Homer: A relational mnemohistory

Abstract

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").

Memory relations: cross-border collaboration between mnemonic actors in Germany, Central Eastern Europe, and the MENA region

“…There are multiple methods for exploring relationality; however, one of the most common, and the one that will be drawn on in this article, is Social Network Analysis (SNA). While the concept of relationality has begun to gain momentum in memory studies (Erll, 2017(Erll, , 2018, the use of SNA has to date been relatively limited. One important exception is Wüstenberg's (2015) pioneering work on official networks at the European level; however, her methodology necessarily limits her to an analysis of members of the selected networks and, therefore, to European actors.…”

Affordances of memorability: Finnish reception of the oppression of Ingrian Finns in the Soviet Union

“…As an analytical concept, affordance directs attention not only to the properties of "memory matter," such as certain stories, events, characters, artifacts, or images, but also to their actualization in a certain sociohistorical situation. Affordance, in other words, allows theorization and analysis of memorability as a fundamentally relational (on the relationality of memory, see Erll, 2018) and sociomaterial phenomenon.…”

Memory worlds: Reframing time and the past – An introduction

“…This limited temporal framework also biases the logic of memory work, mostly framed by the concept of trauma. Likewise, it influences the way we overlook ‘the production of memory across knowledge and belief systems, spatial imaginaries, temporal and emotional regimes other than those in our globalizing present’ (Erll, 2018: 276). To this she adds the eclipsing of forms of memory work beyond the ‘West’, which often relates to different conceptions of time, as we have mentioned earlier.…”

“… 2. Here the West is understood as a ‘relational self’ (Erll, 2018: 11), which is constantly influenced and re-shaped by, and entangled with the ever shifting Other. This means the West is not conceptualised here as an isolated and homogeneous sphere, but as an entity formed by transcultural movements. …”