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Keywords: Memory Studies x
Cultural History (1)
Historiography (1)
American, 19th Century Literature (1)
Ethical Issues and Debates (1)
Scottish Studies (1)
Contemporary Irish Women Poets: Memory and Estrangement
Lucy Collins
This book examines the intersection of private and public spheres through the representation of memory in contemporary poetry by Irish women. It explores how memory shapes creativity in the work of ... More
This book examines the intersection of private and public spheres through the representation of memory in contemporary poetry by Irish women. It explores how memory shapes creativity in the work of well-known poets such as Eavan Boland, Eiléan Ní Chuilleanáin and Medbh McGuckian as well as in that of an exciting group of younger poets. Literary memory highlights the relationship between poet and reader, as well as the larger critical contexts that support or challenge the production of creative work. This book analyses, for the first time, the complex responses to the past recorded by contemporary women poets in Ireland and the implications these have for the concept of a national tradition.Less
Contemporary Irish Women Poets : Memory and Estrangement
This book examines the intersection of private and public spheres through the representation of memory in contemporary poetry by Irish women. It explores how memory shapes creativity in the work of well-known poets such as Eavan Boland, Eiléan Ní Chuilleanáin and Medbh McGuckian as well as in that of an exciting group of younger poets. Literary memory highlights the relationship between poet and reader, as well as the larger critical contexts that support or challenge the production of creative work. This book analyses, for the first time, the complex responses to the past recorded by contemporary women poets in Ireland and the implications these have for the concept of a national tradition.
Keywords: Contemporary Irish Poetry, Irish Women Poets, Memory Studies, Irish Literary Tradition, Poetry and Poetics, Subjectivity in Poetry, Intertextuality in Poetry
Memory, Estrangement and the Poetic Text
in Contemporary Irish Women Poets: Memory and Estrangement
This introduction explores the complex relationship between Irish women poets and the national tradition and examines the role of memory in shaping perceptions of individual subjectivity and literary ... More
This introduction explores the complex relationship between Irish women poets and the national tradition and examines the role of memory in shaping perceptions of individual subjectivity and literary community. Both public and private pasts are the focus of intense scrutiny by women poets in the interrogation of their position within creative and critical fields. Here the many implications of this personal-political dynamic are teased out. This debate encompasses both the cultural and linguistic consequences of the processes of individual and collective memory, and examines the relationship between poetry's concern with subjectivity and with its potential for political engagement.Less
This introduction explores the complex relationship between Irish women poets and the national tradition and examines the role of memory in shaping perceptions of individual subjectivity and literary community. Both public and private pasts are the focus of intense scrutiny by women poets in the interrogation of their position within creative and critical fields. Here the many implications of this personal-political dynamic are teased out. This debate encompasses both the cultural and linguistic consequences of the processes of individual and collective memory, and examines the relationship between poetry's concern with subjectivity and with its potential for political engagement.
Memory Studies and Media Studies
Joanne Garde-Hansen
in Media and Memory
Society and Culture, Media Studies
This chapter will offer a critical introduction to the key issues, debates and ideas within memory studies research. It is not always clear from existing literature how and why memory studies ... More
This chapter will offer a critical introduction to the key issues, debates and ideas within memory studies research. It is not always clear from existing literature how and why memory studies (ranging from the sociological to the cognitive science approaches) should synthesise with media studies. The connections will be made explicit in this chapter. Drawing together foundational theories of memory from for example Halbwachs (1980), Nora (1989), Lowenthal (1996), Olick (1999), Bergson (2004), Ricoeur (2006) and Connerton (2008), the chapter will consider such theorisations of history, remembering, forgetting, amnesia, flashback, archive and nostalgia with a view to making very clear the connections and disconnections between these lines of thoughts and media studies.Less
This chapter will offer a critical introduction to the key issues, debates and ideas within memory studies research. It is not always clear from existing literature how and why memory studies (ranging from the sociological to the cognitive science approaches) should synthesise with media studies. The connections will be made explicit in this chapter. Drawing together foundational theories of memory from for example Halbwachs (1980), Nora (1989), Lowenthal (1996), Olick (1999), Bergson (2004), Ricoeur (2006) and Connerton (2008), the chapter will consider such theorisations of history, remembering, forgetting, amnesia, flashback, archive and nostalgia with a view to making very clear the connections and disconnections between these lines of thoughts and media studies.
Keywords: Memory Studies, Media Studies, Sociology of Memory
Death and Security: Memory and Mortality at the Bombsite
Charlotte Heath-Kelly
Society and Culture, Ethical Issues and Debates
Death is simultaneously silent, and very loud, in political life. Politicians and media scream about potential threats lurking behind every corner, but academic discourse often neglects mortality. ... More
Death is simultaneously silent, and very loud, in political life. Politicians and media scream about potential threats lurking behind every corner, but academic discourse often neglects mortality. Life is everywhere in theorisation of security, but death is nowhere.Making a bold intervention into the Critical Security Studies literature, this book explores the ontological relationship between mortality and security after the Death of God – arguing that security emerged in response to the removal of promises to immortal salvation. Combining the mortality theories of Heidegger and Bauman with literature from the sociology of death, Heath-Kelly shows how security is a response to the death anxiety implicit within the human condition.The book explores the theoretical literature on mortality before undertaking a comparative exploration of the memorialisation of four prominent post-terrorist sites: the World Trade Center in New York, the Bali bombsite, the London bombings and the Norwegian sites attacked by Anders Breivik. By interviewing the architects and designers of these reconstruction projects, Heath-Kelly shows that practices of memorialization are a retrospective security endeavour – they conceal and re-narrate the traumatic incursion of death. Disaster recovery is replete with security practices that return mortality to its sublimated position and remove the disruption posed by mortality to political authority.The book will be of significant interest to academics and postgraduates working in the fields of Critical Security Studies, Memory Studies and International Politics.Less
Death and Security : Memory and Mortality at the Bombsite
Death is simultaneously silent, and very loud, in political life. Politicians and media scream about potential threats lurking behind every corner, but academic discourse often neglects mortality. Life is everywhere in theorisation of security, but death is nowhere.Making a bold intervention into the Critical Security Studies literature, this book explores the ontological relationship between mortality and security after the Death of God – arguing that security emerged in response to the removal of promises to immortal salvation. Combining the mortality theories of Heidegger and Bauman with literature from the sociology of death, Heath-Kelly shows how security is a response to the death anxiety implicit within the human condition.The book explores the theoretical literature on mortality before undertaking a comparative exploration of the memorialisation of four prominent post-terrorist sites: the World Trade Center in New York, the Bali bombsite, the London bombings and the Norwegian sites attacked by Anders Breivik. By interviewing the architects and designers of these reconstruction projects, Heath-Kelly shows that practices of memorialization are a retrospective security endeavour – they conceal and re-narrate the traumatic incursion of death. Disaster recovery is replete with security practices that return mortality to its sublimated position and remove the disruption posed by mortality to political authority.The book will be of significant interest to academics and postgraduates working in the fields of Critical Security Studies, Memory Studies and International Politics.
Keywords: Security, Mortality, Death, Memorialisation, Memory Studies, Critical Security Studies, Sociology of Death, Terrorist, Disaster Recovery, Death of God
Inventing George Whitefield
Jessica M. Parr
in Inventing George Whitefield: Race, Revivalism, and the Making of a Religious Icon
University Press of Mississippi
10.14325/mississippi/9781628461985.003.0006
History, American History: 19th Century
Whitefield began his missionary career believing that he was a reformer in conversation with the Church of England about religious toleration. By the time Whitefield died in September 1770, he was ... More
Whitefield began his missionary career believing that he was a reformer in conversation with the Church of England about religious toleration. By the time Whitefield died in September 1770, he was for most unrecognizable as an Anglican minister. The itinerant and expansive nature of his career meant that he left no permanent ties to any locality or denomination. This made him a powerful religious icon that could be "claimed" by a number of causes.Less
Whitefield began his missionary career believing that he was a reformer in conversation with the Church of England about religious toleration. By the time Whitefield died in September 1770, he was for most unrecognizable as an Anglican minister. The itinerant and expansive nature of his career meant that he left no permanent ties to any locality or denomination. This made him a powerful religious icon that could be "claimed" by a number of causes.
Keywords: George Whitefield, Funeral Customs, Memory Studies, American Revolution, Old South Presbyterian Church
Introduction: Sites of Oblivion
Guy Beiner
in Forgetful Remembrance: Social Forgetting and Vernacular Historiography of a Rebellion in Ulster
History, Cultural History, Historiography
Questioning the inevitability of an inherent opposition between myth and history opens possibilities for rethinking our engagement with the past through the lens of 'mythistory'. In the same vein, ... More
Questioning the inevitability of an inherent opposition between myth and history opens possibilities for rethinking our engagement with the past through the lens of 'mythistory'. In the same vein, the concept of 'vernacular historiography' is introduced in relation to a number of related historiographical developments, namely: living history, history from below, people's history, subaltern history, democratic history, ethnohistory, popular history, public history, applied history, everyday history, shared history, folk history, grass-roots history, as well as local and provincial history. In turn, the study of forgetting and of lieu d'oubli is identified as a new direction for advancing the field of Memory Studies and moving beyond our current understanding of lieux de mémoire. In particular, 'social forgetting', whereby communities try to supress recollections of inconvenient episodes in their past, is conceptualized as thriving on tensions between public reticence and muted remembrance in private. Finally, charting the forgetful remembrance of the 1798 rebellion in Ulster—known locally as 'the Turn-Out'—is presented as an illuminating case study for coming to terms with social forgetting and vernacular historiography.Less
Introduction : Sites of Oblivion
Questioning the inevitability of an inherent opposition between myth and history opens possibilities for rethinking our engagement with the past through the lens of 'mythistory'. In the same vein, the concept of 'vernacular historiography' is introduced in relation to a number of related historiographical developments, namely: living history, history from below, people's history, subaltern history, democratic history, ethnohistory, popular history, public history, applied history, everyday history, shared history, folk history, grass-roots history, as well as local and provincial history. In turn, the study of forgetting and of lieu d'oubli is identified as a new direction for advancing the field of Memory Studies and moving beyond our current understanding of lieux de mémoire. In particular, 'social forgetting', whereby communities try to supress recollections of inconvenient episodes in their past, is conceptualized as thriving on tensions between public reticence and muted remembrance in private. Finally, charting the forgetful remembrance of the 1798 rebellion in Ulster—known locally as 'the Turn-Out'—is presented as an illuminating case study for coming to terms with social forgetting and vernacular historiography.
Keywords: historiography, Memory Studies, Irish Studies, oral history, folklore, Subaltern studies, cultural and social memory, forgetting, modern Ireland
Excavating the Anarchive: An Archeology of the Corpus
Lia Brozgal
in Absent the Archive: Cultural Traces of a Massacre in Paris, 17 October 1961
Literature, Film, Media, and Cultural Studies
Chapter 1 forms the essential foundation of the book, insofar as it names, describes, and thematises the contents of the anarchive—the cultural productions that have represented, directly or ... More
Chapter 1 forms the essential foundation of the book, insofar as it names, describes, and thematises the contents of the anarchive—the cultural productions that have represented, directly or obliquely, the stories of October 17. While anarchive is presented in 3 "waves"--the original scene (1961-1963); the return to the scene (1983-1999); and the post-Papon anarchive (1999-)—the chapter nonetheless seeks to tease out the limits of periodization, calling attention to continuities over time. Chapter 1 also looks at trends and problems within the anarchive, investigating, in particular: the "turn," in the 3rd wave, to visual representation and performance; debates about demands for historical accuracy and truth in fiction; and the anarchive's relationship to scholarship on cultural production and memory. This analysis is also infused with a concern for epi-phenomenal and meta-textual matters, how issues of circulation, translation, marketing, authorial status, genre, and medium bear upon interpretation.Less
Excavating the Anarchive : An Archeology of the Corpus
Chapter 1 forms the essential foundation of the book, insofar as it names, describes, and thematises the contents of the anarchive—the cultural productions that have represented, directly or obliquely, the stories of October 17. While anarchive is presented in 3 "waves"--the original scene (1961-1963); the return to the scene (1983-1999); and the post-Papon anarchive (1999-)—the chapter nonetheless seeks to tease out the limits of periodization, calling attention to continuities over time. Chapter 1 also looks at trends and problems within the anarchive, investigating, in particular: the "turn," in the 3rd wave, to visual representation and performance; debates about demands for historical accuracy and truth in fiction; and the anarchive's relationship to scholarship on cultural production and memory. This analysis is also infused with a concern for epi-phenomenal and meta-textual matters, how issues of circulation, translation, marketing, authorial status, genre, and medium bear upon interpretation.
Keywords: Periodization, Literature, Cinema, Theatre, Street art, Papon affair, Media, Performance, Memory Studies
Memory Drawn into the Present: Waltz with Bashir and Animated Documentary
in Drawn from Life: Issues and Themes in Animated Documentary Cinema
The international success of Ari Folman's Waltz with Bashir (2008) saw this work routinely defined and discussed as the first feature-length example of animated documentary cinema. This chapter ... More
The international success of Ari Folman's Waltz with Bashir (2008) saw this work routinely defined and discussed as the first feature-length example of animated documentary cinema. This chapter analyses Folman's film and the multidisciplinary body of scholarly response that it has provoked. Much response to Folman's film evaluates it in isolation and speculates more ambitiously on animated documentary's possible aesthetic, conceptual and ethical strengths and weaknesses as a distinctive mode of audio-visual practice. This chapter's analysis of Folman's film likewise identifies defining formal and thematic characteristics that drive the contemporary turn towards animated documentary filmmaking more generally. This chapter also identifies several main evolving concepts and debates that characterise animated documentary scholarship as a distinctive subset of Animation Studies and Film Studies. Finally, this chapter also identifies other academic disciplines – such as Memory Studies and Trauma Studies – within which significant discussion of animated documentary is also taking place.Less
The international success of Ari Folman's Waltz with Bashir (2008) saw this work routinely defined and discussed as the first feature-length example of animated documentary cinema. This chapter analyses Folman's film and the multidisciplinary body of scholarly response that it has provoked. Much response to Folman's film evaluates it in isolation and speculates more ambitiously on animated documentary's possible aesthetic, conceptual and ethical strengths and weaknesses as a distinctive mode of audio-visual practice. This chapter's analysis of Folman's film likewise identifies defining formal and thematic characteristics that drive the contemporary turn towards animated documentary filmmaking more generally. This chapter also identifies several main evolving concepts and debates that characterise animated documentary scholarship as a distinctive subset of Animation Studies and Film Studies. Finally, this chapter also identifies other academic disciplines – such as Memory Studies and Trauma Studies – within which significant discussion of animated documentary is also taking place.
Keywords: animated documentary, Animation Studies, Ari Folman, audio-visual practice, Film Studies, Memory Studies, Trauma Studies, Waltz with Bashir (2008)
Sensational Internationalism: The Paris Commune and the Remapping of American Memory in the Long Nineteenth Century
J. Michelle Coghlan
Literature, American, 19th Century Literature
In refocusing attention on the Paris Commune as a key event in American political and cultural memory, Sensational Internationalism radically changes our understanding of the relationship between ... More
In refocusing attention on the Paris Commune as a key event in American political and cultural memory, Sensational Internationalism radically changes our understanding of the relationship between France and the United States in the long nineteenth century. It offers fascinating, remarkably accessible readings of a range of literary works, from periodical poetry and boys' adventure fiction to radical pulp and the writings of Henry James, as well as a rich analysis of visual, print, and performance culture, from post-bellum illustrated weeklies and panoramas to agit-prop pamphlets and Coney Island pyrotechnic shows. Throughout, it uncovers how a foreign revolution came back to life as a domestic commodity, and why for decades another nation's memory came to feel so much our own. This book will speak to readers looking to understand the affective, cultural, and aesthetic afterlives of revolt and revolution pre-and-post Occupy Wall Street, as well as those interested in space, gender, performance, and transatlantic print culture.Less
Sensational Internationalism : The Paris Commune and the Remapping of American Memory in the Long Nineteenth Century
In refocusing attention on the Paris Commune as a key event in American political and cultural memory, Sensational Internationalism radically changes our understanding of the relationship between France and the United States in the long nineteenth century. It offers fascinating, remarkably accessible readings of a range of literary works, from periodical poetry and boys' adventure fiction to radical pulp and the writings of Henry James, as well as a rich analysis of visual, print, and performance culture, from post-bellum illustrated weeklies and panoramas to agit-prop pamphlets and Coney Island pyrotechnic shows. Throughout, it uncovers how a foreign revolution came back to life as a domestic commodity, and why for decades another nation's memory came to feel so much our own. This book will speak to readers looking to understand the affective, cultural, and aesthetic afterlives of revolt and revolution pre-and-post Occupy Wall Street, as well as those interested in space, gender, performance, and transatlantic print culture.
Keywords: Revolution, Sensation, International feeling, Radical Culture, Memory Studies, Gender Studies, Performance Studies, Nineteenth-Century Print and Visual Culture, Paris Commune
A Transnational Icon
Following Whitefield's death and entombment (and some would say enshrinement) in the Old South Presbyterian Church in Newburyport, MA, his followers worked quickly to preserve his memory. They ... More
Following Whitefield's death and entombment (and some would say enshrinement) in the Old South Presbyterian Church in Newburyport, MA, his followers worked quickly to preserve his memory. They republished many of his writings and sermons. They printed memoirs. They perpetuated a legacy that continued to defy denominational and geographic boundaries. His tomb became a sight of pilgrimage, including ritualized handling of his skull and removal of trophies from his coffin. In many ways, Whitefield became more powerful as a symbol in death than he was in life.Less
Following Whitefield's death and entombment (and some would say enshrinement) in the Old South Presbyterian Church in Newburyport, MA, his followers worked quickly to preserve his memory. They republished many of his writings and sermons. They printed memoirs. They perpetuated a legacy that continued to defy denominational and geographic boundaries. His tomb became a sight of pilgrimage, including ritualized handling of his skull and removal of trophies from his coffin. In many ways, Whitefield became more powerful as a symbol in death than he was in life.
Keywords: Memory Studies, Print Culture, Abolitionism, Religious Pluralism, Religious Liberty
Vona Groarke: Memory and Materiality
The relationship between the speaking subject and the material world has been an important one for Vona Groarke – her poetic enquiries are always aware of that subject's location in time and space, ... More
The relationship between the speaking subject and the material world has been an important one for Vona Groarke – her poetic enquiries are always aware of that subject's location in time and space, their moment in history. Though many of her poems have an identifiably Irish setting, Groarke does not see herself as an 'Irish poet' and resists a single cultural location as an interpretative centre of the poem. This chapter explores her work since Juniper Street (2006), analysing her changing representation of time as a means to explore the self's relation to the other. The changing dynamics of home and family are reflected in Groarke's increasing versatility of form, and in the self-reflexive nature of her recent work. As well as mediating between present and past, these poems also offer important insights into Groarke's negotiation of the moment of experience and its assimilation in the finished poem.Less
Vona Groarke : Memory and Materiality
The relationship between the speaking subject and the material world has been an important one for Vona Groarke – her poetic enquiries are always aware of that subject's location in time and space, their moment in history. Though many of her poems have an identifiably Irish setting, Groarke does not see herself as an 'Irish poet' and resists a single cultural location as an interpretative centre of the poem. This chapter explores her work since Juniper Street (2006), analysing her changing representation of time as a means to explore the self's relation to the other. The changing dynamics of home and family are reflected in Groarke's increasing versatility of form, and in the self-reflexive nature of her recent work. As well as mediating between present and past, these poems also offer important insights into Groarke's negotiation of the moment of experience and its assimilation in the finished poem.
Keywords: Vona Groarke, Subjectivity in Poetry, Material Culture, Memory Studies, Poetry and Poetics, Subjectivity in Poetry
Catherine Walsh: A Poetics of Flux
Catherine Walsh is the most significant woman amongst Irish avant-garde poets, best known for her long poems in experimental form. Throughout her career to date she has engaged with the intersection ... More
Catherine Walsh is the most significant woman amongst Irish avant-garde poets, best known for her long poems in experimental form. Throughout her career to date she has engaged with the intersection between spatial and temporal concerns, and their impact on the individual human subject. Her treatment of memory emphasises its fragmented and provisional nature, and the challenges to language in engaging with the past. This chapter is principally concerned with two of her works – Idir Eatortha (1996) and City West (2000) – in which innovations of form challenge the notion of coherent subjectivity. In both these books the impression of being on the margins of definable space is powerfully communicated. The relationship between experiential and poetic space is brought to bear here on notions of continuity, as they relate to the construction of shared memory and to the evolution of poetry traditions.Less
Catherine Walsh : A Poetics of Flux
Catherine Walsh is the most significant woman amongst Irish avant-garde poets, best known for her long poems in experimental form. Throughout her career to date she has engaged with the intersection between spatial and temporal concerns, and their impact on the individual human subject. Her treatment of memory emphasises its fragmented and provisional nature, and the challenges to language in engaging with the past. This chapter is principally concerned with two of her works – Idir Eatortha (1996) and City West (2000) – in which innovations of form challenge the notion of coherent subjectivity. In both these books the impression of being on the margins of definable space is powerfully communicated. The relationship between experiential and poetic space is brought to bear here on notions of continuity, as they relate to the construction of shared memory and to the evolution of poetry traditions.
Keywords: Catherine Walsh, Avant Garde Poetry, Subjectivity in Poetry, Memory Studies, Poetry and Poetics
Gold Rush Societies and Migrant Networks in the Tasman World
Daniel Davy
Society and Culture, Scottish Studies
This book creatively explores the gold rushes in the Tasman World through an examination of the Otago gold rushes. It adopts a new methodology to reveal how transnational connections and local social ... More
This book creatively explores the gold rushes in the Tasman World through an examination of the Otago gold rushes. It adopts a new methodology to reveal how transnational connections and local social and natural environments shaped colonial identities. The first monograph-length study on the Otago gold rushes and their place in the histories of British and Irish migration, it further increases our understanding of the British World by grounding transnational networks in the local ecologies, geologies and weather patterns which shaped local social structures and profoundly affected migrants' relationships to loved ones in Britain, Ireland and elsewhere. In doing so, Gold Rush Societies evolves as neither a local nor a transnational history but one which blends the two into a single study and offers fresh perspectives on each in the process.Less
This book creatively explores the gold rushes in the Tasman World through an examination of the Otago gold rushes. It adopts a new methodology to reveal how transnational connections and local social and natural environments shaped colonial identities. The first monograph-length study on the Otago gold rushes and their place in the histories of British and Irish migration, it further increases our understanding of the British World by grounding transnational networks in the local ecologies, geologies and weather patterns which shaped local social structures and profoundly affected migrants' relationships to loved ones in Britain, Ireland and elsewhere. In doing so, Gold Rush Societies evolves as neither a local nor a transnational history but one which blends the two into a single study and offers fresh perspectives on each in the process.
Keywords: Gold rush, Tasman, Migration, Ecologies, Environmental History, Space and Place, Memory Studies, Migrant correspondence, New Zealand, Migrant Networks
The relationship between the Irish woman poet and history has changed significantly in the work produced by the new generation of writers, emerging since the 1980s. To conclude this exploration of ... More
The relationship between the Irish woman poet and history has changed significantly in the work produced by the new generation of writers, emerging since the 1980s. To conclude this exploration of the role of memory in the work of contemporary Irish women poets, the idea of intergenerational relationships is directly examined. Using the work of Sara Berkeley, Leontia Flynn, Sinéad Morrissey and Leanne O'Sullivan, this chapter considers the loss and the making of memory as it is represented in these relationships, which are at once deeply personal but also linked to the formation of the creative self within a literary tradition. For this younger generation, concepts of Irish identity are greatly expanded but this increasingly globalised perspective complicates, rather than eradicates, the preoccupation with the past.Less
The relationship between the Irish woman poet and history has changed significantly in the work produced by the new generation of writers, emerging since the 1980s. To conclude this exploration of the role of memory in the work of contemporary Irish women poets, the idea of intergenerational relationships is directly examined. Using the work of Sara Berkeley, Leontia Flynn, Sinéad Morrissey and Leanne O'Sullivan, this chapter considers the loss and the making of memory as it is represented in these relationships, which are at once deeply personal but also linked to the formation of the creative self within a literary tradition. For this younger generation, concepts of Irish identity are greatly expanded but this increasingly globalised perspective complicates, rather than eradicates, the preoccupation with the past.
Keywords: Contemporary Irish Poetry, Irish Women Poets, Memory Studies, Sara Berkeley, Leontia Flynn, Sinéad Morrissey, Leanne O'Sullivan, Maternity in Poetry, Subjectivity in Poetry
Between Empires: Spanish Immigrants in the United States (1868–1945)
James D. Fernández
in Transatlantic Studies: Latin America, Iberia, and Africa
Society and Culture, Latin American Studies
In the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, tens of thousands of Spanish peasants, seamen, and workers emigrated to the United States, and settled in an archipelago of tight-knit enclaves ... More
In the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, tens of thousands of Spanish peasants, seamen, and workers emigrated to the United States, and settled in an archipelago of tight-knit enclaves that dotted the entire country from Barre, Vermont to Monterey, California, and from Boise, Idaho, to Tampa, Florida. Neither friars nor conquistadors, those tens of thousands of immigrants from Spain who ended up in the United States represent just a tiny percentage of the millions of Spaniards who, in those same years, crossed the Atlantic, most with the goal of settling in various points of the Spanish-speaking Americas. Herein lies one of the best-kept demographic secrets of the American hemisphere: the massive presence of Spaniards in the Americas –South, Central and North– is largely a post-imperial phenomenon. For every Spanish friar or explorer from Spain's Age of Empire who is commemorated by a statue or a street name in the United States, there would arrive, during the Age of Immigration, thousands of Spanish seamen, nannies, cigar-makers, canners, miners, shopkeepers, sheepherders and steelworkers. But because their stories do not easily fit into any conventional national narrative in either country, these working-class Spaniards are, for the most part, absent from standard historical accounts of both Spanish emigration and US immigration. They are, as it were, invisible immigrants.Less
In the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, tens of thousands of Spanish peasants, seamen, and workers emigrated to the United States, and settled in an archipelago of tight-knit enclaves that dotted the entire country from Barre, Vermont to Monterey, California, and from Boise, Idaho, to Tampa, Florida. Neither friars nor conquistadors, those tens of thousands of immigrants from Spain who ended up in the United States represent just a tiny percentage of the millions of Spaniards who, in those same years, crossed the Atlantic, most with the goal of settling in various points of the Spanish-speaking Americas. Herein lies one of the best-kept demographic secrets of the American hemisphere: the massive presence of Spaniards in the Americas –South, Central and North– is largely a post-imperial phenomenon. For every Spanish friar or explorer from Spain's Age of Empire who is commemorated by a statue or a street name in the United States, there would arrive, during the Age of Immigration, thousands of Spanish seamen, nannies, cigar-makers, canners, miners, shopkeepers, sheepherders and steelworkers. But because their stories do not easily fit into any conventional national narrative in either country, these working-class Spaniards are, for the most part, absent from standard historical accounts of both Spanish emigration and US immigration. They are, as it were, invisible immigrants.
Keywords: Spanish immigrants in the US, Post-imperial immigration, Memory Studies, Exile, Spanish Civil War, Working-class invisibility, Spanish diaspora, Spanishness, Family albums, Archival work
"He could tell you things! Things I've tried to forget; things I never did know": Conrad, Sebald and spectres of imperialism
Alison Garden
in The Literary Afterlives of Roger Casement, 1899-2016
Literature, Criticism/Theory
The relationship between Casement and Conrad has long fascinated many, with W.G. Sebald fictionalising their meeting in The Rings of Saturn (1998) as part of the text's engagement with Conrad's ... More
The relationship between Casement and Conrad has long fascinated many, with W.G. Sebald fictionalising their meeting in The Rings of Saturn (1998) as part of the text's engagement with Conrad's novella and archival trail. For Sebald, Casement galvanises a set of interlinked preoccupations: the catastrophes of modernity, state-sponsored violence, the fragility of memory and the unavoidable spectre of history. Tracing the dialogue between these two works - embodied by Casement's ghost - enables us to read the metamodernist aesthetics of Sebald as a form of ghostly intertextual memory, indicative of the post-imperial debris that continues to haunt our contemporary moment. Reading Heart of Darkness through The Rings of Saturn opens up both texts in enabling, fruitful ways; just as reading Casement through Conrad's archive provides us with novel ways of reading the two men and Conrad's work.Less
"He could tell you things! Things I've tried to forget; things I never did know" : Conrad, Sebald and spectres of imperialism
The relationship between Casement and Conrad has long fascinated many, with W.G. Sebald fictionalising their meeting in The Rings of Saturn (1998) as part of the text's engagement with Conrad's novella and archival trail. For Sebald, Casement galvanises a set of interlinked preoccupations: the catastrophes of modernity, state-sponsored violence, the fragility of memory and the unavoidable spectre of history. Tracing the dialogue between these two works - embodied by Casement's ghost - enables us to read the metamodernist aesthetics of Sebald as a form of ghostly intertextual memory, indicative of the post-imperial debris that continues to haunt our contemporary moment. Reading Heart of Darkness through The Rings of Saturn opens up both texts in enabling, fruitful ways; just as reading Casement through Conrad's archive provides us with novel ways of reading the two men and Conrad's work.
Keywords: Heart of Darkness, The Rings of Saturn, Joseph Conrad, W.G. Sebald, The Congo Free State, Metamodernism, Memory Studies, Imperial literature, Postcolonial literature