Act Of Memory Research Articles

Stimulation and connection: science and theatrical experience in Complicite’s Mnemonic

ABSTRACTFirst produced in 1999, Complicite’s Mnemonic is one of the best examples of plays to use the potential of the stage to convey complex scientific ideas. Complicite’s creative utilization of dramaturgical strategies and theatrical techniques enables the company to artistically enact the complex mechanism of simulation and connection on which the act of remembrance is based. However, performativity is not the only means by which Complicite transfers science from the laboratory to stage. The complex science behind the act of remembrance is also enacted on the stage via the play’s narrative structure and the internationalism that it advocates. The present study provides an in-depth analysis of the ways in which science is presented in the play, by detecting and discussing the mnemonic devices that not only hold the play's narrative elements together but also expand the proscenium arch to involve the audience, via shared images of exile, immigration, and displacement.

Martin Pogačar. Media Archaeologies, Micro-Archives and Storytelling: Re-Presencing the Past. London: Palgrave Macmillan, 2016.

The development of participatory culture on the internet over the last 15 years has challenged conceptualizations of many social phenomena, including society’s work with the past. Acknowledging efforts by José van Dijck, Andrew Hoskins, and others to accommodate the conceptual architecture of shared remembering to the Web 2.0 reality, the field of memory studies still remains undertheorized. Media Archaeologies, Micro-Archives and Storytelling: Re-Presencing the Past by Martin Pogačar intends to fill the conceptual void by exploring grassroots memory practices on the internet. Along with exploring digital memory, the book focuses on how online remembrance activities redefine or, in Pogačar’s words, represence the Yugoslav past. DOI: 10.25285/2078-1938-2018-10-1-139-142

As cabecinhas estourando, a prisão do cientista e o cheiro da chuva: trauma, perplexidade e esperança em Não Verás País Nenhum

Não Verás País Nenhum: entre 1976 e 1981, nascia nas páginas de Ignácio de Loyola Brandão um Brasil que, em um futuro distópico, não-mais-se-veria. Pós-catástrofe ambiental, em um momento de ápice do capitalismo e sob um regime político autoritário, o não-mais-Brasil de Loyola Brandão é apresentado por Souza, que, através de um ato de rememoração, tece uma narrativa visando responder à questão máxima “como foi possível que chegássemos aqui?”. O presente trabalho, tendo em perspectiva a noção de “leitura por Stimmung” de Hans Ulrich Gumbrecht, analisa como a narrativa de Souza apresenta o trauma, a perplexidade e a opacidade da esperança, buscando apreender, na medida do possível, algo da atmosfera do tempo e mundo de Loyola Brandão, o Brasil de fim da década de 1970 e início de 1980.

Beyond Ordinance: Pentecostals and a Sacramental Understanding of the Lord’s Supper

Most Pentecostal churches define the Lord’s Supper as an ordinance, and they practice it mainly as a cognitive act of remembrance. This article argues that this ordinance/memorialist position is inconsistent with Pentecostal belief and practice in other areas and that a more sacramental understanding of the Lord’s Supper would provide an opportunity for an intensification and revival of other Pentecostals core beliefs, particularly in the areas of pneumatology, eschatology, and ecclesiology. Despite a problematic and inconsistent history with sacramental thought, this study shows that Pentecostals inherently hold a sacramental worldview in their most distinctive belief of glossolalia, which provides a launching point for all other sacramental discussions in Pentecostal theology. The conclusion emerges that a more sacramental understanding of the Lord’s Supper within Pentecostalism will provide a unique opportunity to promote, extend, and at times revive core Pentecostal beliefs and values and reinvigorate Spirit-centered worship in Pentecostal churches.

Remembrance Diplomacy by the Mayors of Hiroshima and Nagasaki in the UN, 1976–2015

ABSTRACTThis article investigates how the successive mayors of Hiroshima and Nagasaki have worked to institutionalize their collective memory of the nuclear bombings in the United Nations since 1976. Increased institutionalization of the memory in the UN can serve to influence the value system shared by diplomats engaged with nuclear disarmament by making remembrance activities surrounding that memory obligatory. With their moving testimonies, the mayors of Hiroshima and Nagasaki have primarily promoted Hiroshima and Nagasaki remembrance in the UN by tapping into the moral authority traditionally credited to survivors or witnesses of atrocity. They have been largely successful in achieving institutionalization; however, UN institutionalization of Hiroshima and Nagasaki remembrance does not automatically transform into a global collective memory without also being accepted at the national level.

Mise-en-film da fotografia em três documentários brasileiros

Resumo Este artigo busca analisar, em três filmes da cinematografia brasileira recente, os modos como a fotografia, entendida como dispositivo de rememoração, é colocada em cena, compreendendo-a como rastro da presença de algo que já se tornou ausente. Pretende-se discutir como, ao solicitar imagens retiradas dos "álbuns de família", corrobora-se a construção de narrativas que dão a ver a biografia de homens e mulheres comuns, reais ou imaginados pelo documentário. Verificar, em metodologias distintas, o exercício político e estético do fazer cinematográfico que expõe as fragilidades e possíveis frustrações na reconstrução de algo longínquo (do ponto de vista do personagem) e desconhecido (do ponto de vista dos autores), por mais presente materialmente que esteja a imagem no ato da rememoração.

Portrait of an artist as an ex-war surgeon

Purpose To examine how art is shaped by war, outside of the official commemorative projects of the First World War. The purpose of this paper is to examine the experience of a surgeon/artist who knew first-hand the horror of industrial scale of destruction. It speculates on how his medical education and surgical knowledge in the treatment of the casualties informed his art and considers how such scientific discourses may have contributed to a new modernist language. Design/methodology/approach The double career of J.W. Power – a surgeon then an artist – provides a case study to probe such questions. The paper speculates about the connections between these different careers, and considers the implications of becoming an artist for someone who had pre-war university-training, medical expertise and experience as a war surgeon. In particular, consideration is given to how surgical knowledge and contemporary medical debates may have informed a group of later paintings. Findings A group of J.W. Power’s late paintings stand apart from his other subjects as they suggest states of physical or psychological damage. Indeed by the 1930s shell shock was recognised as a war-related psychological injury. These paintings then may not only be an act of remembrance, but also potentially a reflection on that new discourse. Research limitations/implications It remains a compelling idea that by the 1930s Power had found a modern abstract language capable of revisiting the traumatic subject of his hospital sketches. The implications of the war-time surgery on his art was delayed and remains highly ambiguous, however it invites, indeed encourages, such speculation. Originality/value The paper is the first to examine the cultural impact of the medical career of the artist J.W. Power. His medical training and experience as a war-time surgeon is shown to have been significant to his later painting, for he knew the regenerative powers of modern surgery, of how such knowledge had the power to repair and to heal.

Erinnern! Auch wenn es unmöglich ist Mieczysław Weinbergs oper Passažirka op. 97

In the search for reasons, why Weinberg’s opera Passažirka op. 97 never made it into public despite the praise it received after various hearings, one reason can be found in the way the opera deals with remembrance, especially in the context of the Holocaust. Whereas remembrance provides a mental shelter to those in need, others are denied to take refuge in memories or are even forced to confront brutal truths. Not only the libretto but also the music deals with the act of remembrance in a way, that made the opera a daring composition in the time of its origin.

Acts of Remembrance: Canadian Great War Memory and the Public Funerals of Sir Arthur Currie and Canon F.G. Scott

Canadian public memory of the Great War was initially fragmented, centered around specific locations and events, before becoming more nationalistic in the 1930s. After the outbreak of the Second World War the public memory became more distant still from the experience of 1914-1918 although specific commemorations of the war remained most meaningful to those who had been directly affected. This paper looks briefly at Armistice/Remembrance Day rituals and uses the public funerals of two Great War heroes, General Sir Arthur Currie (1933) and Canon F.G. Scott (1944), to illustrate the changes in Canadian public memory after 1918.

Apollinaire: le renouvellement de l’écriture poétique du XXe siècle by Mario Richter

and, as the ideal student of life must undergo a gradual spiritual conversion to remember man’s natural state.Likewise,Rousseau himself tries to reawaken his Vincennes epiphany concerning la bonté naturelle through the act of writing. Les confessions represents a similar exercise: exposing how man’s naturally virtuous nature can be subverted through his relationship to the world. Here, too, the act of remembrance through resuscitation is equally important. Replete with Latinate terms and detailed phonemic analysis, this impressive essay is intended for an audience with a very specialized knowledge of Rousseau’s work. Regardless, it is a colossal contribution to Rousseau studies. Christopher Newport University (VA) Michael J. Mulryan Richter, Mario. Apollinaire: le renouvellement de l’écriture poétique du XXe siècle. Paris: Garnier, 2014. ISBN 978-2-8124-2045-0. Pp. 362. 39 a. This book collects nearly forty years of scholarship on Apollinaire’s poetry. As do many scholars of his generation, Richter presents a series of scrupulous and often insightful micro-readings of poems by Apollinaire. Richter’s enterprise, however, shows more courage than others, attempting readings of challenging and apparently opaque passages often assumed to be aleatory.For instance,Richter attacks Apollinaire’s most enigmatic calligrammes,“Lettre-Océan”and“Loin du pigeonnier”in two exhaustive studies which are a highlight of his collection. In his study of “Lettre-Océan” Richter lends particular significance to the poem’s introductory statement,“je traverse la ville nez en avant et je la coupe en 2.”He eventually extrapolates from this statement and from other details of “Lettre-Océan” that the poem as a whole is structured as a “unité divisée en deux” or “unité double,” which Richter associates with the sun, according to him a central emblem in Apollinaire’s work (102–03, 138–39). While many details of Richter’s reading of this poem are as intriguing as they are subtle, his observation of the poem’s structure ultimately fails to yield substantial keys to significance of the poet’s work, because Richter’s “unité double” is described as emblematic of a series of extremely vague and confusing dualities (139). On the one hand, Richter’s subtle thought sometimes leads him to excessively tenuous ground—and he admits as much on at least one occasion (119). On the other, as in the case of his conclusions regarding “Lettre-Océan,” Richter often fails to draw solid broader conclusions from his micro-readings. Emblematic of this problem is the unifying figure to which Richter returns again and again to tie his readings together, that of Orpheus. For Richter, Apollinaire’s texts are “guidés par une idée centrale et unificatrice,” that of a “conception orphique du monde”according to which the artist is an exceptional being uniquely able to create what Apollinaire calls “nouvelles joies” (9). But this “conception of the world”(evidently an exaggeration, given the conceptually hollow nature of this notion 234 FRENCH REVIEW 89.4 Reviews 235 as Richter deploys it) is never discussed at any length, and is generally mentioned as though it went nearly without saying; its connections to, or difference from past or present notions of artistic genius is unfortunately never discussed. Readers will appreciate that Richter devotes his close readings to neglected texts, and particularly to the war poems of Calligrammes, which is a rare case in Apollinaire scholarship (only two of the book’s readings are devoted to texts from Alcools). Several literary historical excursions (on Ardengo Soffici, de Chirico and Remy de Gourmont in relation to Apollinaire) form a welcome appendix. Readers will certainly delight in Richter’s capacity for detecting the most subtle and interesting textual details. But his difficulty connecting to broader theoretical or ideological issues makes the stakes of his readings often unclear, a disconnect symptomatic of unfortunate, longstanding trends in Apollinaire studies. Virginia Tech Alexander Dickow Siess, Jürgen, Matthijs Engelberts, and Angela Moorjani, eds. Beckett in the Cultural Field/Beckett dans le champ culturel.Amsterdam: Rodopi, 2013. ISBN 97890 -420-3776-2. Pp. 282. $96. While each year’s appearance of Samuel Beckett Today/Aujourd’hui marks the series as one of the consistently most valuable forums...

Spatialising Ritual: Acts of Remembrance in Contemporary Memorial Design

This paper examines the processes of ritual performance and ritualisation in contemporary memorial design, and argues that through their design, creation, and use, memorials have the capacity to invoke ritual action that is akin to those associated with sacred space. Spatialising ritual is thereby achieved by consciously allowing for the possibility of ritual action, where memory, rather than an end product, is reframed as remembrance, a process.

Acts of Charity as Acts of Remembrance in the Book of Tobit

This article argues that charitable acts in the book of Tobit are religious acts of remembrance. On the one hand, the narrative emphasizes the practice of righteousness, the doing of what is true, and the performance of charitable deeds. On the other hand, the remembrance of God is an equally prominent motif in the story. This gives rise to the question of how remembering is linked to acts of charity. The close connection between remembering and almsgiving argues against the commonly held view that the story endorses acts of charity because such acts facilitate social cohesion and mutual support in the Diaspora. Given the theological value the narrative places on almsgiving, the book of Tobit witnesses to the emergence of a horizontal expression of service to God as part of the religious piety in Second Temple Judaism.

Rewriting, a Literary Concept for the Study of Cultural Memory: Towards a Transhistorical Approach to Cultural Remembrance

This article explores rewriting as a concept for cultural memory studies, examining the transformation of the technology of “writing again” in different historical periods. Its aim is to elucidate in what ways rewriting functions as an act of remembrance, and how this function differs in the manuscript age, the age of print and the digital age. The article discusses differences and similarities in the stability or fluidity of texts as a medium for memory, presenting rewriting as a helpful tool to see through presumed distinctions between these periods and their characteristic methods of text transmission. In particular, the article presents findings with respect to its utility to a broad range of historical source evidence, from the early medieval literature on saints’ lives to contemporary post-colonial and feminist literature. In this article, rewriting is recognized as a transformative technology of memory, carrying and transmitting memories but not without change and adaptation. Dealing explicitly with the variety and the diversity of the media that transmit cultural memory in the different historical periods, including visual media, the article shows rewriting to be a productive concept for understanding cultural memory as an act of transfer.

A Golden Silence? Acts of Remembrance and Commemoration at U.K. Football Games

This article reviews the use of minute’s silences and applause at football (soccer) games in the United Kingdom, considering why acts of remembrance take place and for whom. Examining the variation in commemoration, the article explores the extent to which these acts serve as liminal events to reinforce or diminish football fans’ sense of (“fictive”) kinship and cohesion. Uncertainty about how to conduct them, and their purpose, is complicated by the way in which they are now used for a wide variety of people, regardless of their affiliation to a club, alongside their organization and spontaneity.

Views and Reviews

Views and Reviews Natalie Alvarez "If the theatre were a verb," Anne Bogart writes in A Director Prepares, "it would be 'to remember'" (22). The bountiful body of scholarship on theatre and memory that has accumulated over the past three decades alone seems to substantiate Bogart's claim, and the views and reviews featured here contribute to this corpus by raising provocative questions about this poetic coupling. But what is an act of remembrance and how does the theatre remember? To remember is to recapture the past in a unique form of possession: it is to bring back before oneself a past event but simultaneously to negate it, to acknowledge that the past is not, in fact, now, nor as it was. We could say that remembering is as much about forgetting: a past event is reclaimed as another is displaced and recedes again into the oblivion of time (which gives another sense to Michel de Certeau's assertion that "memory is a sort of anti-museum" (108)). Remembrance, then, occupies a metaphorical space of analogy and of seeming. If theatre is remembering, as Bogart says, it is because they share the same task: to overcome the inevitable failure to restore the past. If theatre remembers, it does so as a palliative praxis, "exorcising the vertigo time" by "conquering it through repetition" (Ubersfeld 136). If theatre and remembering share the same task, they also share the same structure. As Peggy Phelan writes, "performance plunges into visibility—in a maniacally charged present—and disappears into memory, into the realm of invisibility" leaving "no visible trace" (148-49). The upcoming production of Vancouver's The Only Animal titled Sea of Sand, a site-specific show at Jericho Beach, makes elegiac use of these performative disappearing acts with set pieces made of sand that are swept away by the tide. "The beach," Kendra Fanconi writes in her lyrical treatise "Place Remembers" featured in these pages, "is an amnesiac [...] What we construct is washed away. Within a day, no trace remains." A story about an amnesiac who encounters the washed-up remains of his past life, Sea of Sand dramatizes this ebb and flow of forgetting and remembering. But the piece also invites us to think about the particular ontology of site-specific performance that complicates what we understand as the ephemerality and "tracelessness" of performance. Fanconi reminds us of how place serves as both a context and container of remembrance. "This is our version of public artwork," Fanconi writes, "the memory trace we have left on the landscape" (99). [End Page 88] These traces, like the remains washed up on the beach in Sea of Sand or the wheels of recordings in Krapp's Last Tape, save us from becoming complete amnesiacs and forgetting altogether. In an interview with Michael Hays, director Jennifer Tarver shares her insights on Beckett's play after critically acclaimed runs at Stratford in 2008 and Chicago's Goodman Theatre in 2010. Tarver considers the metaphor of Krapp's reel-to-reel player as not merely concrete proof of the past's existence. The tape plays only to be looped in on itself, winding back tightly on a spool—a movement that not only captures a quintessentially Beckettian gesture of moving "forward only to go back" (94), but also the movement of remembrance that allows the past to be reinserted in the present, only to recede once again. For Anne Ubersfeld, performance provides a means of overcoming the forgetting of memory and retrieving what has been forgotten. But if it can retrieve the past, it can also re-inflict its pain. In her examination of the domestic memory play The Walworth Farce in which family members terrorize themselves through a repeated re-enactment of the family's sordid history, Kim Solga examines the "fickle," and potentially damaging, "performatics of memory" (89). Not unlike the movement of Krapp's reel-to-reel, the memory play in The Walworth Farce "fold[s] in on itself " though here, the recounting is "an act of terror" that "consum[es] its witnesses" (90). Solga's review raises important questions about the ways in which theatre can be traumatogenic. That "performance might augment and reproduce...

Tracing slavery and abolition's routes and viewing inside the invisible: The monumental landscape and the African Atlantic

This essay analyses Lubaina Himid's satirical performance piece “What Are Monuments for? Art of the Black Diaspora: Possible Landmarks on the Urban Map” (2009) and juxtaposes it with other memorial pieces. She uses collaged additions to manipulate a glossy guidebook to the world cities of London and Paris to imagine what might have been if the contributions of African diasporan peoples to the capitals had been fully taken on board in the memorial landscape over the last three centuries. Her commentary in the same self-satisfied style of the touristic voyeur populates London and Paris's history in radical new ways. Through image and text, she subverts the imperial national narrative and makes the landscape speak its hidden and diverse history. The city's amnesia and her act of remembrance are counterpoints that create new multiple possibilities in the often monological cityscape. This essay argues that Himid is working against the apolitical notion that a city gives up its meaning without any work on the part of its citizens. The essay shows how her work is related to that of Yinka Shonibare, whose dramatic Nelson's Ship in a Bottle (2010) is the latest work to be introduced on the Trafalgar Square fourth plinth. Like Himid's work, Shonibare introduces ideas of the absence of black historical memorialisation in London. The essay discusses Himid's work in the light of recent London, Paris and Amsterdam memorials for victims of the slave trade by Michael Visocchi and Lemn Sissay, Fabrice Hyber and Erwin de Vries. These works exemplify how national memorials can be stymied by conservatism and how municipal memorials can be undermined by apathy when there is an absence of community involvement. The essay uses the author's theory of “guerrilla memorialisation” developed from theoretical paradigms around memory and memorials by Pierre Nora, Édouard Glissant, James Young, Stuart Hall and Paul Ricoeur to show that the right kind of political response to amnesia can make art that is effective and dynamic, enabling nation states, cities and localities to create memorial landscapes that are affecting, truly radical and worthy of a transatlantic abolitionist legacy.

Hors de Combat - The Falklands-Malvinas Conflict in Retrospect - by Garcia Quiroga, Diegi F. and Seear, Mike

The editors of Hors de Combat, Diergo F Garcia Quiroga (‘first in, first out', p. 3) and Mike Seear (‘last in, last out'. p. 8), fought on different sides of the Falklands/Malvinas conflict. Alongside an increasing number of veterans of war, Seear and Garcia Quiroga aim to share their experiences: to give voices to their comrades, inform civilians of the impact of warfare on combatants and inform government and military policy. Their collection is also an act of remembrance. The contributors ‘shared respect for our dead and our painful memories as we praised the courage and determination of each other’. (p. x)

Fighting a Lost Battle: The Reichsbund judischer Frontsoldaten and the Rise of National Socialism

Historical writing has long condemned the German-Jewish war veterans’ association, the Reichsbund judischer Frontsoldaten (RjF), for its apparently naive and even traitorous response to National Socialism. This article, however, argues that the RjF's actions need to be understood in the light of the confusing mixed signals that shaped the first years of National Socialist rule. The RjF, as a conservative association of war veterans, was particularly prone to misreading these developments. Remembrance activities for the war dead during the Weimar Republic had brought it into contact with other ex-servicemen's associations. After 1933, these relations, though much reduced, persisted, and this offered the RjF a glimmer of hope that it would have some influence on wider policy decisions. This mistaken belief was reinforced when the regime introduced new benefits and medals for all of Germany's war veterans. At the same time that the RjF's members were facing increasing persecution in their everyday lives, then, they were also being honoured for their war service. In suggesting that the RjF's actions were shaped by this paradoxical mixture of acceptance and exclusion, the article argues for a more inclusive history of German Jewry that is not based on an ‘ideal’ response to National Socialism, but instead embraces both conservative and liberal Jewish associations.

“We will remember them”: a mixed-method study to explore which post-funeral remembrance activities are most significant and important to bereaved people living with loss, and why those particular activities are chosen

In an increasingly secular age in which society no longer offers a code of behaviour for those who are bereaved as in Victorian times, the majority of people do not seek support from church-based rituals of remembrance. Most hospices provide religious Services of Remembrance and Thanksgiving or non-faith remembrance gatherings for families and friends, and although these are usually well attended, the average number of families represented is usually less than 20% raising the question of whether alternative support should be offered to the remaining majority of families. This study explored which post-funeral remembrance activities are most significant and important to people living with death-related loss, and why those particular activities are chosen. A total of 43 participants took part in a mixed-method study using 2 different data sets: a self-report questionnaire and semi-structured interviews. To add further contextual data to support the study, a third dataset was created when six hospice bereavement counsellors met as a Focus Group. Results indicated that although formal remembrance events are valued, informal rituals created by the bereaved are more important and significant to them. Results could be divided into four different categories: rituals to maintain a ‘direct link’, or those undertaken ‘for’ the deceased, rituals that remember the deceased within the community and those viewed as an act of remembrance. The most common reason for choosing a ritual was to keep a bond with the deceased or ensure that the deceased was remembered by others. Remembrance and ritual is personal to each individual and is dynamic, altering from day to day. Remembrance appears to be a journey made up of many small daily rituals, some of which are generic to bereaved people and some of which are highly individualistic. For the majority of people, their informal rituals are far more important than the large planned events that hospices offer because the informal rituals occur and serve to sustain people in the context of their daily lives.

‘A DESIRE UNTO DEATH’: THE DECONSTRUCTIVE THANATOLOGY OF JEAN‐LUC MARION*

One of the most persistent questions in modern theology has been that of how we can adequately acknowledge the stranger. Drawing upon the work of post‐Heideggerian theorist of language and death, Jacques Derrida, and his own creative re‐reading of Martin Heidegger and Emmanuel Levinas, the Catholic theologian and phenomenologist Jean‐Luc Marion has attempted to reconstruct what he regards as a genuinely Husserlian phenomenology. In so doing he has mapped out a phenomenology of love and a phenomenology of that divine gift as ‘being given as givenness’; that is, a condition of life itself. In fact, as I will argue, this rests on the boundary between theology and thanatology (the philosophy of our encounter with that most radical stranger, death) and in his recent reflections upon ‘saturated phenomena’ Marion has explored the interplay between traditional theological topics such as hope and death and contemporary arguments on meaning, symbol and ritual. Christian hope resides in an act of remembrance and Marion argues for the eucharist – in its recollection of the life, death and resurrection of Jesus Christ – as the site of human hope; only this crucial eucharistic move upwards and outwards can overcome the burden of Western metaphysics. It is a literary move which takes us some way towards elevating the language which we use in talking about and recognising the other beyond that of the narrow model offered to us by some commentators of Levinas and one which encourages us to look again at poetry, hymn and Scripture.