Researching Memory in Early Modern Studies

This essay pursues the study of early modern memory across a chronologically, conceptually and thematically broad canvas in order to address key questions about the historicity of memory and the methodologies of memory studies. First, what is the value for our understanding of early modern memory practices of transporting the methodologies of contemporary memory studies backwards, using them to study the memorial culture of a time before living memory? Second, what happens to the cross-disciplinary project of memory studies when it is taken to a distant period, one that had its own highly self-conscious and much debated cultures of remembering? Drawing on evidence and debates from a range of disciplinary locations, but primarily focusing on literary and historical studies, the essay interrogates crucial differences and commonalities between memory studies and early modern studies

Memory, history, nation : contested pasts /

Originally published: Contested pasts. New York : Routledge, 2003.Includes bibliographical references and index

Stored virtue : memory, the body and the evolutionary museum

There is a strong tendency, in current critiques of anti-essentialist conceptions of race and identity, to ascribe racial identity to a shared memory rooted in the ancestral history of the body. Figurations of memory that locate it within the body inevitably imply a devaluation of other forms of remembering as inauthentic, and therefore politically debased, coinage. John Frow identifies the consequences of this in the terms used by Pierre Nora to contrast history and memory. For Nora ‘true memory’ is that which has ‘taken refuge in gestures and habits, in skills passed down by unspoken traditions, in the body’s inherent self-knowledge, in unstudied reflexes and ingrained memories’. By contrast, Frow argues that the passage of memory through history renders it ‘archival’ in its reliance on the materiality of writing and representation. In thus being severed from any collective psychologically or bodily grounded mechanisms of transmission that might vouchsafe its rootedness in a connected past, history as memory can only offer what - viewed from the perspective Nora advocates - Frow calls ‘the empty traces of a lost plenitude’. A similar devaluation of history is involved, Frow argues, whenever its evidently fabricated nature is contrasted with forms of remembering that are said to arise out of forms of collective memory that function organically as a part of the social tissue of specific groups or movements. The opposition that is at work here is profoundly disabling. In automatically preferring forms of remembering that are inscribed in the body or in the organic consciousness of a particular collectivity, these approaches diminish the political significance that ought properly to attach to the analysis of the different institutional and technological forms in which memory is socially organised. The following questions also arise: what are the mechanisms, the mnemonics, through which organicist conceptions of memory are said to operate? And what are the technological conditions of these mnemonics? With questions of this kind in mind, I argue in what follows that the bodily mnemonics echoed in the formulations of contemporary theorists like Pierre Nora derive their originating rationale and intelligibility from the practices of evolutionary museums. My purpose is to deny the conditions that organicist accounts of memory presuppose by showing how those accounts depend on precisely the kinds of technological and archival conditions which serve as the degraded counterpoint to their own claims to authenticity. For it was only in relation to the archival form of the evolutionary museum - and associated technical and representational devices - that a practice of memory carried in the body was made both thinkable and do-able

A Cultural History of Memory in the Early Modern Age

A cultural history of memory, as pursued by this book set, is both a timely and intriguing editorial enterprise. Moreover, the period under investigation here offers particularly rewarding documentation and research questions to stimulate the appetite of writers and readers alike, especially if it be taken into account how extensively memory studies have so far been focused on modern and contemporary periods

Littérature et Société en Asie centrale

La littérature de ce que l’on a convenu d’appeler « l’Asie centrale » a été composée dans une grande variété de langages sur un vaste territoire qui inclut non seulement les cinq républiques de l’ex-Union soviétique (Turkménistan, Ouzbékistan, Kazakhstan, Kirghizstan, Tadjikistan), mais aussi l’Azerbaïdjan, l’Afghanistan, la Mongolie, le Tibet, le Népal, le Bhoutan, ainsi que certaines régions de la Russie et de la Chine (la région autonome ouïgoure du Xinjiang pour ne citer qu’elle). Inutile de dire que les œuvres produites dans ce vaste ensemble forment une somme considérable de matériaux, à la fois écrits et oraux, qui auraient peut-être requis davantage d’attention que celle que l’on leur a accordée jusqu’ici, au moins dans les recherches réalisées en Occident. Compte tenu du déficit de publications dans ce domaine, le fait que les Cahiers d’Asie centrale consacrent un numéro à ce sujet mérite toute notre attention. Mais ce volume est certainement plus qu’une contribution à l’étude de la littérature centrasiatique. En se concentrant sur les défis sociétaux tels qu’ils se reflètent dans la production littéraire, cet ouvrage aimerait bien entendu apporter des réponses, mais aussi des nouvelles formes de questionnements sur la façon dont les différentes sociétés et les populations de cette aire ont représenté leur propre cheminement historique. Avec la perspective d’étudier comment la littérature pouvait être utilisée telle une véritable source historiographique, et plus généralement avec l’intention d’évaluer le niveau d’intrication de la littérature avec la société qui la produit, les différents contributeurs ont consacré une attention particulière au problème des relations établies entre culture et pouvoir. A cet égard, la période historique ici considérée s’étend du XVe siècle jusqu’à nos jours. Elle commence avec la fin de l’époque médiévale, lorsque la Renaissance Timouride offre ses plus belles heures, et s’achève avec la situation de la littérature kirghize contemporaine, incluant dans l’intervalle l’époque pré-moderne envisagée du point de vue des écrits mystiques d’un poète du Turkestan oriental, ainsi que la période de la colonisation russe et l’ère soviétique qui lui succède directement. The literature of what has been labelled ‘Central Asia’ has been produced in a variety of languages and across a huge area, which includes not only the five republics of the former Soviet Union (Turkmenistan, Uzbekistan, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan), but also Azerbaijan, Afghanistan, Mongolia, Tibet, Nepal, Bhutan, and parts of Russia and China (the Uyghur Autonomous Region). Needless to say the literary works produced in this vast space represent a considerable amount of material, both oral and written, which would maybe require more attention than they are actually given thus far, at least in the Western academic world. Given the scarcity of publications in the field, the fact that the Cahiers d’Asie centrale is devoting a single issue to this matter is something that deserves due attention. But this issue is certainly more than a contribution to the study of Central Asian literature. Indeed, by aiming to focus on the societal challenges reflected by Central Asian literary production, this volume would like to bring answers, as well as new kinds of question regarding the way the various societies and peoples of this geographic area have depicted their own historical trajectories. Within the perspective of examining the way literature can be used as a source of historiography, and more generally speaking with the aim of assessing the interconnectedness of society and literature, the various contributors have devoted a specific attention to the issue of the relationships between culture and power. In this regard the historical timeline that is encompassed extends from the fifteenth century up to the present day. It begins with the end of the medieval times, when the Timurid Renaissance achieved the production of its finest hours, and ends with the situation of contemporary Kyrgyz literature, including in the period between the early modern times looked at from the viewpoint of the mystical writings of an Eastern Turkestanese poet, as well as the Russian colonisation and the Soviet era

Littérature et Société en Asie centrale

La littérature de ce que l’on a convenu d’appeler « l’Asie centrale » a été composée dans une grande variété de langages sur un vaste territoire qui inclut non seulement les cinq républiques de l’ex-Union soviétique (Turkménistan, Ouzbékistan, Kazakhstan, Kirghizstan, Tadjikistan), mais aussi l’Azerbaïdjan, l’Afghanistan, la Mongolie, le Tibet, le Népal, le Bhoutan, ainsi que certaines régions de la Russie et de la Chine (la région autonome ouïgoure du Xinjiang pour ne citer qu’elle). Inutile de dire que les œuvres produites dans ce vaste ensemble forment une somme considérable de matériaux, à la fois écrits et oraux, qui auraient peut-être requis davantage d’attention que celle que l’on leur a accordée jusqu’ici, au moins dans les recherches réalisées en Occident. Compte tenu du déficit de publications dans ce domaine, le fait que les Cahiers d’Asie centrale consacrent un numéro à ce sujet mérite toute notre attention. Mais ce volume est certainement plus qu’une contribution à l’étude de la littérature centrasiatique. En se concentrant sur les défis sociétaux tels qu’ils se reflètent dans la production littéraire, cet ouvrage aimerait bien entendu apporter des réponses, mais aussi des nouvelles formes de questionnements sur la façon dont les différentes sociétés et les populations de cette aire ont représenté leur propre cheminement historique. Avec la perspective d’étudier comment la littérature pouvait être utilisée telle une véritable source historiographique, et plus généralement avec l’intention d’évaluer le niveau d’intrication de la littérature avec la société qui la produit, les différents contributeurs ont consacré une attention particulière au problème des relations établies entre culture et pouvoir. A cet égard, la période historique ici considérée s’étend du XVe siècle jusqu’à nos jours. Elle commence avec la fin de l’époque médiévale, lorsque la Renaissance Timouride offre ses plus belles heures, et s’achève avec la situation de la littérature kirghize contemporaine, incluant dans l’intervalle l’époque pré-moderne envisagée du point de vue des écrits mystiques d’un poète du Turkestan oriental, ainsi que la période de la colonisation russe et l’ère soviétique qui lui succède directement. The literature of what has been labelled ‘Central Asia’ has been produced in a variety of languages and across a huge area, which includes not only the five republics of the former Soviet Union (Turkmenistan, Uzbekistan, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan), but also Azerbaijan, Afghanistan, Mongolia, Tibet, Nepal, Bhutan, and parts of Russia and China (the Uyghur Autonomous Region). Needless to say the literary works produced in this vast space represent a considerable amount of material, both oral and written, which would maybe require more attention than they are actually given thus far, at least in the Western academic world. Given the scarcity of publications in the field, the fact that the Cahiers d’Asie centrale is devoting a single issue to this matter is something that deserves due attention. But this issue is certainly more than a contribution to the study of Central Asian literature. Indeed, by aiming to focus on the societal challenges reflected by Central Asian literary production, this volume would like to bring answers, as well as new kinds of question regarding the way the various societies and peoples of this geographic area have depicted their own historical trajectories. Within the perspective of examining the way literature can be used as a source of historiography, and more generally speaking with the aim of assessing the interconnectedness of society and literature, the various contributors have devoted a specific attention to the issue of the relationships between culture and power. In this regard the historical timeline that is encompassed extends from the fifteenth century up to the present day. It begins with the end of the medieval times, when the Timurid Renaissance achieved the production of its finest hours, and ends with the situation of contemporary Kyrgyz literature, including in the period between the early modern times looked at from the viewpoint of the mystical writings of an Eastern Turkestanese poet, as well as the Russian colonisation and the Soviet era