The roundtable discussion will focus on the many meeting points between their projects, as well as questions at the intersection of memory and history, archival pasts and presents, autobiography and ethnography, and research and/as creative practice.Īt the end of the twentieth century, the sociologist Stuart Hall identified a new politics of cultural difference. The performative returns they enact raise the possibility of methodological reciprocities, as well as spectres of extraction, othering and (self-) Orientalism. Their interdisciplinary projects approach the fields of dance history, literature, theatre and dance anthropology through creative practices of multimedia documentary making, playwriting and reenactment. In doing so, their autobiographical memories articulate with more public memories, conceived as mythofictions, ghosts and archival materials with ‘messianic power’ (Benjamin, 1974). They revisit memories of childhood performance, theatre histories, urban landscapes and local performance practices. In this roundtable, the panelists will share their reflections on their current research as a return, a recollection or a reenactment. The papers in this panel endeavor to voice the same main concern: that witnessing of this dark event of 20th century history can also take place in the realm of and through objects that remain proofs of the horrendous events during WW2 and that perform the work of recollection for generations who have learned about these events only from history books. Yet Marianne Hirsch’s concept of postmemory needs to be supplemented by another type of transmission and presence of memory: material witnessing. In other words, for about two decades, as many memory and trauma scholars have emphasized, we have gradually been stepping into an epoch when no witnesses can give us direct testimonies and when the Holocaust started to be mainly represented by the second and third generations’ postmemory. As time passes, almost all those who survived and told us their stories both on their behalf and on behalf of those who had perished in concentration and death camps are disappearing. In this day and age, we attempt to think of how we can still witness one of greatest atrocities against humankind, the Holocaust. In only three years’ time, 80 years will have passed since Auschwitz was liberated. July 11th – July 12th MSA Groups’ Panels.
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |
AuthorWrite something about yourself. No need to be fancy, just an overview. ArchivesCategories |