The Silence Of Memory

This book examines how the British people came to terms with the massive trauma of the First World War. Although the literary memory of the war has often been discussed, little has been written on the public ceremonies on and around 11 November which dominated the public memory of the war in the inter-war years. This book aims to remedy the deficiency by showing the pre-eminence of Armistice Day, both in reflecting what people felt about the war and in shaping their memories of it. It shows that this memory was complex rather than simple and that it was continually contested. Finally it seeks to examine the impact of the Second World War on the memory of the First and to show how difficult it is to recapture the idealistic assumptions of a world that believed it had experienced 'the war to end all wars'.

In an age of information and new media the relationships between remembering and forgetting have changed. This volume addresses the tension between loud and often spectacular histories and those forgotten pasts we strain to hear. Employing social and cultural analysis, the essays within examine mnemonic technologies both new and old, and cover subjects as diverse as U.S. internment camps for Japanese Americans in WWII, the Canadian Indian Residential School system, Israeli memorial videos, and the desaparecidos in Argentina. Through these cases, the contributors argue for a re-interpretation of Guy Debord's notion of the spectacle as a conceptual apparatus through which to examine the contemporary landscape of social memory, arguing that the concept of spectacle might be developed in an age seen as dissatisfied with the present, nervous about the future, and obsessed with the past. Perhaps now "spectacle" can be thought of not as a tool of distraction employed solely by hegemonic powers, but instead as a device used to answer Walter Benjamin's plea to "explode the continuum of history" and bring our attention to now-time.

This novel narrates the lives of two sisters separated by the Cuban Revolution. In 1959, the twins Lauri and Menchu take different and seemingly irreconcilable paths, when Lauri leaves for Miami with her husband and Menchu remains in Havana. During the next forty years, their everyday lives are very different but unknowingly they share the same milestones, attitudes, values and secrets. The Memory of Silence transcends the Cuban reality and becomes a story of universal scope, a triumph of love and family over political and geographical distances. "Its greatest virtue is that it is the first Cuban novel on both sides, that is, not just a novel about the Revolution or just a novel about Exile, but it is the only novel about the Revolution and Exile that I know of." -Rafael Rojas Cuban Historian "The Memory of Silence is a powerful depiction of the tragic, forty-year-long separation endured by twin sisters, one in Cuba and one in America. By artfully weaving the women's diaries into a tapestry of everyday life experiences profoundly impacted by the Cuban Revolution, Uva de Aragon bears witness to each sister's heartaches of severance, dislocation, and dispossession. In the face of these hardships De Aragon celebrates the resilience of the human spirit, applauds the redemptive powers of friendship, and asserts the indomitability of familial bonds. The Memory of Silence is a call to keep the hope of reunification and reconciliation alive. It is an aspiration best expressed by Lauri, the twin who escaped to America: "If I had one wish for Cuba ... [it is] that no Cuban would ever live in exile. Never." Ultimately, the power of De Aragon's novel lies in its universal implications: no human being should ever be subjected to the onerous effects of severance and exile." -Dr. Asher Z. Milbauer, Professor Director, The Exile Studies Program Florida International University

Beyond Memory: Silence and the Aesthetics of Remembrance analyses the intricate connections between silence, acts of remembrance and acts of forgetting, and relates the topic of silence to the international research field of Cultural Memory Studies. It engages with the most recent work in the field by viewing silence as a remedy to the traditionally binary approach to our understanding of remembering and forgetting. The international team of contributors examine case studies from colonialism, war, politics and slavery from across the globe, as well as drawing examples from literature, philosophy and sites of memory to draw three main conclusions. Firstly, that the relationship between remembering and forgetting is relational rather than ‘hermetic’, and the space between the two is often occupied by silence. Secondly, silence is a force in itself, capable of stimulating more or less remembrance. Finally, that silence is a necessary and key element in the interaction between the human mind and the ‘outer world’, and enables people to challenge their understanding of art, music, literature, history and memory. With an introduction by the editors discussing Memory Studies, and concluding remarks by Astrid Erll, this collection demonstrates that acceptance and consideration of silence as having both a performative and aesthetic dimension is an essential component of history and memory studies.

“It is so rare and refreshing to read a Roman history book which recognizes and celebrates the sheer difficulty of writing history” (The Times Literary Supplement). The ruling elite in ancient Rome sought to eradicate even the memory of their deceased opponents through a process now known as damnatio memoriae. These formal and traditional practices included removing the person’s name and image from public monuments and inscriptions, making it illegal to speak of him, and forbidding funeral observances and mourning. Paradoxically, however, while these practices dishonored the person's memory, they did not destroy it. Indeed, a later turn of events could restore the offender not only to public favor but also to re-inclusion in the public record. This book examines the process of purge and rehabilitation of memory in the person of Virius Nicomachus Flavianus. Charles Hedrick describes how Flavianus was condemned for participating in the rebellion against the Christian emperor Theodosius the Great—and then restored to the public record a generation later as members of the newly Christianized senatorial class sought to reconcile their pagan past and Christian present. By selectively remembering and forgetting the actions of Flavianus, Hedrick asserts, the Roman elite honored their ancestors while participating in profound social, cultural, and religious change. “One of the most interesting and original books about the Later Roman Empire that I have ever read.” —T. D. Barnes

This book explores national attitudes to remembering colonialism in Britain and France. By comparing these two former colonial powers, the author tells two distinct stories about coming to terms with the legacies of colonialism, the role of silence and the breaking thereof. Examining memory through the stories of people who incited public conversation on colonialism: activists; politicians; journalists; and professional historians, this book argues that these actors mobilised the colonial past to make sense of national identity, race and belonging in the present. In focusing on memory as an ongoing, politicised public debate, the book examines the afterlife of colonial history as an element of political and social discourse that depends on actors’ goals and priorities. A thought-provoking and powerful read that explores the divisive legacies of colonialism through oral history, this book will appeal to those researching imperialism, collective memory and cultural identity.

This edited, one-volume version presents the first ever English translation of the report of The Guatemalan Commission for Historical Clarification (CEH), a truth commission that exposed the details of 'la violenca,' during which hundreds of massacres were committed in a scorched-earth campaign that displaced approximately one million people.

Accompanying an exhibition at the Imperial War Museum, London, from 5 April to 27 August 2001, this volume examines the contribution of artist-witnesses, victims and survivors of the Holocaust to post-war culture and the visual arts.