Witness: Memory, Representation and the Media in Question - Softcover

Ekman, Ulrik; Tygstrup, Frederik

Softcover

ISBN 10: 8763504251 ISBN 13: 9788763504256

Publisher: Museum Tusculanum Press, 2008

Synopsis

Witness presents a new body of work in the field by an international cast of scholars who engage with a complex set of questions concerning notions of witnessing and attestation in twentieth- and twenty-first century Western culture. Providing insight into this vital yet relatively unexplored concept and the wide range of media and subject areas to which it lends itself the volume not only establishes links with existing, currently canonical contributions to witness literature from Primo Levi through Victor Klemperer to Imre Kertesz but also goes on to provide a set of analyses of exemplary and very recent literary works in that area. Furthermore, Witness extends and changes the previous scholarly tendency to focus strongly on historical evidence and the witness s vocalization of true remembrance so as to include difficult theoretical and interpretative questions posed by studies today of traumatic experience, amnesia, visual culture, new media, and technology. The book includes contributions from the acclaimed Romanian-German author Herta Muller, Nobel laureate of literature 2009, and Cathy Caruth, the internationally recognized scholar in trauma studies."

About this title

Product Description:

This book offers a complex and thought-provoking anthology of critical essays respecting the notion of the witness and phenomena of witnessing in Western culture since the Holocaust. 'Witness' presents a new body of work in the field by an international collective of scholars concerned with resituating witnessing in its specifically contemporary problematic. This volume thus not only establishes links with existing, currently canonical contributions to witness literature - from Primo Levi through Victor Klemperer to Imre Kertesz - it also goes on to provide a set of analyses of exemplary and very recent literary works in that area. Most significantly, "Witness" extends and changes the previous scholarly tendency to focus strongly on historical evidence and the witness' vocalisation of true remembrance, so as to include difficult theoretical and interpretative questions posed by studies today of traumatic experience, amnesia, visual culture, new media, and technology. Amongst others, the book includes contributions from the acclaimed Romanian-German author Herta Muller, and such an internationally recognised scholar in trauma studies as Cathy Caruth.

About the Author:

Ulrik Ekman is Assistant Professor at the Section of Comparative Literature and Modern Culture, Department of Art and Cultural Studies, University of Copenhagen. Frederik Tygstrup is head of the Copenhagen Doctoral School in Cultural Studies, Literature, and the Arts and Associate Professor at the Section of Comparative Literature and Modern Culture, Department of Art and Cultural Studies, University of Copenhagen.

About this edition

• Publisher: Museum Tusculanum Press
• Publication date: 2008
• ISBN 10: 8763504251
• ISBN 13: 9788763504256
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 420