Postnational Memory, Peace and War: Making Pasts Beyond Borders

Description

This book examines the phenomenon of modern memory as a reaction to total war, an aspiration to truth-seeking provoked by the independent forces of modern war and collective violence which is transnational, or postnational, in character. Using examples from prose and poetry, film and theatre, painting and photography, and music and the popular arts, the author traces a narrative path through the events of the twentieth century, defining the tradition of modern memory in terms of its essentially anti-militaristic, anti-war character, as expressed in the manner in which it represents recalled violence and atrocity. Through a series of thematic discussions of two world wars, the Shoah, urbicide and nuclear weapons, Postnational Memory explores the formation of transnational memory, drawing on examples from industrialized societies, with a focus on memory of real events and their reproduction in literature and the arts, often including personal recollections that link the self to the represented past. As such, by asking how the concept of modern memory is constructed through the victims of war and genocide, the book constitutes an alternative to national memories and hegemonic, militarist or ethnocentric histories. Surveying the emergence of new, transnational forms of remembering the past, it will appeal to students and scholars of sociology, memory studies and peace studies, as well as those working in disciplines such as modern and international history, cultural studies and military studies. Cover Half Title Series Page Title Page Copyright Page Dedication Table of Contents List of images Preface: ways of remembering and the role of text PART 1: Memory and counter-memory Prologue: a modern memory? Vignette: Being there – a Cotswold vignette ‘Adlestrop’ Introduction: defining ‘modern memory’ 1. A memorable engagement Vignette: Kennington at Laventie Vignette: ‘The Bradford Pals’ – a community of loss 2. ‘The great sunk silences’: the nature of forgetting and the unbearable pain of recall 3. Memory’s new voice 4. Generations of memory: war booms and memory booms 5. Strange meetings and cosmopolitan sympathies Vignette: Eugen Gehweiler Vignette: An espresso memory – a coffee moment recalled PART 2: Against forgetting – retrieving a borderless past 6. Memory after the ‘Shoah’ Vignette: Being there – Poland, 1988–1996 7. Airwar and memory Vignette: A silence Vignette: ‘Bambi’ and Belsen: Memories from the Camps PART 3: Re-writing memory 8. Beyond amnesia: breaking silences Vignette: Benicàssim – raising the ghosts of Castillon de la Plana 9. A testimony of place Vignette: Walking the fields of memory: Germany 1994; France and Flanders, 1988 and 1992 10. Beyond militarism? Peace and war in civil memory Vignette: Oh! What a Lovely War! Vignette: A mass of memoried flowers – poppies and ploughboys 11. Postnational memory and national conflict: Remembrance in a globalizing society PART 4: Towards a history of modern memory 12. Towards a history of modern memory I: The work of the precursors 13. Towards a history of modern memory II: a memory–work timeline 14. The past in the present – Metamorphosen Vignette: Yevgeny Khaldei – the malleability of memory and the Reichstag photo, 1945 Acknowledgements Image credits List of abbreviations Bibliography Filmography Index