The Mnemonic Imagination Remembering as Creative Practice

by Keightley, Emily; Pickering, Michael

• ISBN13: 9780230243361
• ISBN10: 0230243363
• Format: Hardcover
• Copyright: 2012-10-16
• Publisher: Palgrave Macmillan

Summary

Exploring the creative dimensions of memory and remembering, Emily Keightley and Michael Pickering tackle some of the key questions facing the emergent field of memory studies, including the nature of the relationship between memory and experience and between individual and collective memory. The most crucial relationship examined is one which has previously been largely ignored: the relationship between memory and imagination. The book argues for the importance of bringing imagination into the purview of memory studies and introduces the key concept of the mnemonic imagination as a tool for demonstrating the mutual interaction of memory and imagination in our everyday practices and processes of making sense of experience. Showing how the mnemonic imagination works in various aspects of personal life and popular culture, the authors address diverse topics such as the commercial exploitation of nostalgia and the remembering of traumatic and painful pasts.

Author Biography

EMILY KEIGHTLEY is Lecturer in Communication and Media Studies at Loughborough University, UK. She has published her research on time, memory and everyday life in a number of international journals. She is the editor of Time, Media and Modernity and is currently co-editing Research Methods for Memory Studies with Michael Pickering. She is also Assistant Editor of Media, Culture and Society.
MICHAEL PICKERING is Professor of Media and Cultural Analysis at Loughborough University, UK. He has published in the areas of social and cultural history, the sociology of art and culture, and media and communication studies. His most recent books include Researching Communications (2007); Blackface Minstrelsy in Britain (2008); Research Methods for Cultural Studies (2008); and Popular Culture, a four-volume edited collection (2010).

Table of Contents

An Outline of What Lies Ahead
Memory and Experience
The Mnemonic Imagination
Personal and Popular Memory
The Reclamation of Nostalgia
The Foreclosure of Mnemonic Imagining
Creative Memory and Painful Pasts
Coda
Index