Memory And Autobiography

This book by one of Latin America’s leading cultural theorists examines the place of the subject and the role of biographical and autobiographical genres in contemporary culture. Arfuch argues that the on-going proliferation of private and intimate stories – what she calls the ‘biographical space’ – can be seen as symptomatic of the impersonalizing dynamics of contemporary times. Autobiographical genres, however, harbour an intersubjective dimension. The ‘I’ who speaks wants to be heard by another, and the other who listens discovers in autobiography possible points of identification. Autobiographical genres, including those that border on fiction, therefore become spaces in which the singularity of experience opens onto the collective and its historicity in ways that allow us to reflect on the ethical, political, and aesthetic dimensions not only of self-representation but also of life itself. Opening up debate through juxtaposition and dialogue, Arfuch’s own poetic writing moves freely from the Holocaust to Argentina’s last dictatorship and its traumatic memories, and then to the troubled borderlands between Mexico and the United States to show how artists rescue shards of memory that would otherwise be relegated to the dustbin of history. In so doing, she makes us see not only how challenging it is to represent past traumas and violence but also how vitally necessary it is to do so as a political strategy for combating the tides of forgetting and for finding ways of being in common.

Our memories, many believe, make us who we are. But most of our experiences have been forgotten, and the memories that remain are often wildly inaccurate. How, then, can memories play this person-making role? The answer lies in a largely unrecognized type of memory: Rilkean memory.

Reviews and integrates the many theories, perspectives and approaches in the field of autobiographical memory.

The Doukhobors, Russian-speaking immigrants who arrived in Canada beginning in 1899, are known primarily to the Canadian public through the sensationalist images of them as nude protestors, anarchists, and religious fanatics - representations largely propagated by government commissions and the Canadian media. In Negotiating Memory, Julie Rak examines the ways in which autobiographical strategies have been employed by the Doukhobors themselves in order to retell and reclaim their own history. Drawing from oral interviews, court documents, government reports, prison diaries, and media accounts, Rak demonstrates how the Doukhobors employed both "classic" and alternative forms of autobiography to communicate their views about communal living, vegetarianism, activism, and spiritual life, as well as to pass on traditions to successive generations. More than a historical work, this book brings together recent theories concerning subjectivity, autobiography, and identity, and shows how Doukhobor autobiographical discourse forms a series of ongoing negotiations for identity and collective survival that are sometimes successful and sometimes not. An innovative study, Negotiating Memory will appeal to those interested in autobiography studies as well as to historians, literary critics, and students and scholars of Canadian cultural studies.

Measuring Behaviour is a guide to the principles and methods of quantitative studies of behaviour, with an emphasis on techniques of direct observation, recording and analysis. Numerous textbooks describe and analyse human and animal behaviour, but none provides a comprehensive review of the principles and techniques of its measurement. Those undertaking this task for the first time are often bemused by the apparent difficulty of the job facing them - how will they accurately and systematically record all that is happening? The purpose of this book is to provide this basic knowledge in a succinct and easily understood form. This concise review of methodology includes a comprehensive annotated bibliography. Written with ,brevity and clarity, Measuring Behaviour is intended, above all, as a practical guide-book.

Autobiographical memory is a major form of human memory. it is the basis of most psycotherapies, an important repository of legal, historical, and literary information, and, in some views, the source of the concept of self. When it fails, it is the focus of serious complaints in many neurological disorders. This timely book brings together and integrates the best contemporary work on the cognitive psychology of autobiographical memory. Introductory chapters place the study of autobiographical memory in its historical, methodological, and theoretical contexts; chapters reporting original research probe the recollections people have for substantial portions of their lives. Topics include the schematic and temporal organization of autobiographical memory, the temporal distribution of autobiographical memories, and the failures of autobiographical memory in various forms of amnesia. Autobiographical Memory constitutes the first tutorial in this exciting new area of research. Cognitive psychologists, clinicians, researchers in artificial intelligence, and their students - indeed, anyone interested in the processes that preserve and distort autobiography - will find it a useful resource.

Divided into three parts, this volume discusses: the development of autobiographical memory and self-understanding; cross-cultural variation in narrative environments and self-construal; and the construction of gender and identity concepts in developmental and situational contexts.

This book reviews the latest research in the field of autobiographical memory.