Non-subsumptive memory and narrative empathy

Abstract

This article shows the relevance of a model of non-subsumptive understanding for theorising memory as a mode of sense-making that can contribute to understanding the other in ethically sustainable ways. It develops a theory of non-subsumptive memory and narrative empathy. While understanding is often seen as a form of appropriation, assimilation, and subsumption of the singular under the general, a hermeneutic approach suggests that there are also non-subsumptive, non-appropriative, dialogical forms of understanding. In dialogue with Jenny Erpenbeck’s novel Gehen, ging, gegangen ( Go, Went, Gone), the article argues that cultural memorial forms, as (narrative) models of sense-making, tend to be productive when they adapt and change as they are applied to new situations and harmful when they subsume new experiences under fixed meaning templates. The article envisages memory as a resource for learning and other-oriented empathy in processes of dialogical understanding.

Recalling the Hunger Winter: Evoking famine memory beyond the national

“…Focusing on memory as a ‘sense-making process’, Hanna Meretoja (2021: 25) places memory and its narrativisation on a spectrum from ‘subsumptive’ to ‘non-subsumptive narrative practices’, which is a relevant observation for our study. While the former results in memories becoming ‘reified into a fixed memorial form under which new events and experiences are rigidly subsumed’, in the latter form we ‘use our earlier experiences as a starting point for understanding something new’ without subsuming the new into the existing structures.…”

“…Building on theories of mnemonic transfer and exchange, including Michael Rothberg's (2009) distinction between competitive and 'multidirectional' memory uses, and theories relating to processes of narrativisation and premediation (e.g. Beiner, 2014;Erll, 2009;Meretoja, 2021), this is the first study to investigate the comparative uses of famine memory in newspapers.…”

“Let me be dust”: Memory beyond testimony in Gwangju, South Korea

“…The collective self-interrogation that the students propose operates in an explorative mode of memory, which can include “negative or ambivalent affects linked to experiences of perplexity, confusion, becoming aware of one’s expectations and their ethically problematic implications, and fear and anxiety over the unknown” (Meretoja, 2021: 35). They are, unlike others in the text, willing to put their beliefs at risk to understand.…”

“…They are, unlike others in the text, willing to put their beliefs at risk to understand. Such affects, which start without a presumption of knowledge but rather from “not-knowing,” move one away from a desire to subsume the other into the self and more toward other-oriented and empathetic understanding (Meretoja, 2021: 35). But, of course, the students never find her.…”

“…Unlike the narrative clarity presented through the photographs, documents, and testimony exhibited in the Archives alongside timelines and informational placards, Ch'oe's novella relies on a silent, nameless protagonist's wanderings to tell a story of 5•18. Ch'oe's text encourages a "non-subsumptive memory" practice (see Meretoja, 2018Meretoja, , 2021, which is rooted in productive empathy and understanding rather than the idea of narrative mastery over another's story. Instead of selecting and promoting the most correct or inspiring narrative of 5•18, such heterogeneous voices might encourage interaction with a variety of unlikely memory artifacts.…”