History And Memory

In this brillant meditation on conceptions of history, Le Goff traces the evolution of the historian's craft. Examining real and imagined oppositions between past and present, ancient and modern, oral and written history, History and Memory reveals the strands of continuity that have characterized historiography from ancient Mesopotamia to modern Europe.

In recent years, "memory" has become a central and controversial concept in historical studies. It is a term that denotes a new and distinctive field of study and a fresh way of conceptualizing history as a more general field of inquiry. This book provides historians with an accessible and stimulating introduction to debates and theories about memory and approaches to the study of it in history and other disciplines. The book explores the relationships between the individual and the collective, between memory as survival and memory as reconstruction, between remembering as a subjective experience and as a social or cultural practice, and between memory and history as modes of retrospective knowledge.

Hutton considers the ideas of philosophers, poets, and historians to seek outthe roots of fact as mere recollection.

"In this brilliant meditation on the varying conceptions of history, Jacques Le Goff, one of the leading members of the French "Annales" school, examines the oppositions between past and present, ancient and modern as well as the various continuities in the evolutions of the historical spirit." "Clearly written, broad-ranging, and richly allusive, History and Memory is a provocative book that will inspire a better understanding of historical work and provide an overview of the "new history" that has revolutionized historical studies over the post half century. Le Goff has written a new preface for the English language edition, which examines recent trends in historiography."--Jacket.

History, Memory and Public Life introduces readers to key themes in the study of historical memory and its significance by considering the role of historical expertise and understanding in contemporary public reflection on the past. Divided into two parts, the book addresses both the theoretical and applied aspects of historical memory studies. ‘Approaches to history and memory‘ introduces key methodological and theoretical issues within the field, such as postcolonialism, sites of memory, myths of national origins, and questions raised by memorialisation and museum presentation. ‘Difficult pasts‘ looks at history and memory in practice through a range of case studies on contested, complex or traumatic memories, including the Northern Ireland Troubles, post-apartheid South Africa and the Holocaust. Examining the intersection between history and memory from a wide range of perspectives, and supported by guidance on further reading and online resources, this book is ideal for students of history as well as those working within the broad interdisciplinary field of memory studies.

Why do major historical events such as the Holocaust occupy the forefront of the collective consciousness, while profound moments such as the Armenian genocide, the McCarthy era, and France's role in North Africa stand distantly behind? Is it possible that history "overly remembers" some events at the expense of others? A landmark work in philosophy, Paul Ricoeur's Memory, History, Forgetting examines this reciprocal relationship between remembering and forgetting, showing how it affects both the perception of historical experience and the production of historical narrative. Memory, History, Forgetting, like its title, is divided into three major sections. Ricoeur first takes a phenomenological approach to memory and mnemonical devices. The underlying question here is how a memory of present can be of something absent, the past. The second section addresses recent work by historians by reopening the question of the nature and truth of historical knowledge. Ricoeur explores whether historians, who can write a history of memory, can truly break with all dependence on memory, including memories that resist representation. The third and final section is a profound meditation on the necessity of forgetting as a condition for the possibility of remembering, and whether there can be something like happy forgetting in parallel to happy memory. Throughout the book there are careful and close readings of the texts of Aristotle and Plato, of Descartes and Kant, and of Halbwachs and Pierre Nora. A momentous achievement in the career of one of the most significant philosophers of our age, Memory, History, Forgetting provides the crucial link between Ricoeur's Time and Narrative and Oneself as Another and his recent reflections on ethics and the problems of responsibility and representation. “His success in revealing the internal relations between recalling and forgetting, and how this dynamic becomes problematic in light of events once present but now past, will inspire academic dialogue and response but also holds great appeal to educated general readers in search of both method for and insight from considering the ethical ramifications of modern events. . . . It is indeed a master work, not only in Ricoeur’s own vita but also in contemporary European philosophy.”—Library Journal “Ricoeur writes the best kind of philosophy—critical, economical, and clear.”— New York Times Book Review

This book examines the interfaces of memory theory and oral history, which is based on human recollection. Essays examine the importance of memory and its reliability. Scholars from two fields, cognitive psychology and oral history, examine the ways in which human experience is recalled and interpreted. The papers were first presented in 1988 at an interdisciplinary conference sponsored by Baylor University Institute for Oral History. Contents: Foreword, Donald A. Ritchie; Introduction; Believe It or Not: Rethinking the Historical Interpretation of Memory, Paul Thompson, Comment by Glenace E. Edwall; Tricked by Memory, Elizabeth F. Loftus, Comment by Eva M. McMahan; American History and the Structures of Collective Memory: A Modest Exercise in Empirical Iconography, Michael H. Frisch, Comment by Kenneth Foote; Dialogue I: Sally Browder, Michael H. Frisch, ELizabeth Loftus, Paul Thompson; Phoenix and Chimera: The Changing Faces of Memory, Marigold Linton, Comment by Kim Lacy Rogers; What One Cannot Remember Mistakenly, Karen E. Fields, Comment by Alpine W. Jefferson; Reliability and Validity in Oral History: The Case for Memory, Alice M. Hoffman and Howard S. Hoffman, Comment by Terry Anderson, Comment by Brent Slife; Dialogue II: Karen E. Feilds, Alice M. Hoffman, Howard S. Hoffman, Marigold Linton, Paul Thompson, Donald Ritchie; Afterword, Lewis M. Barker. Co-published with the Institute for Oral History.