Cultural memory and the role of literature

Renate Lachmann

European Review, 2004, vol. 12, issue 2, 165-178

Abstract: The history of mnemonic concepts encompasses utopian and sceptical views that produce either a hypertrophic memory or denounce any representation as false. Each literary text incorporates or stores other texts, thus mnemonic space unfolds between and within texts. In storing and accumulating cultural data, the literary text in its intertextual dimension functions as part of cultural memory. A fantastic text points to a silenced repressed memory, confronting culture with its oblivion. Yet the fantastic in restoring the displaced and vanished parts of culture is not merely a mnemonic memory: its speculative potential strives for arbitrary creations that erase the accepted mnemonic imagery.

Date: 2004
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