The Memory of Catastrophe (Paperback)

Memories of catastrophes - those which occur naturally and those which are consequences of human actions - loom large in the modern consciousness. This volume draws on the latest scholarship to investigate this phenomenon in both contemporary and historical contexts. collective memory and the relationships between them. Arguing that a pervasive catastrophic memory may be as disabling as it is instructive, Gray and Oliver stress the necessity of rendering the phenomenon subject to secular critical inquiry. The value of such an approach is then demonstrated in a series of case studies. These range across period, place and methodological approach, from longitudinal studies of the memory of the English Civil War and Irish Famine, to oral-history analysis of the legacy of Indian partition, and participant-observation of more recent events in Croatia. Several studies concentrate on the moulding of memories by hegemonic or demotic languages and institutions; others focus on the mutability and ambiguities of memory as expressed in a variety of forms. They exemplify the diversity of memorial languages and responses to catastrophic events. Yet they also speak to each other in their central concerns: the dynamics of memory and erasure, rupture and recovery, uniqueness and universality, exploitation and authenticity, power and resistance, the personal and the social. the field. It should be of value to all with an interest in the subject of memory and its relationship with the cataclysms of the past.