« I REMEMBER »: INDIVIDUAL AND COLLECTIVE MEMORY IN

Année universitaire 2014/2015
Collège universitaire
Semestre de printemps
« I REMEMBER »: INDIVIDUAL AND COLLECTIVE MEMORY IN
THE LITERARY IMAGINATION (19th-20th CENTURIES)
Sarah Juliette Sasson
[email protected]
[email protected]
Syllabus
Course Description:
This course explores the role of individual and collective memory in the literary imagination.
The ubiquitous presence of memory in our cultural landscape forces us to consider it not only as
a fundamental tool of inspiration and creation but also as an essential component of our modern
world. In the modern period, as an overwhelming reaction to a constantly changing society and
world, memory has stood as the guarantor of values and as a defence mechanism against the
dissolution of identities. Nostalgia for a lost world generates literary creation, that itself
remains sometimes the sole trace of the existence of that world, culture or experience. Whereas
the Bible posits the sinfulness of forgetting, the concept and evocation of memory have
enchanted writers such as Proust and Nabokov who made it the very catalyst of their artistic
production. Yet, memory is also an elusive concept which bears witness to the complexity of its
stakes; its uses and misuses are emblematic of our collective anxiety towards defining ourselves.
We will look at literary examples of individual and collective memory and attempt to analyze
their respective differences and function within our modern culture. We will also look at several
examples of collective trauma and their representation in culture. In our society, obsessed with
personal narratives and communication technology, we will reflect on the paradoxical emergence
of a growing collective, indeed global, memory and on its significance.
Our texts will be come from world literature of the 19th and 20th centuries and be read in
English.
Required Work and Form of Assessment:
This course will be run as a seminar: it will depend on your active participation. Regular
attendance and participation are essential and will constitute a part of your overall grade. You
are expected to come to class fully prepared to discuss the assigned material.
Your grade will be based on four components:
-Class discussion, participation: 30%
-Visual narrative (you will be asked to write a parataxis based on a photo exhibit): 10%
-Oral Presentation (Group presentation on students’ collective projects): 30%
-Research paper: 30%
SYLLABUS
SESSION 1:
INTRODUCTION. THEORY OF MEMORY
Sigmund Freud, Selected Works, The Standard Edition of the Complete Psychological Works,
James Strachey Ed. In collaboration with Anna Freud, 1999.
Mary Caruthers, The Book of Memory. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press 2008.
Maurice Halbwachs. On Collective Memory. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.
SESSION 2:
FRAMING THE QUESTION OF MEMORY
Said, Edward Said. “Invention, Memory and Place,” Critical Inquiry, Vol. 26, No. 2 (Winter
2000), pp. 175-192.
Pierre Nora. Realms of Memory, Columbia University Press, 1996–1998.
Jean-Paul Sartre on collective memory.
SESSION 3:
RIBBONS, THRUSHES, MADELEINES
Jean-Jacques. Rousseau, Confessions, The Echo Library, 2010.
François René de Chateaubriand. Memoirs (Mémoires d’outre-tombe), Nabu Press, 2010.
Proust, Marcel. Remembrance of Things Past. Vintage Books, 1982.
Vladimir Nabokov. Speak, Memory: An Autobiography Revisited. Penguin Classics, 1966.
SESSION 4:
CAN ONE REMEMBER COLLECTIVELY?
Günter Grass, Dog Years. Harcourt Press, 1965.
Georges Perec, I Remember (Je me souviens). Personal Translation.
SESSION 5:
DOCUMENTING MEMORY
James Agee, Walker Evans. Let Us Praise Now Famous Men. New York, Houghton Mifflin
Company, 1988.
Raymond Depardon, France. (A 2010 Exhibit at the Bibliothèque-François Mitterrand, now
available on Google).
SESSION 6:
MEMORY AS PHANTOM
Roberto Bolaño. Nazi Literature in the Americas. New Directions Paperbook, 2009.
Jean-Louis Faure, Sculpture. Paris: Editions de Fallois, 2009. Also available on
www.emamo.free.fr
Kristin Ross. Fast Cars, Clean Bodies: Decolonization and the Reordering of French Culture.
Boston: MIT Press, 1996.
SESSION 7:
FRAUD AND MEMORY
Misha Defonseca. Micha: A Memoir of the Holocaust (Survivre avec les loups, Paris: Robert
Laffont, 1997)
Benjamin Wilkomirski, Fragments. Memories of a Wartime Childhood. New York: Schocken
Books, 1996.
Ross Chambers, “Orphaned Memories, Foster-Writing, Phantom Pain: The Fragments Affair,”
in: Nancy Miller and Jason Tougaw (eds.) Extremities: Trauma, Testimony, and Community,
Urbana and Chicago: University of Illinois Press, 2002, pp. 92–111.
SESSION 8:
WORKSHOP / STUDENTS’ PROJECTS
Students present their group projects.
SESSION 9:
WORKSHOP / STUDENTS’ PROJECTS
Students present their group projects.
SESSION 10:
WORLD WAR II AND THE IMPERATIVE OF REMEMBRANCE
Ruth Klüger, Landscapes of Memory. Bloomsbury Paperbacks, 2004.
Marguerite Duras, The War, a Memoir (La Douleur). New Press, 1994.
Peter Z. Malkin, The Argentina Journal. New York, VWF Publishing, 2002.
SESSION 11:
9/11 MEMORY AS COLLECTIVE CATASTROPHE
Jonathan Safran Foer. Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close. New York, Mariner Books, 2006.
Teju Cole. Open City. New York, Random House, 2011.
Edwige Dandicat, On 9/11’s tenth anniversary, The New Yorker.
SESSION 12:
TOWARDS A GLOBALIZED MEMORY: ENVIRONMENTAL CATASTROPHES AND
THEIR REPRESENTATION
Jhumpa Lahiri. Unaccustomed Earth. Stories. New York: Vintage, 2009.
Emmanuel Carrère. Lives Other than my Own (D’autres Vies que la mienne). Metropolitan 2011.
Dany Laferrière, Tout bouge autour de moi. (Personal translation: unavailable in English).
CONCLUSION. THE DISAPPEARANCE OF MEMORY
Alice Munro, « The Bear Came over the Mountain» in Hateship, Friendship, Courtship,
Loveship, Marriage: Stories, New York, Vintage, 2002.