Memory in the Twenty-First Century New Critical Perspectives from the Arts, Humanities, and Sciences

by Groes, Sebastian

• ISBN13: 9781137520579
• ISBN10: 1137520574
• Format: Hardcover
• Copyright: 2016-01-02
• Publisher: Palgrave Macmillan

Summary

This book maps and analyses the changing state of memory at the start of the twenty-first century via short essays written by scientists, scholars and writers. An experimental, multidisciplinary volume, it presents new research whilst recontextualising memory by investigating the impact of new conditions such as the digital revolution, climate change and an ageing population. It contains contributions by researchers at the foreground of new thinking about the human mind, such as N. Katherine Hayles and Claire Colebrook, as well as by writers such as Will Self, Maggie Gee and Adam Roberts. The interlinking work shows that the multiplicity of revolutions force us to reconsider our thinking about what it means to be a human being in the twenty-first century. Memory is increasingly becoming a collective, globally shared networking activity, whilst the role of the human mind is increasingly marginal, and taken over by machines. Human nature is rapidly changing.

Author Biography

Sebastian Groes is Senior Lecturer in English Literature at Roehampton University, UK. He specializes in modernist and contemporary fiction, has written on authors including Ian McEwan and Kazuo Ishiguro, and published The Making of London. He is the Principal Investigator of the AHRC and Wellcome Trust-funded The Memory Network.

Table of Contents

List of illustrations
Foreword; N. Katherine Hayles
Acknowledgements
Notes on Contributors
Introduction: Memory in the Twenty-first Century; Sebastian Groes
PART I: METAPHORS OF MEMORY
1. Metaphors of Memory: From the Classical World to Modernity; Corin Depper
2. Proust, the Madeleine, and Memory; Barry C. Smith
3. Proust Recalled: A Psychological Revisiting of that Madeleine Memory Moment; E. Leigh Gibson
4. The Persistence of Surrealism: Memory, Dreams and the Dead; Jeannette Baxter
5. 'There Was Nothing Hidden That Might Not Be Revealed': The Brain Observatory and the Imaginary Media of Memory Research; Flora Lysen
6. Memory and the Fictional Imagination: Creating Memories; Peter Childs
7. Misled by Metaphor; Nicholas Carr
8. Calling Gaia: World Brains and Global Memory; Stephan Besser
PART II: MEMORY IN THE DIGITAL AGE
9. What's in a Brain?; Will Self
10. Will Self and his Inner Seahorse; Hugo Spiers
11. Navigation Aids in Neuropsychological Rehabilitation; Ineke van der Ham
12. Living Digitally; Wendy Moncur
13. Death and Memory in the Twenty-first Century; Stacey Pitsillides
14. The Oceanic Literary Reading Mind: An Impression; Michael Burke
15. Memory and the Reading Substrate; Adrian van der Weel
16. Memory, Materiality the Ethics of Reading in the Digital age; Sebastian Groes
PART III: ECOLOGIES OF MEMORY
17. Time that is Intolerant; Claire Colebrook
18. 'The Winters Were Colder and the Snows Deeper'; Mike Hulme
19. Memories of Snow: Nostalgia, Amnesia, Re-reading; Greg Garrard
20. Writing Climate Change; Maggie Gee
21. Against Nostalgia: Antony Gormley, Ian McEwan and J. G. Ballard's Climate Change Art; Sebastian Groes
PART IV: MEMORY AND THE FUTURE
22. The Trace of the Future; Mark Currie
23. Simulation and the Evolution of Thought; Joanna J. Bryson
24. Imaginative Anticipation: Rethinking Memory for Alternative Futures; Jessica Bland
25. Memory is No Longer What it Used to Be; Patricia Pisters
26. 'We Can Remember It, Funes, Wholesale': Borges, Total Recall and the Logic of Memory; Adam Roberts
27. Remembering Without Stored Contents: A Philosophical Reflection on Memory; Daniel D. Hutto
PART V: FORGETTING
28. Remembering; Larry R. Squire and John T. Wixted
29. Directed Forgetting; Karen R. Brandt
30. Remembrance in the Twenty-first Century; Peter Childs
31. Memory, Hither Come: The Body and the Page in Poetry Readings as Remembrance of Composition; Holly Pester
32. Our Plastic Brain: Remembering and Forgetting Art; Heather H. Yeung
33. Amnesia and Identity in Contemporary Literature; Jason Tougaw
34. Amnesia in Young Adult Fiction; Alison Waller
35. Remembering Responsibly; Thomas F. Coker and Heather H. Yeung
PART VI: TWENTY-FIRST CENTURY SUBJECTIVITIES
36. Losing the Self? Subjectivity in the Digital Age; Claire Colebrook
37. Memory and Voices: Challenging Psychiatric Diagnosis Through the Novel; Patricia Waugh
38. Rereading the Self: On Remembering Multiple Selves In and Out of Young Adult Fiction; Alison Waller
39. Neuroscience and Posthuman Memory; Robert Pepperell
40. The Confabulation of Self; Joanna J. Bryson
41. Malingering and Memory; Neander Abreu
42. Trauma and the Truth; Martijn Meeter
Conclusion: 'The Futures of Memory'; Sebastian Groes
References
Index