Saturday, April 16, 2016
Rhapsody (DoubleTree by Hilton Philadelphia Center City)
Scholarship by historian Gabrielle Spiegel and work on the composition of transnational memory by literary scholar Ann Rigney pave the way to understanding a new two-track model geared toward the future of memory studies. Approaches used by the two scholars have been present for decades yet never consciously worked out and combined. I propose a two-track model for understanding the competition between the resilient power structures inherent in the nation state with the destabilizing and unpredictable agency of transnational actors and de-territorialized identities. Migration is the focal point of this paper; though other topics of central importance include ethics, post-colonialism, empire and the sacred. I argue along with Spiegel that the aftermath of events such as war, the Holocaust, and migration have a direct impact on both the first and second generation of historical scholarship: with the second generation experiencing an “absent memory.” For this reason, it is the task of the historian to “write the history that was never written.” Here oral history remains an important tool. Rigney eloquently describes how new memory narratives gain transnational awareness and places emphasis on the importance of the sensorial quality of certain stories that catch or hold audiences' attention. Here I argue in my two-track model that in fact it is not just the properties of certain stories that are decisive, but rather the combination of a powerful message with technologically-savvy curators, opinion makers and influential benefactors that rally the agency of transnational actors and de-territorialized identities.
