Nowadays, historians and scholars tend to emphasize that memory has become extinct from the cultural domain. Hence, as the historian Pierre Nora had emphasized “people talk so much about memory only because there’s none left” (Assman 1). Even though the “experiential memory” (Assman 4) has started to fade due to the lesser number of the victims of the war, in the contemporary era new “new forms of memory” are being introduced that provide “access to the past” (Assman 6) through memorials, museums, and recollection of archives. Of course, scholars such as Erica Doss, have claim that in our century cultures suffer from a memorial mania, “an urgent desire to express and claim those issues in visibly public contexts” (2). However, building statues
The title of this piece, “Remembered Morning,” establishes what the speaker describes in the stanzas that follow as memory; this fact implies many themes that accompany works concerning the past: nostalgia, regret, and romanticism, for instance. The title, therefore, provides a lens through which to view the speaker’s observations.
Memories are symbols that are used to demonstrate the progression from the past into the development of one’s current personal identity. We often use our personal memories to investigate our thoughts. Native Guard by Natasha Trethewey and Never Let Me Go by Kazuo Ishiguro are 21st century works that reflect on the use of memoires to enhance personal thoughts to impact perspectives. Perspectives are created and altered by addressing and reflecting on thoughts and feelings towards previous events. In Native Guard, Trethewey uses her memories to develop a perspective on her past and history. In Never Let Me Go, Ishiguro uses Kathy’s memories to develop her actions and decisions. Tretheway and Ishiguro both demonstrate that a memory is a symbol
Monuments and museums are arenas of public history and for the formation and articulation of identities and narratives.[1] Decisions taken as to the formation of museums and the selection, display and organisation of exhibits are influenced by criteria which are not necessarily politically neutral; these may especially involve devices of political elites to emphasise aspects of communal togetherness and thus exert control over communities.[2] Memory and commemoration of past events and generations is by its nature a political and contested act, especially in sharply divided societies.[3] It is no surprise that recently established governments and states should particularly concern themselves with the production of such forms of festivities, commemorations, and monuments.[4] As rulers of a sharply divided society, unionist elites in Northern Ireland in the aftermath of its eventful creation in 1920-1 had particular reasons to concern themselves, and did concern themselves, with such strategies of power.[5] The integration of the province's Catholic minority may have been, or may have been felt to be, beyond the rulers of Northern Ireland;[6] but this very fact heightened the importance of preserving the highest possible degree of political unity under unionist hegemony among the Protestant majority.[7]
In the book the memory palace of Matteo Ricci, the author Jonathan Spence talks about the Italian preacher Matteo Ricci who spent almost his whole life in China. Spence tries to describe a person who was determined and underwent many difficulties in preaching but never lost his faith in establishing Christian faith among Chinese people by using the memory palace. He divided the book into nine chapters. Despite the preface and the summary of the memory palace, each chapter contains an image or picture which is used for introduction of each chapter. In this way, Spence uses these images and pictures to help the reader build their own memory palace of this book which also well-illustrated the memory method that Matteo Ricci had used – the memory palace. According to Brook (p.831), a memory palace is “a mnemonic method that was popular with sixteenth-century Jesuits for retaining in memory.”
The interplay of history and memory can exist in both harmoniously as well as under strain. I’m going to show this through personal experience, documented experience and memory in ‘The Fifteith Gate’ by Mark baker, Maus:a survivors story’ by Art Speigelman and…
Teacher: “What makes you think his memory was so great? Student: “They erected a monument to it.”
When the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2011 rocked New York City, Pennsylvania, and Washington D.C., the word “tragedy” was used on a grandiose level around the world. For the people who lived close enough to experience the events first-hand, they may not have even called it a tragedy; perhaps they called it a misfortune, retaliation, lack of a strong government, unreal, or maybe even rebirth. In the coming years after the attacks, everything between standing united as a nation to declaring a war had flourished; but how has that left us - the land that has no distinct ethnicity - feel about each other? Why is it that fear is usually missing in the affective mnemonics of memorial sites, which, after all, are signifiers of some of the most horrific violence in human history? Do memorials dedicated to these attacks bring us together in terms of understanding, or is it just continual collective grief? This paper will cover the global complexity of the 9/11 attacks, the Empty Sky 9/11 Memorial in Liberty State Park, NJ, and factors and theories that memorials do influence a sense of complexity. The ground of public memory is always in motion, shifting with the tectonics of national identity. I chose the Empty Sky 9/11 Memorial as my topic of observation as I, personally, visit a few times throughout the year to pay respects to people I personally knew who perished in the attacks to the World Trade Center. I was in the 5th grade when this happened, and had absolutely no clue what was going on until my father did not return home until two days later with a bandage wrapped around his head and his devastating recollection of what happened just before he arrived to his job. The emotions that I feel within myself compared to others will...
Washington, DC is a spectacular place. This being my first time in DC, I was in awe of everything and all the historical places I encountered. The presence of the monuments and history is what made the capitol so magnificent. Having only read about the Lincoln memorial, I never had the chance to experience the sensation of being inside such an honorable place of importance. The imposing white marble walls of the memorial and the many people surrounding it could be seen from afar. Arriving at the location, an unknown feeling came over me. I was experiencing history in a whole different level. When I think about a memorial, the term remembrance comes to mind. Seeing the statue of Abraham Lincoln brought pieces of memories from history class and evoked thoughts of what it might have felt like to be in his shoes. I was astonished by the statue’s enormousness and how grand Abraham Lincoln looked in his chair. The size of the statue compared to pictures from books and elsewhere was surreal. Abraham Lincoln was a very “powerful and prominent individual” in the history of our nation, the statue’s design and size reflected upon that. Looking around me, I wanted to know what the others thoughts were on seeing his statue and how they felt in that building. I finally had the courage to ask one or two people what they thought; they all had the same appreciation as me. Hearing about an important person or learning about them in a history book gives you vast knowledge but it doesn’t evoke the feeling of utter appreciation as the memorial does. When Abraham Lincoln was assassinated, many people wanted to build a memorial in honor of him. They wanted to be able to show how important he was to shaping our nation and to “honor his existence”. Ce...
Lebow, Richard Ned. "The Future of Memory." American Academy of Political and Social 617 (2008): 25-41. JSTOR. Web. 21 Apr. 2014.
Engelhardt, I. (2002). A Topography of Memory: Representations of the Holocaust at Dachau and Buchenwald in comparison with Auschwitz, Yad Vashem and Washington DC. Presses Interuniversitaires Européennes.
Art is a key element in understanding history and culture. It is the written words, drawings, constructions of a nation. Eric Mortimer Wheeler, an archaeologist and British officer, was part of one of the first efforts to conserve art during the war. A fellow officer asked Eric Wheeler how important the destruction to buildings in Leptis Magna, a great city of a Roman emperor, by the British army were. His words were, “They’re irreplaceable. They’re history. They’re… It’s our duty as soldiers to protect them, sir. If we don’t, the enemy will use that against us (Edsel 35)”. Another example of art’s importance is seen when Walter Hancock gave a Torah to a Jewish chaplin. It was previously thought by Jewish survivors at his previous service that all Torah scrolls were destroyed. When the Jewish chaplin brought it to his next service, the scroll received great emotional response, “the people weeping, reaching for it, kissing it, overcome, with joy at the sight of the symbol of their faith (Edsel 310)”. Art protection was crucial during World War II. “This was the moment of art conservation; there was not a second to lose if the world’s cultural patrimony was going to be preserved (Edsel 27)”.
The Holocaust Memorial Museum was built to honor those who were directly affected by the Holocaust. “Never shall I forget these things, even if I am condemned to live as long as God himself. Never” Elie Wiesel (“Holocaust Encyclopedia”). While some believe the building of the museum was a political act for President Carter, others were very optimistic of the outcome. The United States Holocaust Memorial Museum was a marvelous achievement for this country and those who dedicated their time and effort to this wonderful building. This museum not only has an interesting history and opening, but exhibits inside are nothing in comparison to the statistics of this grand foundation.
Implications: The social framing of issues of historical remembrance as ontological security problems legitimates the rhetoric and means of security for handling them. Emphasising a particular remembrance of the past as the 'right remembrance' does not let the political actors break away from the old and possibly damaging narratives for both themselves and their 'others'. Desecuritisation of memory and pluralism instead of consensus in remembering in my opinion would help depoliticise some public political issues that are present in CEECs (integration policies concerning Russian minorities, immigration, language issues etc), but I also want to question if it is possible to depoliticise memory at all.
Imagine having the ability to take a screenshot of what one sees. It sounds like photographic memory, that superhuman ability one often hears about on Dateline or movies and shows. As much as the idea of saving everything one has ever perceived, storing it away like a file in a cabinet, and recalling it at a moment’s notice sounds amazing, it just isn’t plausible. Despite the stories you may have heard from friends, photographic memory is not real. This misconception is often muddled with eidetic memory. Eidetic memory is the ability to recall certain images in great detail for a certain amount of time. The key detail about eidetic memory is that these “snapshots” are not stored forever. They eventually fade over time along with the actual ability itself. In 1964, Haber and Haber, two psychologists, conducted a series of studies on eidetic memory and found a correlation between age and the brain’s capacity for eidetic memory. In their experiments, the children were exposed to a detailed picture on an easel for approximately thirty seconds. When the picture was taken away, the children scanned the blank easel in order to recall the image. They described the image in present tense, as if it was still there (Arnaudo, 2008). Haber and Haber found that although it is relatively rare, eidetic memory occurred more in children, than adults. But upon further research, it appears there is an explanation to its gradual dissipation as one matures. Eidetic memory is more commonly found in children, because as children grow, their brains develop linguistically ,functionally, and associatively.
.... As every era, every civilization leaves behind monuments and artistic culture in the form of cities and works of art, all this forms the basis for the nation’s memory of its historical heritage.