How can the memory of violent pasts be mobilized for a more progressive and hopeful future? This talk responds to the renewed monumentality we find in memory museums, memorials and commemorative rituals that perpetuate nationalism and ethnocentrism. Looking at recent memorial projects by diasporic artists from different parts of the world, it explores both the vicissitudes and the vulnerabilities of exile and statelessness. While scholars have defined memory as transnational or transcultural, diasporic artists offer statelessness as a potential space of resistance to nationalist imaginaries, and as a platform of encounter and interconnection.
Marianne Hirsch is William Peterfield Trent Professor of English and Comparative Literature. Her work combines feminist theory with memory studies, particularly the transmission of memories of violence across generations. Her recent books include The Generation of Postmemory: Writing and Visual Culture After the Holocaust (Columbia University Press, 2012), Ghosts of Home: The Afterlife of Czernowitz in Jewish Memory, co-authored with Leo Spitzer (University of California Press, 2010), Rites of Return: Diaspora, Poetics and the Politics of Memory, co-edited with Nancy K. Miller (Columbia University Press, 2011).
In cooperation with:
Wien Museum - Karlsplatz 8, 1040 Vienna
Marianne Hirsch is William Peterfield Trent Professor of English and Comparative Literature. Her work combines feminist theory with memory studies, particularly the transmission of memories of violence across generations. Her recent books include The Generation of Postmemory: Writing and Visual Culture After the Holocaust (Columbia University Press, 2012), Ghosts of Home: The Afterlife of Czernowitz in Jewish Memory, co-authored with Leo Spitzer (University of California Press, 2010), Rites of Return: Diaspora, Poetics and the Politics of Memory, co-edited with Nancy K. Miller (Columbia University Press, 2011).
In cooperation with:
Wien Museum - Karlsplatz 8, 1040 Vienna
