The memory of catastrophe / edited by Peter Gray and Kendrick Oliver.

Format:

Book

Contributor:

Gray, Peter, 1965-

Oliver, Kendrick, 1971-

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

Disasters.

Memory--Social aspects.

Memory.

Suffering.

Genocide.

War and society.

Physical Description:

xi, 225 pages ; 24 cm

Place of Publication:

Manchester ; New York : Manchester University Press ; New York : Distributed exclusively in the USA by Palgrave, 2004.

Summary:

Memories of catastrophes -- both those which occur naturally and those which are consequences of human actions -- loom large in the modern consciousness. This timely and accessible volume draws on the latest innovative scholarship to investigate the phenomenon in both its contemporary and historical contexts. The volume opens with an investigation of the concepts of catastrophe and collective memory, and the relationships between them. Arguing that a pervasive catastrophic memory may be as disabling as it is instructive, Gray and Oliver stress the necessity of rendering the phenomenon subject to secular critical inquiry. The value of such an approach is then demonstrated in a series of case studies. These range across period, place and methodological approach, from longitudinal studies of the memory of the English Civil War and Irish Famine, to oral-history analysis of the legacy of Indian partition, and participant-observation of more recent events in Croatia. Several studies in the book concentrate on the moulding of memories by hegemonic or demotic languages and institutions; others focus on the mutability and ambiguities of memory as expressed in a variety of forms. They exemplify the diversity of memorial languages and responses to catastrophic events. Yet they also speak to each other in their central concerns: the dynamics of memory and erasure, rupture and recovery, uniqueness and universality, exploitation and authenticity, power and resistance, the personal and the social. The memory of catastrophe offers a nuanced and progressive model for future scholarship in the field. It will be of value to all with an interest in the subject of memory and its relationship with the cataclysms of the past.

Contents:

2 Remembering the English Civil Wars / Mark Stoyle 19

3 'Diabolical design': the Charleston elite, the 1822 slave insurrection, and the discourse of the supernatural / P.A. Cramer 31

4 Memory and the commemoration of the Great Irish Famine / Peter Gray 46

5 'The greatest and the worst': dominant and subaltern memories of the Dos Bocas well fire of 1908 / Glen D. Kuecker 65

6 The Titanic and the commodification of catastrophe / James Guimond 79

7 Doctors and trauma in the First World War: the response of British military psychiatrists / Edgar Jones 91

8 Commemorations of the siege of Leningrad: a catastrophe in memory and myth / Lisa A. Kirschenbaum 106

9 The missing camps of Aktion Reinhard: the judicial displacement of a mass murder / Donald Bloxham 118

10 Memory and authenticity: the case of Binjamin Wilkomirski / Andrea Reiter 132

11 Partition memory and multiple identities in the Champaran district of Bihar, India / Kathinka Sinha-Kerkhoff 147

12 Bodies do count: American nurses mourn the catastrophe of Vietnam / Carol Acton 158

13 'Not much of a place anymore': the reception and memory of the massacre at My Lai / Kendrick Oliver 171

14 Remembering Vukovar, forgetting Vukovar: constructing national identity through the memory of catastrophe in Croatia / Rose Lindsey 190

15 Who do you think you are kidding, Mr Sawoniuk? British memory of the Holocaust and Kosovo, spring 1999 / Tony Kushner 205.

Notes:

Includes bibliographical references and index.

ISBN:

0719063442

0719063450

OCLC:

53192393