Book contents
- Frontmatter
- Dedication
- Contents
- Preface
- Acknowledgments
- Introduction: Coming to Terms with Memory
- 1 The Tragedy of Memory: Antigone, Memory, and the Politics of Possibility
- 2 Remembering to Forget: Democratizing Memory, Nietzschean Forgetting, and South Africa's Truth and Reconciliation Commission
- 3 Introducing Segregated Memory and Segregated Democracy in America
- 4 Remembering What Others Cannot Be Expected to Forget: James Baldwin and Segregated Memory
- 5 Making Silence Speak: Toni Morrison and the Beloved Community of Memory
- 6 In Memory of Democratic Time: Specters of Mexico's Past and Democracy's Future
- 7 The Future of the Past: Unholy Ghosts and Redemptive Possibilities
- 8 Imprisoned by the Past: The Complexion of Mass Incarceration
- Notes
- Selected Bibliography
- Index
Preface
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 05 November 2014
- Frontmatter
- Dedication
- Contents
- Preface
- Acknowledgments
- Introduction: Coming to Terms with Memory
- 1 The Tragedy of Memory: Antigone, Memory, and the Politics of Possibility
- 2 Remembering to Forget: Democratizing Memory, Nietzschean Forgetting, and South Africa's Truth and Reconciliation Commission
- 3 Introducing Segregated Memory and Segregated Democracy in America
- 4 Remembering What Others Cannot Be Expected to Forget: James Baldwin and Segregated Memory
- 5 Making Silence Speak: Toni Morrison and the Beloved Community of Memory
- 6 In Memory of Democratic Time: Specters of Mexico's Past and Democracy's Future
- 7 The Future of the Past: Unholy Ghosts and Redemptive Possibilities
- 8 Imprisoned by the Past: The Complexion of Mass Incarceration
- Notes
- Selected Bibliography
- Index
Summary
Many historical controversies boil down to who has the power to name what. … The naming of the “fact” is itself a narrative of power disguised as “innocence.”
—Michel-Rolph TrouillotIt's memories that I'm stealing, but you're innocent when you dream.
—Tom WaitsIt is the innocence which constitutes the crime.
—James BaldwinThis book grew out of questions about the nature of memory—how the past lives on in the present, and the extent to which our personal and collective memories shape our futures. Many years ago I began thinking about how our relationship to the past affects our sense of what is possible, and how memory affects our ability to achieve those possibilities. As I learned more about the tortured history of North America and nations attempting to transition to democracy, these concerns began to take a more explicitly political shape. In this volume, I ask which relationships to memory enable, or threaten, democratic possibilities.
My purpose in this preface is to offer the reader a clear sense of why I take these themes to be so deserving of closer consideration. The questions about memory that animate this book are political and theoretical. They are also personal—though my own memories are not the explicit theme of the chapters that follow. That said, I begin with an unconventional preface that includes a description of my own encounters with memory in an American context.
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- Information
- The Power of Memory in Democratic Politics , pp. ix - xxPublisher: Boydell & BrewerPrint publication year: 2013