnischen Ostgebieten und die Deutschen aus den vormals deutschen Ostgebieten flüchten mussten oder ausgesiedelt wurden. Dabei ähnelten sich die Schicksale der Deutschen in Schlesien und der Polen in Ostgalizien, wodurch beide Regionen in einer interdependenten Beziehung zueinander stehen und die Analogien zwischen ihnen sich in den Narrativen der jüngsten Generation zeigen. Diese Texte deuten auf die komplexe Situation beider Gruppen wie auch auf die Schwierigkeiten beim Aufbau einer neuen nachgalizischen und-schlesischen Identität für die Umgesiedelten hin. Das Trauma der Vertreibung wird den Nachfolgegenerationen weitergegeben und verpflichtet sie dazu, darüber Rechenschaft abzugeben, indem es für spätere Generationen in Form von Literatur, Kunst, Film oder Bild verfügbar gemacht werden soll. Wie dies geschieht, untersucht dieser Artikel.

Although films representing violence through a child’s eyes have become increasingly commonplace in Latin American cinema of the last three decades, this article proposes that Benjamín Ávila’s 2012 Infancia clandestina provides an... more

Although films representing violence through a child’s eyes have become increasingly commonplace in Latin American cinema of the last three decades, this article proposes that Benjamín Ávila’s 2012 Infancia clandestina provides an innovative approach. The film emphasizes ruptures – aesthetic, thematic and spectatorial – as well as gestures towards their repair in an attempt to represent the child’s perspective and engage the viewer in approaching the nation’s violent past. These forms of rupture and reparation, along with oscillations between identification with and distance from the protagonist’s perspective, draw attention not only to the complexities of representing the child’s subjective viewpoint but also of representing the violence of state repression. After examining the film’s treatment of postmemorial generational rupture, the article explores the mechanisms by which the film aligns the viewer with the perspective of its child protagonist while refusing complete identification with his subject position. Finally, it demonstrates how the child’s perspective of violence is cast as unique – underscoring his difference and questioning the possibility of representing ‘realistically’ the violence of the Dirty War years.

¿Es el cómic un medio válido para recuperar la memoria histórica de nuestro país? Esta es la cuestión que inicia un estudio de 4 obras en particular: Paracuellos, de Carlos Giménez; El arte de volar y El ala rota, de Antonio Altarriba y... more

¿Es el cómic un medio válido para recuperar la
memoria histórica de nuestro país? Esta es la cuestión que inicia un estudio de 4 obras en particular: Paracuellos, de Carlos Giménez; El arte de volar y El ala rota, de Antonio Altarriba y kim; y por último, Los surcos del azar, de Paco Roca.

The evacuation to El Shatt represents an important, yet largely forgotten, collective experience in modern Dalmatian history. The oral testimonies I have drawn on for this chapter offer profound insights into the experience of being a... more

The evacuation to El Shatt represents an important, yet largely forgotten, collective experience in modern Dalmatian history. The oral testimonies I have drawn on for this chapter offer profound insights into the experience of being a refugee, of being in exile and of encountering various losses. They also provide instructive accounts of the ways in which the refugees’ social, cultural, and religious life in the camp was organized on a daily basis, and the systematic indoctrination of the camp’s inhabitants with socialist ideology. Drawing on the notion that remembering trauma is integral to public pedagogy, I have assumed that storytelling makes a crucial contribution in this context. In this discussion, I draw on literature, archival records, autobiographical memoirs, my own ethnographic fieldwork observations, and oral histories that I have gathered and analyzed to bring the memory of the El Shatt refugee camp alive.

El conflicto armado de El Salvador (1980-1992) ha sido uno de los más largos y sangrientos de la historia reciente de Latinoamérica. Ya han transcurrido 25 años de su fin formal, y del proceso de reconstrucción de las comunidades rurales... more

El conflicto armado de El Salvador (1980-1992) ha sido uno de los más largos y sangrientos de la historia reciente de Latinoamérica. Ya han transcurrido 25 años de su fin formal, y del proceso de reconstrucción de las comunidades rurales que fueron devastadas por operativos militares que obligaron a su población a desplazarse. En este tiempo han emergido nuevas generaciones que no vivieron este acontecimiento, pero se han socializado en el periodo de posguerra dentro de las comunidades afectadas, en interacción cotidiana con las víctimas directas (familiares y vecinos). Dado los escasos estudios sobre la memoria de nuevas generaciones desde una perspectiva local, la presente investigación tuvo por objetivo comprender la construcción de memorias del conflicto armado en jóvenes de una comunidad desplazada, y explorar la forma en que este evento ha condicionado sus vidas. Mediante metodología cualitativa, se utilizó la técnica de relatos de vida y foto-elicitación con 10 jóvenes, quienes crecieron después de 1992 en la comunidad Nueva Trinidad, territorio reconstruido por exrefugiados. En general, se observó que los jóvenes, pese a no haber vivido la guerra, construyen memorias propias, en un intento de darle sentido a un pasado que les interpela. Esto es posible gracias a mecanismos dinámicos (emociones, imaginación, empatía, etc.) que les posibilitan explorar el pasado, y unir los relatos fragmentados que familiares y vecinos les han transmitido en una cotidianidad comunitaria que remite al conflicto armado a través de marcas en las personas y espacios. Además, las memorias de los jóvenes les promueven una orientación hacia formas determinadas de ser, de estar con otros, y de interpretar la realidad. Así como también ofrecen elementos que facilitan y dificultan la convivencia familiar y comunitaria.

Can we remember other people’s memories? I believe that we can and that we do. Descendants of individuals and communities that have survived powerful collective experiences –catastrophes such as war, genocide and extreme violence, but... more

Can we remember other people’s memories? I believe that we can and that we do. Descendants of individuals and communities that have survived powerful collective experiences –catastrophes such as war, genocide and extreme violence, but also transformative political movements such as coups, revolutions and uprisings– often feel as though they were shaped by events that preceded their birth.
They experience these events not as memories, but as postmemories; they are belated, temporally and qualitatively removed.

In questa analisi procederemo con gli strumenti ereditati dal metodo semiotico applicato alla cultura e al fumetto, attingendo dallo studio della memoria – intesa in senso lotmaniano – e dai trauma studies e memory studies per osservare... more

In questa analisi procederemo con gli strumenti ereditati dal metodo semiotico
applicato alla cultura e al fumetto, attingendo dallo studio della memoria – intesa in senso lotmaniano – e dai trauma studies e memory studies per osservare come il racconto del più grande trauma collettivo del nostro tempo, l’Olocausto, possa essere incasellato in vignette sullo sfondo di una narrazione familiare: brutalmente senza alcuna morale e candidamente senza alcuna retorica, attraverso timidi musi di topi.

…The event of the Holocaust is already a horizon which orients our time, certainly in the west, even now, three or four generations afterwards. (Eaglestone 2004: 12) s the final Holocaust survivors pass, the urgent task of representing... more

…The event of the Holocaust is already a horizon which orients our time, certainly in the west, even now, three or four generations afterwards. (Eaglestone 2004: 12) s the final Holocaust survivors pass, the urgent task of representing the atrocity in order to keep its memory alive passes to later generations. However, the ethical imperative for postwar generations to keep memory of the Holocaust alive must compete with vigorous debate about the nature of vicariously claiming connection to this horrific trauma. Accessing the event from a position of generational distance demands new levels of mediation and imagination. Fiction, in particular, has come to be considered a " serious vehicle for thinking about the Holocaust " (Hungerford 2004: 181). Many critics agree that fiction possesses a unique ability to represent the unrepresentable event that is the Holocaust, while also having the power to promote empathy towards traumatic events more broadly: " It is literature that has at least since the Romantics enabled the ethical moment which compels reader response A

Resumen Tesis Doctoral en Español: Lengua y Literatura, Universidad de Salamanca

Once overwhelmingly inhabited by Jews, the Austro-Galician border town of Brody, in present-day Western Ukraine, has retained an important place on Ashkenazi mental maps until today, even though scholarly studies on Brody are scarce. The... more

Once overwhelmingly inhabited by Jews, the Austro-Galician border town of Brody, in present-day Western Ukraine, has retained an important place on Ashkenazi mental maps until today, even though scholarly studies on Brody are scarce. The present article tries to capture the elements that allowed Brody to inscribe itself so successfully in Jewish memory. Therefore, this paper analyses several lieux de mémoire underlining Brody's enduring perception as a town closely related to Jewish issues. These places, however, are not only physical spots in the cityscape, like the ruins of the synagogue and the cemetery, but also images of and texts about Brody. Whether intended or not, pictures and postcards also have an impact on how Brody has been remembered; and so do memory books, be they written in Yiddish, Hebrew, Polish or Ukrainian. This study argues that Brody appears on the mental maps of Eastern European Jewry as an amalgam of physical places, icons and texts linked to a multi-layered and multifaceted urban history

This article studies the ethics of remembrance and its transformative potential through the reading of the postmemorial narrative of Kamila Shamsie's Salt and Saffron. While it is the story of a particular individual's journey of memory... more

This article studies the ethics of remembrance and its transformative potential through the reading of the postmemorial narrative of Kamila Shamsie's Salt and Saffron. While it is the story of a particular individual's journey of memory transformation, it speaks to a shared experience of rupture in the wake of Partition violence and what it might mean to confront and transform the powerful impact that this collective memory has on everyday lives. The analysis of the central character's evolution seeks to demonstrate the way in which memories of Partition violence are connected to the continuation of an oppressive class system in Pakistan and how transforming these memories also implies transforming a worldview that maintains class prejudices. In so doing, the article offers broader insights for understanding the nature of intergenerational memory, mourning, and transformation in the wake of historical violence. The struggle of man against power is the struggle of memory against forgetting.-Milan Kundera, The Book of Laughter and Forgetting (1) One person's lament can be someone else's elegy.-Kamila Shamsie, Salt and Saffron (37) Not-Quite-Twins: Conceptual and Otherwise The difference between lament and elegy as poetic genres is a blurry one as far as their mood and content are concerned. Both capture a loss and the sorrow and grief emanating from it. However, an elegy is a meditation that takes the poet beyond the immediate loss to the reflection of some permanent principle about the tragic aspects of life. In contrast, a lament, defined as "an expression of deep regret or sorrow" by J A Cuddon and C E Preston (448), is more visceral, cried out in a voice stemming directly from the wound. The difference seems to consist in the emotional immediacy of a lament and the analytical belatedness of an elegy. The latter can only be conceived of when the mind has lamented for a while, contemplated on the absence of the beloved and finally come to terms with it with an acquired knowledge about the ephemerality of life, for instance. The moods and psychical states evoked by lament and elegy seem to parallel the acts of melancholy and mourning This work is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License.

This introductory essay situates the four sections of the book in ongoing discussions on the methods, ethics, and politics of memory studies. Starting from the observation that memory is increasingly being studied as a dynamic process... more

This introductory essay situates the four sections of the book in ongoing discussions on the methods, ethics, and politics of memory studies. Starting from the observation that memory is increasingly being studied as a dynamic process rather than a static product, it identifies the four main dimensions of mnemonic mobility in a globalized and digitalized world: transcultural, transgenerational, transmedial, and transdisciplinary. Underlining that these four dimensions cannot be studied in isolation from each other, it contends that attention to the interrelations between them is indispensable for the study of memory today. The essay shows how all twelve chapters in the book contribute to the project of capturing the dynamics of memory.

El género del biopic musical, o película biográfica, conjuga tanto una apariencia de autenticidad, como el potencial de congelar el tiempo (Rabinowitz 120) y trasladarnos a distintas épocas. Los biopics se caracterizan por hilvanar... more

El género del biopic musical, o película biográfica, conjuga tanto una apariencia de autenticidad, como el potencial de congelar el tiempo (Rabinowitz 120) y trasladarnos a distintas épocas. Los biopics se caracterizan por hilvanar recuerdos personales y colectivos a través de una gran cantidad de entrevistas, vídeos de conciertos y canciones, dando como resultado un caleidoscopio de recuerdos, en la frontera entre lo privado y lo público. Una mirada rápida a la cartelera, con títulos como la película de Martin Scorsese de Bob Dylan, Rolling Thunder Revue, o el éxito de Bohemian Rhapsody de Freddy Mercury, nos hará comprobar que el biopic musical es un género en auge. ¿Qué consiguen estas películas?, ¿Qué modelos o referentes construyen? En esta ponencia examinaré la construcción de dos leyendas de la música popular latinoamericana: 1) Violeta Parra, “La Violeta”, quien es recordada como el canto de Chile; y 2) Mercedes Sosa, a quien se ha considerado “la voz de Latinoamérica”, “La Negra”. Desarrollaré mi análisis a través de Violeta más viva que nunca (2017) y Mercedes Sosa. La voz de Latino América (2009), pues comparten una característica común—haber sido producidos con la estrecha colaboración de los hijos de las cantoras—lo que posibilita preguntarse cómo la posmemoria familiar interfiere con la memoria colectiva de dichos referentes.

In the first 20 years of the 21st century, Central American film production has increased exponentially, despite a persistent lack of state support after decades of armed conflict. The relatively recent professionalisation and visibility... more

In the first 20 years of the 21st century, Central American film production has increased exponentially, despite a persistent lack of state support after decades of armed conflict. The relatively recent professionalisation and visibility of the ‘small’ and ‘precarious’ cinemas of Central America has coincided with the development of film festivals. In the ongoing emergence of regionally embedded film cultures, film festivals have assumed particularly mediating and enabling roles, in terms of education, promotion and distribution of local cinemas. These initiatives are contained within traditions that can be traced back to the heyday of New Latin American Cinemas during the 1980s, the Havana Film Festival and the educational ideology of the EICTV Film and Television School in Cuba, which emphasise creative solidarity and collaboration across borders. Since the signing of the last regional Peace Agreements in 1996, events responded to the broader cultural sector’s call to set up networks for cultural production on a regional scale, due to an emphasis on commonality, and the need for a larger audience. Through immersive and reflexive ethnographic fieldwork at film festivals in the region and a network analysis of film production relations, this study illuminates film-cultural developments during the postwar moment, a time especially marked by the active processing of past conflict and trauma through the socially cathartic experience of cinema. This results in a threefold thematic analysis of respectively film festivals, filmmaking communities and the creative use of the ‘postmemory’ phenomenon in the Central American film landscape. In absence of strong national support structures, film festivals have surfaced as multipurpose interfaces that facilitate the exhibition of Central American films, the transnational mobilisation and networking of film professionals, and the mediation of a conflicted past. Against economic, social and political odds, filmmakers in Central America share a common energy to strengthen and expand the region’s small cinemas for both cultural and economic reasons.

This article turns towards the legacy of the Greco-Turkish War (1919-22) in contemporary Greek culture. Drawing on the conceptual frameworks of postmemory and intergenerational transmission of trauma, it examines the Greek graphic novel... more

This article turns towards the legacy of the Greco-Turkish War (1919-22) in contemporary Greek culture. Drawing on the conceptual frameworks of postmemory and intergenerational transmission of trauma, it examines the Greek graphic novel Aivali by Soloup (2014, translated into English in 2019) in order to discuss aesthetics and practices set in motion by the memory of Asia Minor, when the relay of remembrance reaches the third generation. The article demonstrates how the fragments of memories that the grandchildren of Asia Minor refugees inherited from their ancestors find their way into comics panels, through which those memories are reassembled into a public visual archive. At the same time, the graphic novel also performs a reconstitution of the Greek literary canon, when the works of Greek and Turkish writers are called upon to fill in the gaps in the family story. Ultimately, it is argued that affective connections fostered through reading Aivali ensure that memory can travel across time and lead to new encounters, bringing back reminiscences of Asia Minor afresh to communities' collective imagination.

En el excelente dossier “Teatralidades y cuerpos en escena en la historia reciente del Cono Sur”, coordinado por Lorena Verzero, Malena La Rocca y María Luisa Diz (Revista del Núcleo de Estudios sobre Memoria). El dossier incluye textos... more

En el excelente dossier “Teatralidades y cuerpos en escena en la historia reciente del Cono Sur”, coordinado por Lorena Verzero,
Malena La Rocca y María Luisa Diz (Revista del Núcleo de Estudios sobre Memoria). El dossier incluye textos de Alicia Del Campo / Lola Proaño Gómez / María Gabriela Aimaretti / Maximiliano Ignacio de la Puente / Verónica Perera. También una entrevista a Katherine Hite sobre los sitios de memoria.
Sección reseñas al final.

Introducción al Volumen Las posmemorias Perspectivas latinoamericanas y europeas Les post-mémoires Perspectives latino-américaines et européennes. Basile, T. y González, C. (Eds.). (2020). Las posmemorias: Perspectivas latinoamericanas y... more

Introducción al Volumen Las posmemorias Perspectivas latinoamericanas y europeas Les post-mémoires Perspectives latino-américaines et européennes.
Basile, T. y González, C. (Eds.). (2020). Las posmemorias:
Perspectivas latinoamericanas y europeas. La Plata: Universidad Nacional de La Plata. Facultad de Humanidades y Ciencias de la Educación ; Bordeaux: Presses Universitaires de Bordeaux. (Coediciones ; 9/Maison des Pays ibériques ; Série
Amériques).
Recuperado de https://libros.fahce.unlp.edu.ar/index.php/libros/
catalog/book/--

This work is an investigation into how youth in Derry~Londonderry are impacted by ‘The Troubles’. Using Hirsch’s concept of postmemory, this work explores how the past affects youth’s historical knowledge, identity and the way they use... more

This work is an investigation into how youth in Derry~Londonderry are impacted by ‘The Troubles’. Using Hirsch’s concept of postmemory, this work explores how the past affects youth’s historical knowledge, identity and the way they use the urban space. By looking at the segregated and shared areas of the city, this work analyses the spatial patterns of youth. This work also uses Larkin’s notion of ‘memoryscapes’ as a way to investigate the knowledge and understanding youth have of these sites of traumatic memories. It concludes that there are layers of collective memory collected by that impact the understanding youth have. However, the interpretations and knowledge that youth carry about their urban environment emphasise the importance in understanding the collective memory, as these sites play an important role in representing the past in the cityscape.

El objeto de esta investigación es el cine documental contemporáneo vinculado a los descendientes de militantes de izquierda víctimas de las dictaduras del Cono Sur. Desde fines de los años 1990 gana importancia en la región la producción... more

El objeto de esta investigación es el cine documental contemporáneo vinculado a los descendientes de militantes de izquierda víctimas de las dictaduras del Cono Sur. Desde fines de los años 1990 gana importancia en la región la producción de documentales dirigidos o protagonizados por hijos/as, sobrinos/as y nietos/as de aquellos que se opusieron a los regímenes autoritarios vigentes entre las décadas de 1960 y 1980. En esta filmografía, las historias de resistencia y represión vividas por la generación anterior son revisadas por las generaciones más jóvenes desde un enfoque familiar e íntimo. La tendencia se hace presente en Argentina, Chile, Brasil, Uruguay y Paraguay, en el marco de un fenómeno más amplio de rememoración intergeneracional, lo cual comprende otras expresiones artísticas – más allá de otros contextos históricos traumáticos. Cuatro películas componen el corpus principal del trabajo: 'Diario de una búsqueda' (Flavia Castro, Brasil / Francia, 2010); 'Los rubios' (Albertina Carri, Argentina, 2003); 'Mi vida con Carlos' (Germán Berger-Hertz, Chile / España, 2009); 'Los días con él' (Maria Clara Escobar, Brasil / Portugal, 2013). Metodológicamente, la argumentación contrasta el análisis de estas obras específicas con un corpus fílmico extendido y otros materiales externos, construyendo un acercamiento global y matizado a las expresiones de la memoria intergeneracional en este cine documental. Cuatro objetivos centrales guían las reflexiones, desplegando aspectos sobresalientes de las películas del corpus principal. Respectivamente: describir la formación de esta filmografía a lo largo de los años, examinando las dinámicas transnacionales y temporales en juego, así como los influjos ejercidos por los festivales de cine y la escritura académica en este proceso; profundizar la discusión sobre el circuito de interacciones entre las generaciones, destacando el rol activo de los descendientes y abarcando vectores de la memoria que sobrepasan la transmisión de un legado traumático; delinear el repertorio de formas cinematográficas y narrativas de esta producción, rastreando paralelismos, variaciones, contradicciones estéticas y las posturas enunciativas de la primera persona; interpretar aquello que la representación audiovisual puede testimoniar acerca del peso del pasado y su anclaje en un presente todavía marcado por el autoritarismo. La investigación indaga en el andamiaje conceptual de este campo de estudios para desvelar un fenómeno denso en su historicidad, cuyas imágenes están cargadas de conexiones transnacionales, transferencias culturales, tensiones formales y nexos referenciales. El resultado final es un retrato polifacético del cine documental intergeneracional del Cono Sur, de lo cual emergen perspectivas renovadas por el prisma subjetivo y afectivo, pero que también plasma nuevas fórmulas de la memoria.

Re-Take of Amrita (2001–2) is a series of digital photomontages by Indian artist Vivan Sundaram, constructed using photographs from a family album authored primarily by his grandfather, Umrao Singh Sher-Gil. I explore the relation of two... more

Re-Take of Amrita (2001–2) is a series of digital photomontages by Indian artist Vivan Sundaram, constructed using photographs from a family album authored primarily by his grandfather, Umrao Singh Sher-Gil. I explore the relation of two examples from Re-Take to its predecessor, Sundaram’s The Sher-Gil Archive (1995), as well as to its source in Umrao’s album, and in doing so, I also explore the relationship between album and archive. Sundaram’s aunt, Amrita Sher-Gil, became a famous modernist painter, mythologised after her premature death. Sundaram never knew his aunt. This series engages with the tragedy of Amrita’s death and her mother’s subsequent suicide: a double trauma that returns to Sundaram as a haunting. In the concept of “re-take,” a photographic act of correction through reiteration also suggests the pleasures and pains of revision. Enabled by digital capabilities, such reprises offer renewed psychic and narrative opportunities for Sundaram to probe the open wounds and disavowed desires within the life of this urbane, multi-talented, cosmopolitan Indian family. Through digital manipulation, I argue, Re-Take of Amrita, undoes the fatal teleology implicit in the indexicality of traditional vernacular and documentary photography, enlivening time past as the site of possibility and new aesthetic elaboration.

Fugir era el més bell que teníem (2019), by Marta Marín-Dòmine, explores the world of the daughter of a man exiled after the Spanish Civil War. Through reflections on the life of her father, the memories he wrote and left to her, and her... more

Fugir era el més bell que teníem (2019), by Marta Marín-Dòmine, explores the world of the daughter of a man exiled after the Spanish Civil War. Through reflections on the life of her father, the memories he wrote and left to her, and her own experience with “escaping” (la fugida), the narrator makes a variety of observations that correspond with Marianne Hirsch’s definition of postmemory. By examining objects present throughout the text, connections between the lived experiences of the narrator and her father, and the literary interactions of these aspects with the representation of memory in museums and other places of memory, this article determines that the study of this novel, and others like it, can bring the literature of exile into the present. The intergenerational relationships presented in the book are vital to demonstrate that Spanish Republican exile (and its literary works) is not relegated to the 20th century, but that it also has a continuing impact in the 21st century.

Geographers have studied memory for decades, but there is currently a renewed interest in places of postmemory: sites to which memories of a past are connected, that engage those who have no living memory of the past in question. By... more

Geographers have studied memory for decades, but there is currently a renewed interest in places of postmemory: sites to which memories of a past are connected, that engage those who have no living memory of the past in question. By combining a process-tracing approach to several post-communist surveys with in-depth interviews with members of the younger generation about their postmemories of the communist past, this paper explores places associated with postmemories of communism amongst young people in contemporary Romania, focusing on two types of place: (1) mega-constructions, prisons and deportation sites; and (2) sites connected to everyday life (home, shops, hospitals). The findings suggest that “postmemories in places” are reproduced and co-produced by younger people in a nuanced and complex way. Spatial postmemories of communism are not simply formed by parental or grandparental experiences of communism itself, but are also shaped by experiences of the initial post-communist period. Younger people’s complex range of “postmemories in places” towards the communist past are politically multivalent: postmemory of specific sites related to the cultural welfare of the communist past did not necessarily indicate a political commitment to its restoration amongst interviewees; and postmemories of political violence associated with particular sites did not preclude unilateral pride in national achievements prior to 1989. Furthermore, “postmemory in place” is not a passive process, but one that is shaped by both a critical attitude to the responses of older generations towards particular places, and the challenges of the capitalist present.

The centenary of indenture in Fiji was celebrated with public displays, speeches, parades, and publications. The momentum for critical and creative response grew in tandem with the wave of publications inspired by the end of colonial rule... more

The centenary of indenture in Fiji was celebrated with public displays, speeches, parades, and publications. The momentum for critical and creative response grew in tandem with the wave of publications inspired by the end of colonial rule in many Pacific Island countries. This period of increased agency and autonomy was also a time of political uncertainty in Fiji, as questions of the nation's identity and direction were raised. For many Indo-Fijian writers rootedness in Fiji was voiced through the traumas of indenture, which they invested with mythic valence, and which can be understood as operating as an origin story for Indo-Fijians. Vijay Mishra considered indenture, or girmit, to be a foundational ideology for Indo-Fijian writers, but viewing girmit in terms of false consciousness leads him to read Indo-Fijian anxieties in terms of political blindness and cultural insularity. Building instead on Sudesh Mishra's elaboration of girmit as non-agreement, and Vijay Mishra's later revisions of girmit ideology as founded on memories of betrayal, this article argues that girmit can be productively understood through Marianne Hirsh's work on postmemory. Looking at writings of the centenary, and in particular Subramani's short stories, this article proposes that the traumas of girmit that haunt writings of the period do so as postmemories.