The Immanent Past: Culture and Psyche at the Juncture of Memory and History

Birth, Kevin

doi:10.1525/eth.2006.34.2.169

Cited by 40 publications

(23 citation statements)

References 48 publications

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“…Despite each of us being schooled in different disciplinary backgrounds – geography, landscape archaeology, and heritage – we all intuitively turned to these frames of analysis. Shaping the conceptual (s)pace of our paper, then, is an overriding engagement with the affective, emotional, sensual, and immediate realms of memory, which borrows from Kevin Birth's (, p. 176) observation that ‘remembering can use far more than the written word … it can rely on buildings, spaces, monuments, bodies and patterns of representing self and others’. This engagement has been driven by our (individual and collective) attempts to explore senses of ‘affirmation and experimentation’ in our dealings with memory‐work (Anderson and Harrison , p. 2).…”

Section: Memory Makes Livesmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…In dealing primarily with public articulations of memory, previous studies have drawn from more material and tangible remnants of memory to explain how memory is 'used' to form/maintain/(re)produce identity. Echoing the work of Barad (2007), Butler (1993Butler ( , 1997Butler ( , 2004 and Birth (2006), we contend that intersections of memory and identity need not only focus on representational thinking. Rather, this interconnection can also be felt, sensed, heard, tasted, and touched.…”

Section: Identitiesmentioning

confidence: 99%

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Geographies of memory, place and identity: Intersections in remembering war and conflict

2016

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The terms memory, place and identity exemplify the core concerns of geographical inquiry – focusing on linkages between people, place, and culture. In this review, we hone in on the intersections between these three terms in the context of the remembrance of war and conflict. We seek to highlight how memory informs the construction and maintenance of identities (personal, national, and supranational) post‐conflict and post‐war, and how these identities are drawn upon and articulated through place. In doing so, we also explore how investigations of and in memory benefit from methodologies that engage with more‐than‐human and more‐than‐representational approaches. We take this stance because memory is a powerful force invoking experience, emotion, and an awakening of the senses. Its affective capacity moves beyond stoic representations of memory in stone and marble, for example; it can be smelt, touched, felt, imagined, tasted, and heard. Any one of these sensations has the agency to transport us not only to different times but to different places. With this in mind, we use this review to investigate how memory (re)produces and maintains the identity of places, communities, and nations. Understanding the links between memory, identity, and place also leads to a concomitant process of comprehending the influence of a politics of memory in the (re)production of both places and identities.

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Section: Memory Makes Livesmentioning

confidence: 99%

Section: Identitiesmentioning

confidence: 99%

Geographies of memory, place and identity: Intersections in remembering war and conflict

2016

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“…Despite the ability of the material to revive the past, the material too can be a stumbling block preventing the past from being forgotten. Birth (, 180) refers to this as the workings of ‘the immanent past’. Central to this is the tendency for the material world to be more than the clay moulded by humans to assist memory‐making; encounters with the material too can act as a trigger, reminding individuals of what they wish to render forgotten.…”

Section: Forgetting Materiality and The Immanent Pastmentioning

confidence: 99%

On the matter of forgetting and ‘memory returns’

Muzaini

2014

Trans Inst British Geog

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Much geographical attention is paid to issues of memory and its relationship to place. Yet, there has been less disciplinary interrogation of what goes on when one forgets. This paper argues that forgetting, as it involves active embodied, material and spatial practices of producing absences, is just as salient as its counterpart, and worthy of analysis on its own terms. Drawing on the personal experiences of individuals who went through the Second World War in Malaysia, this paper first examines individuals' strategies for obscuring if not obliterating memories that are personally traumatic and injurious to well-being. The paper then shows how these memories can re-emerge, frequently in an involuntary or unexpected fashion, despite attempts to render them pass e. In doing so, the paper espouses forgetting as a 'productive' practice; yet such practice is frequently incomplete as materials limit -as well as support -explicit efforts to keep the past in the past. More broadly, it challenges the valorisation of 'presence' in human-landscape interactions to expose the ways 'absence' too is imbricated in the everyday milieu.

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“…I, as many scholars have, turn to more‐than‐representational thinking to challenge current discourses of memory and identity as vital to understandings of place (Birth, ; Drozdzewski et al, ; Jones, ). Several scholars have used more‐than‐representational theory to explore the role of the body, senses, and emotions and how they affect perceptions of places (Macnaghten & Urry, ; Phillips, ; Thrift, ).…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…The place-based context of the home can provide a space for further consideration into the more-than-representational elements of our memories and identities. I, as many scholars have, turn to more-than-representational thinking to challenge current discourses of memory and identity as vital to understandings of place (Birth, 2006;Drozdzewski et al, 2016;Jones, 2011). Several scholars have used more-than-representational theory to explore the role of the body, senses, and emotions and how they affect perceptions of places (Macnaghten & Urry, 1998;Phillips, 2005;Thrift, 2004).…”

mentioning

confidence: 99%

Creating home: Intersections of memory and identity

Ratnam

2018

Geography Compass

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The concepts of memory, identity, and place form key debates in geographical literature because they link people to place. Memory incorporates narratives of the past that are articulated in the present day and can inform the way identities are constructed. The intersections of memory and identity can prompt us to think about how we experience and/or have experienced place(s). In this review, I trace discussions that position memory and identity as meta‐concepts that coalesce with the home and home‐building practices. I situate this discussion in and around the home because the home is commonly our most frequented place. It is a place where our person‐place bonds develop through everyday encounters and practices. I explore how memory, identity, and place have been broached in the home by using more‐than‐representational approaches. I have turned to more‐than‐representational theory to flesh out how enactments and encounters with objects and other materialities in the home demonstrate agency and connections to the home, which are indicative of memory and identity in action. Sensory and material encounters provoke remembrances and identifications with home(lands) through objects, people, food, and places that hold particular resonance among migrants.

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The Immanent Past: Culture and Psyche at the Juncture of Memory and History

Cited by 40 publications

References 48 publications

Geographies of memory, place and identity: Intersections in remembering war and conflict

Geographies of memory, place and identity: Intersections in remembering war and conflict

On the matter of forgetting and ‘memory returns’

Creating home: Intersections of memory and identity

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