Forgetting to Re-member: Politics of Amnesia and the Reconstruction of Memory in Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind, Everything Is Illuminated and Memento

IF 0.1 0 LITERARY THEORY & CRITICISM

American, British and Canadian Studies Pub Date : 2019-12-01 DOI:10.2478/abcsj-2019-0019

M. Goc

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Abstract

Abstract This essay aims to discuss the ideological aspects of memory loss as a reconstruction of personal and collective memory with reference to several Hollywood movies, Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind, Memento and Everything Is Illuminated. The essay explores the construction of memory within a network of power relations and the profound influence that the reproduction of memory has on the embodiment of personal identities. The unreliability of human memory has been a major issue in philosophical debates and works of art from early Greek philosophy to cyberpunk novels. Memory studies draw on a wide range of academic fields varying from neuroscience to political science, with an emphasis on prosthetic memories, identity and body politics, displaced cultural identities, and consumer culture. Often intermingled with collective narratives, memory is an ideological artifact or rather a form of language that can be institutionally manipulated or manufactured. The mass production of personal and collective memories further deprives human beings of control over their personal histories and identity constructions. In this regard, this article elaborates the formation, reinforcement, and reconstruction of memory in contemporary culture with particular references to the inclusion of hegemony, cultural politics, and identity politics in selected movies.

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遗忘记忆:《美丽心灵的永恒阳光》、《一切都被照亮》、《纪念品》中的失忆政治与记忆重建

摘要本文旨在以好莱坞电影《美丽心灵的永恒阳光》、《记忆碎片》和《一切都被照亮》为例，探讨记忆丧失作为个人和集体记忆重建的意识形态层面。本文探讨了在权力关系网络中记忆的建构，以及记忆的再生产对个人身份体现的深刻影响。从早期希腊哲学到赛博朋克小说，人类记忆的不可靠性一直是哲学辩论和艺术作品中的一个主要问题。记忆研究借鉴了从神经科学到政治学等广泛的学术领域，重点是假肢记忆、身份和身体政治、流离失所的文化身份和消费文化。记忆通常与集体叙事交织在一起，是一种意识形态的产物，或者更确切地说，是一种可以被制度操纵或制造的语言形式。个人和集体记忆的大量生产进一步剥夺了人类对其个人历史和身份结构的控制。在这方面，本文阐述了当代文化中记忆的形成、强化和重建，特别提到了霸权主义、文化政治和身份政治在选定的电影中的包含。

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来源期刊

American, British and Canadian Studies Arts and Humanities-Literature and Literary Theory

CiteScore

0.20

自引率

0.00%

发文量

审稿时长

10 weeks

期刊介绍： Founded in 1999, American, British and Canadian Studies, the journal of the Academic Anglophone Society of Romania, is currently published by Lucian Blaga University of Sibiu. Re-launched in refashioned, biannual format, American, British and Canadian Studies is an international, peer-reviewed journal that sets out to explore disciplinary developments in Anglophone Studies in the changing environment forged by the intersections of culture, technology and electronic information. Our primary goal is to bring together in productive dialogue scholars conducting advanced research in the theoretical humanities. As well as offering innovative approaches to influential crosscurrents in contemporary thinking, the journal seeks to contribute fresh angles to the academic subject of English and promote shape-changing research across conventional boundaries. By virtue of its dynamic and varied profile and of the intercultural dialogue that it caters for, ABC Studies aims to fill a gap in the Romanian academic arena, and function as the first publication to approach Anglophone studies in a multi-disciplinary perspective. Within the proposed range of diversity, our major scope is to provide close examinations and lucid analyses of the role and future of the academic institutions at the cutting edge of high-tech. With this end in view, we especially invite contributions in the fields of Comparative Literary and Cultural Studies, Postcolonial Theory, Area Studies, Cultural Anthropology, Language and Linguistics, Multimedia and Digital Arts, Translation Studies and related subjects. With its wide subject range, American, British and Canadian Studies aims to become one of the academic community’s premium scholarly resources.