South Asian Literatures, Postcolonial Literatures in English: Sources and Resources, vol 1.

Abstract

borhood, represent counter-narratives and participate in the larger, national narrative about identity (What is an American?), and share what she calls “transnational connotations” (396): for instance, they have an international audience and establish transatlantic ties to Africa (and many other nations and countries). Juliane Schwarz-Bierschenk (Art. 16) opts for a geographic space, the Camino Real, rather than a monument, and argues that the two commemorative projects, the National Historic Trail (2000) and the Camino Real International Heritage Center (2005), situate the site within “the material context of a globalized economy and the cultural discourses of world heritage” (352). As a highly ambivalent borderlands symbol, the Camino Real allows for two possible readings for the future development: her optimistic reading highlights the possibility that the transitional space will be pulling the Americas together while her skeptical reading emphasizes the possibility that the Camino Real will be used to revive the nationalist Hispanic homeland concept and thus “ennoble exploitative economic relations by awarding them the cultural distinction of national and world heritage” (373). Like Schwarz-Bierschenk, Birgit Däwes (Art. 13) prefers a transnational view, rather than a national one in her essay on cinematic memorializations of Ground Zero. Arguing that a ‘glocal’ event like 9/11 requires transnational interpretations and angles, she devalues Oliver Stone’s World Trade Center (2006), as it promotes a homeland concept and a patriotic discourse of heroism. She favors, by contrast, Alain Brigand’s series of short films 11’09’01 (2002), especially the films made by Sean Penn and Alejandro González Iñárritu, and Wim Wender’s Land of Plenty (2004), for these cinematic reactions to 9/11 resituate the event in larger historical contexts and constitute “transnational contributions to the memory of 9/11” (303). The study’s various approaches to American memory studies are representative of the current set of ideas that are stimulated by the new concept of “transnational memory”. The referential objects display a spectrum from American to European aspects as well as the need for new descriptive modes and variations of literary and non-literary sources and media. Such diversity is also reflected in the international roster of the contributing authors, who share a similar terminology (e.g., “transnational memory”, “lieu de mémoire”, “collective memory”, and “memories”) which in turn facilitates the reading and also the comparison of similar studies. However, as my summaries make clear, the complexity of the topic “memory” and its cultural variety raises questions about the delimitation of terms, such as “memory” and “remembrance”, as Edward T. Linenthal’s “Commentary Epilogue” (Art. 20) calls to mind. Such cautionary reminders need not deter from further research in this exciting new field, but are rather apt to provoke more exploratory studies that include a perspective of the explanatory potential and limitations of common terminology.