Astrid Erll’s research while affiliated with Goethe University Frankfurt and other places

This article asks how memory studies might use the conceptual insights gained during its “third transcultural phase” for the challenges of its “fourth phase” – heralded in this Special Issue as a phase of research invested in questions about memory and the environment. It argues that memory is fundamentally “eco-logical”, and that the relational dynamics explored in research on transcultural memory can enable an understanding of the more-than-human in collective memory. The article offers a brief introduction to the field of memory studies and its transcultural turn around 2010. It traces the emergence of transcultural studies as a field of enquiry and its roots in research on colonialism, postcolonialism, and cultural globalisation. It discusses new developments in memory studies and considers their transcultural and broader eco-logical dimensions. Finally, the article distinguishes between “the relationality of the remembered”, “relational remembering”, and “mnemonic relationality” as conceptual building blocks for eco-logical mnemohistories.

Este artigo explora a relação multifacetada entre literatura e memória. Inicia abordando o conceito de "memória da literatura", discutindo intertextualidade, história dos gêneros e historiografia literária. Em seguida, aprofunda-se nos modelos miméticos de memória e literatura, discutindo como a literatura cria e enriquece a realidade através de processos dinâmicos. Baseando-se no conceito de mimesis de Ricoeur, o artigo diferencia entre referências extra-literárias, representações textuais e a formação de memórias individuais e coletivas. A obra de Marcel Proust é destacada como um exemplo crucial de representação da memória literária. O artigo também discute a relação intrincada entre literatura e memória coletiva, considerando a interação histórica e o papel evolutivo da literatura como um medium para a memória cultural coletiva. Finalmente, o texto propõe direções para pesquisas futuras, enfatizando o diálogo interdisciplinar e a integração de estudos tradicionais e contemporâneos sobre a memória para aprofundar a compreensão do papel da literatura nas culturas da memória.

The two authors – one from literary and cultural studies, the other a cognitive psychologist – explore how the interdisciplinary perspective of Memory Studies can broaden and enrich current research efforts on flashbulb memories (FBMs). FBMs are memories of the circumstances in which one learned of a public emotionally charged event, such as 9/11 . Psychological research on FBMs have focused on their cognitive properties, their putative accuracy and confidence. But we claim that when seen in the broader interdisciplinary perspective of collective memory research, FBMs emerge as inextricably linked up with social, cultural, and narrative dynamics. This article therefore locates FBMs at the intersection of individual and collective memory narratives. Connecting research in cognitive psychology with cultural Memory Studies, we explore how flashbulb narratives bear on social identity and how they might travel across national boundaries or across generations. We further discuss how FBMs are tied to culture, aesthetics, and media history.

WerGedächtnis einen Blick in die von Etienne François[aut]François, Etienne und Hagen Schulze[aut]Schulze, Hagen herausgegebenen dreibändigen Deutschen ErinnerungsorteErinnerungsort wirft, dem fällt auf, dass der Deutschen liebster lieu de mémoire – neben Orten im engeren Sinne (‚Weimar‘), Ereignissen (‚Der Westfälische Frieden‘), Dingen (‚Der Volkswagen‘), Mythen und Legenden (‚Die Dolchstoßlegende‘) oder literarischen Werken (‚Grimms Märchen‘) – offenbar die Biographie darstellt. Von insgesamt 121 in kurzen Essays dargestellten Erinnerungsorten sind immerhin 25, also über ein Fünftel, klar als biographische Porträts erkennbar. Sie widmen sich so unterschiedlichen erinnerungswürdigen Personen wie Karl dem Großen[aut]Karl der Große, Goethe[aut]Goethe, Johann Wolfgang von, der Familie Mann, Heinrich Heine[aut]Heine, Heinrich, Bismarck[aut]Bismarck, Otto von, Rosa Luxemburg[aut]Luxemburg, Rosa, Walther Rathenau[aut]Rathenau, Walther, Marlene Dietrich[aut]Dietrich, Marlene, Albert Einstein[aut]Einstein, Albert, Karl May[aut]May, Karl, Moses Mendelssohn[aut]Mendelssohn, Moses, Karl Marx[aut]Marx, Karl, Richard Wagner[aut]Wagner, Richard, Arminius[aut]Arminius und Friedrich dem Großen (François/Schulze 2001X[aut]Friedrich der Große).

Over the past decades, the field of memory studies has produced a wealth of research on explicit (conscious, commemorative, official) collective memory. But beyond this realm of the visible, there is a largely hidden world of ‘implicit collective memory’. Elements of this invisible world include narrative schemata, stereotypes, patterns of framing, or world models, which are usually not explicitly known or addressed, but get passed on from generation to generation – in order to shape perception and action in new situations. Implicit collective memory is pervasive and powerful. But it is difficult to trace. It is therefore time to join forces for its systematic study: Drawing on approaches from psychology, sociology, communication studies, anthropology, media culture studies, literary studies, and mnemohistory, this article proposes some building blocks for a future transdisciplinary field of research on implicit collective memory.

This afterword addresses the complex temporal and global dynamics of the coronavirus pandemic. After considering some of the new social rhythms that have emerged in the wake of Covid-19 around the world, it turns to the role of collective memory before, during and after corona. The aim is to provide a basic grid for how the Covid-19 pandemic could be addressed using memory studies expertise and concepts such as premediation, memorability, memory (ab)use, national memory, colonial memory, racial stereotypes, the digital archive, generational memory, or Anthropocene time.

This introduction outlines new developments in the field of cultural and media memory studies in the wake of the transcultural turn. It pays specific attention to the twofold dynamics of memory’s travel and locatedness. While in recent memory studies discourse there has been a tendency to see travel as the inspiration for innovative research, locatedness has become associated with old-fashioned, bounded approaches. Rather than reproduce the positive charging of travel and negative charging of locatedness, this special issue aims to emphasise the complexity of memory dynamics resulting from the interaction of the two poles and to make visible that the production, (re)mediation, and reception of the past in the present is constituted by both travel and locatedness.

This article proposes to extend the prevalent short-term and presentist frameworks of research on transcultural memory and to consider its dynamics across long-term relational mnemohistories. After more than two and a half millennia, “Homer” and the Homeric epics still resonate in memory cultures across the world. But they are often erroneously cast as “European heritage” or “foundations of the West.” This is the result of what I call a tenacious “Homeric genea-logic.” Highlighting three moments in the relational mnemohistory of Homer, this article shows, first, that already during their emergence in the archaic age, the Homeric epics were relational objects; second, how during the Middle Ages Homer could arrive in Petrarch’s Italy only as a product of relational remembering between the Roman and the Byzantine empires; and third, how twentieth-century literature (Joyce, Walcott) developed conscious modes of mnemonic relationality connecting diverse cultural memories. Relationality thus emerges as a key term for a reflexive memory culture today, a tool to overcome exclusive memory logics (“Homer as the heritage of Europe”) while enabling the articulation of meaningful long-term transcultural memories (“Homer as relational heritage in Europe”).