Jason Lustig
- Published in print:
- 2022
- Published Online:
- December 2021
- ISBN:
- 9780197563526
- eISBN:
- 9780197563557
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/oso/9780197563526.003.0001
- Subject:
- History, Cultural History
The introduction presents the book’s core argument that twentieth-century Jewish archives were not just about the past but also about the future: We can look to a process whereby Jews turned ...
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The introduction presents the book’s core argument that twentieth-century Jewish archives were not just about the past but also about the future: We can look to a process whereby Jews turned increasingly toward archives as anchors of memory in a rapidly changing world. Jews in Germany, the United States, and Israel/Palestine all sought to gather the files of the past in order to represent their place in Jewish life and articulate a vision of the future. It situates these projects in the history of community-based archiving and archival theory and methodology, as well as Jewish history at large. It also dives into the ways we can see archive making as a metaphor for the broader patterns in modern Jewish history, as Jews sought to gather the sources and resources of their culture both before the Holocaust and especially in its aftermath.Less
The introduction presents the book’s core argument that twentieth-century Jewish archives were not just about the past but also about the future: We can look to a process whereby Jews turned increasingly toward archives as anchors of memory in a rapidly changing world. Jews in Germany, the United States, and Israel/Palestine all sought to gather the files of the past in order to represent their place in Jewish life and articulate a vision of the future. It situates these projects in the history of community-based archiving and archival theory and methodology, as well as Jewish history at large. It also dives into the ways we can see archive making as a metaphor for the broader patterns in modern Jewish history, as Jews sought to gather the sources and resources of their culture both before the Holocaust and especially in its aftermath.
Sue Campbell
- Published in print:
- 2014
- Published Online:
- August 2014
- ISBN:
- 9780199376933
- eISBN:
- 9780199376964
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780199376933.003.0002
- Subject:
- Philosophy, Feminist Philosophy, Moral Philosophy
This chapter argues that some contemporary reconstructive models of memory have retained a standard for “good” memory (as fidelity to an original impression) that derives from an outmoded archival ...
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This chapter argues that some contemporary reconstructive models of memory have retained a standard for “good” memory (as fidelity to an original impression) that derives from an outmoded archival model. From the perspective of the reconstructive view, which acknowledges that the needs and interests of selves and others influence memory, our recollections appear as distortions of the past. This chapter argues that when we dismiss the dubious norm of good remembering as reproductive fidelity, the reconstructivist theory no longer encourages skepticism. Campbell’s positive proposal for good remembering combines a need to get both the facts about the past and their significance for the present and future right. The phenomenon of nostalgia is used to illustrate one sort of failure to get the significance of past facts right.Less
This chapter argues that some contemporary reconstructive models of memory have retained a standard for “good” memory (as fidelity to an original impression) that derives from an outmoded archival model. From the perspective of the reconstructive view, which acknowledges that the needs and interests of selves and others influence memory, our recollections appear as distortions of the past. This chapter argues that when we dismiss the dubious norm of good remembering as reproductive fidelity, the reconstructivist theory no longer encourages skepticism. Campbell’s positive proposal for good remembering combines a need to get both the facts about the past and their significance for the present and future right. The phenomenon of nostalgia is used to illustrate one sort of failure to get the significance of past facts right.
Kristina Bross
- Published in print:
- 2017
- Published Online:
- August 2017
- ISBN:
- 9780190665135
- eISBN:
- 9780190665166
- Item type:
- book
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/oso/9780190665135.001.0001
- Subject:
- History, American History: early to 18th Century, Historiography
Future History analyzes English and American writings that imagine England on a global stage well before England became an empire or the United States became a global power. Through close readings, ...
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Future History analyzes English and American writings that imagine England on a global stage well before England became an empire or the United States became a global power. Through close readings, historical contextualization, application of archival theory, and careful speculation, the book traces the ways that English and American writers imagined the East Indies and the West Indies as interconnected. The book argues that the earliest expressions of an American or English worldview were born colonial, conceived at the margins of a rising empire, not in its metropolis, and that a wider variety of agents than we have previously understood—Algonquian converts, “reformed” Catholics, enslaved women in the spice trade, Protestant dissidents, West Indian maroons—helped shape that worldview. In order to recover these voices and experiences, so often overwritten or ignored, the book combines more traditional methodologies of literary analysis and historicization with an interrogation of the structures of the archives in which early writings have been preserved. The chapters taken together describe a particular global (East Indies–West Indies) literary history, while the codas, taken as a separate sequence, demonstrate how a “slant” view on literary history that is asynchronous and at times anachronistic affords a new and more inclusive view of the worlding of the English imagination in the seventeenth century.Less
Future History analyzes English and American writings that imagine England on a global stage well before England became an empire or the United States became a global power. Through close readings, historical contextualization, application of archival theory, and careful speculation, the book traces the ways that English and American writers imagined the East Indies and the West Indies as interconnected. The book argues that the earliest expressions of an American or English worldview were born colonial, conceived at the margins of a rising empire, not in its metropolis, and that a wider variety of agents than we have previously understood—Algonquian converts, “reformed” Catholics, enslaved women in the spice trade, Protestant dissidents, West Indian maroons—helped shape that worldview. In order to recover these voices and experiences, so often overwritten or ignored, the book combines more traditional methodologies of literary analysis and historicization with an interrogation of the structures of the archives in which early writings have been preserved. The chapters taken together describe a particular global (East Indies–West Indies) literary history, while the codas, taken as a separate sequence, demonstrate how a “slant” view on literary history that is asynchronous and at times anachronistic affords a new and more inclusive view of the worlding of the English imagination in the seventeenth century.
