Syllabus
Instructor: Pavel Barša
* Trauma and Identity
Collective identity and collective memory are interlinked. What we remember from the past and what meaning we give to it signals who we are or want to be. From this point of view, it is not primarily the past that determines the present, but vice versa. This, at least, was the main thesis of the founding father of the sociology of collective memory Maurice Halbwachs. His view has been shaken recently by psychoanalytical approaches. They focus on the traumatic memory and its "return of the repressed" in which the past exerts a tight control over the present. Collective trauma and memory are modeled on individual psychological processes. Is this analogy appropriate or flawed? Does it help us understand processes of collective memory construction or does it rather obscure them? The course rehearses theoretical debates about collective trauma, memory and identity that have taken place in the last twenty years in psychoanalysis, sociology and literary theory.
* Summer Term
* Day: Wednesday
* Time: 15.45-17.15
Place: Room 326 (Palachovo náměstí 1)
Course Requirements
* Oral presentation
* Participation (including position papers for each class)
* In-class essay
* Week One
Introduction
Ernst Renan: What is a Nation? In: Nationalism. Oxford Readers, Hutchinson, John and Smith, Anthony D. (eds.), Oxford University Press, Oxford 1994: pp. 20-28.
* Week Two
Maurice Halbwachs: On Collective Memory, The University of Chicago Press, Chicago and London, 1992: 37-40, 46-61, 167-189.
* Week Three
Nora, Pierre: "Between Memory and History: Les Lieux de Mémoire", Representations 26, 1989, pp. 7-25.
* Week Four
Olick, Jeffrey K.: Collective Memory: The Two Cultures, Sociological Theory, Vol. 17, No. 3, Nov. 1999, pp. 333-348.
* Week Five
Young, James E.: The Biography of a Memorial Icon: Nathan Rapaport's Warsaw Ghetto Monument, Representations, No. 26, Special Issue: Memory and Counter-Memory, Spring 1989, pp. 69-106.
* Week Six
Wagner, Pacifici, Robin, Schwartz, Barry: The Vietnam Veterans Memorial: Commemorating a Difficult Past, The American Journal of Sociology, Vol. 97, No. 2, Sept. 1991, pp. 376-420.
* Week Seven
Kaplan, E. Ann: Why Trauma Now?. Freud and Trauma Studies, in: Trauma Culture. The Politics of Terror and Loss in Media and Literature, Rutgers University Press, New Brunswick, New Jersey, and London, 2005, pp. 24-41.
* Week Eight
Caruth, Cathy (ed.): Trauma. Explorations in Memory, The Johns Hopkins University Press, Baltimore 1995, pp. 3-12, pp. 251-257; Unclaimed Experience: Trauma and the Possibility of History, Yale French studies, No. 79, Literature and the Ethical Question, 1991, pp. 181-192.
Week Nine
Kaplan, E. Ann: Memory as Testimony in World War II. Freud, Duras, and Kofman, in: Trauma Culture. The Politics of Terror and Loss in Media and Literature, Rutgers University Press, New Brunswick, New Jersey, and London, 2005, pp. 41-58; Duras, Marguerite: The War. A Memoir, The New Press, New York, pp. 71-112.
* Week Ten
Felman, Shoshana: The Return of the Voice: Claude Lanzmann's Shoah, in: Felman, Shoshana, Laub, Dori: Testimony: Crises of Witnessing in Literature, Psychoanalysis, and History, New York and London, Routledge, 1992, pp. 204-283.
* Week Eleven
LaCapra, Dominick: Representing the Holocaust: Reflections on Historians' Debate, in: Friedlander, Saul (ed.): Probing the Limits of Representation: Nazism and the 'Final Solution', Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1992, pp. 108-127.
* Week Twelve
LaCapra, Dominick: Writing History, Writing Trauma, The Johns Hopkins University Press, 2001, pp. 1-42, pp. 181-219.
* Week Thirteen
Smelser, Neil J.: Psychological Trauma and Cultural Trauma, in: Alexander Jeffrey C. et al. (eds.): Cultural Trauma and Collective Identity, University of California Press, L.A., 2004, pp. 31-59.
Annotation
Instructor: Pavel Barša
Trauma and Identity
Collective identity and collective memory are interlinked. What we remember from the past and what meaning we give to it signals who we are or want to be. From this point of view, it is not primarily the past that determines the present, but vice versa. This, at least, was the main thesis of the founding father of the sociology of collective memory Maurice Halbwachs.
His view has been shaken recently by psychoanalytical approaches. They focus on the traumatic memory and its "return of the repressed" in which the past exerts a tight control over the present. Collective trauma and memory are modeled on individual psychological processes. Is this analogy appropriate or flawed? Does it help us understand processes of collective memory construction or does it rather obscure them? The course rehearses theoretical debates about collective trauma, memory and identity that have taken place in the last twenty years in psychoanalysis, sociology and literary theory.
Summer Term
Day: Wednesday
Time: 15.45-17.15
Place: Room 326 (Palachovo náměstí 1)
Course Requirements
Oral presentation
Participation (including position papers for each class)
In-class essay
Week One
Introduction
Ernst Renan: What is a Nation? In: Nationalism. Oxford Readers, Hutchinson, John and Smith, Anthony D. (eds.), Oxford
University Press, Oxford 1994: pp. 20-28.
Week Two
Maurice Halbwachs: On Collective Memory, The University of Chicago Press, Chicago and London, 1992: 37-40, 46-61, 167-189.
Week Three
Nora, Pierre: "Between Memory and History: Les Lieux de Mémoire", Representations 26, 1989, pp. 7-25.
Week Four
Olick, Jeffrey K.: Collective Memory: The Two Cultures, Sociological Theory, Vol. 17, No. 3, Nov. 1999, pp. 333-348.
Week Five
Young, James E.: The Biography of a Memorial Icon: Nathan Rapaport's Warsaw Ghetto Monument, Representations, No. 26, Special Issue: Memory and Counter-Memory, Spring 1989, pp. 69-106.
Week Six
Wagner, Pacifici, Robin, Schwartz, Barry: The Vietnam Veterans Memorial: Commemorating a Difficult Past, The American
Journal of Sociology, Vol. 97, No. 2, Sept. 1991, pp. 376-420.
Week Seven
Kaplan, E. Ann: Why Trauma Now?. Freud and Trauma Studies, in: Trauma Culture. The Politics of Terror and Loss in
Media and Literature, Rutgers University Press, New Brunswick, New Jersey, and London, 2005, pp. 24-41.
Week Eight
Caruth, Cathy (ed.): Trauma. Explorations in Memory, The Johns Hopkins University Press, Baltimore 1995, pp. 3-12, pp. 251-257; Unclaimed Experience: Trauma and the Possibility of History, Yale French studies, No. 79, Literature and the
Ethical Question, 1991, pp. 181-192.
Week Nine
Kaplan, E. Ann: Memory as Testimony in World War II. Freud, Duras, and Kofman, in: Trauma Culture. The Politics of Terror and Loss in Media and Literature, Rutgers University Press, New Brunswick, New Jersey, and London, 2005, pp. 41-58;
Duras, Marguerite: The War. A Memoir, The New Press, New York, pp. 71-112.
Week Ten
Felman, Shoshana: The Return of the Voice: Claude Lanzmann's Shoah, in: Felman, Shoshana, Laub, Dori: Testimony:
Crises of Witnessing in Literature, Psychoanalysis, and History, New York and London, Routledge, 1992, pp. 204-283.
Week Eleven
LaCapra, Dominick: Representing the Holocaust: Reflections on Historians' Debate, in: Friedlander, Saul (ed.): Probing the
Limits of Representation: Nazism and the 'Final Solution', Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1992, pp. 108-127.
Week Twelve
LaCapra, Dominick: Writing History, Writing Trauma, The Johns Hopkins University Press, 2001, pp. 1-42, pp. 181-219.
Week Thirteen
Smelser, Neil J.: Psychological Trauma and Cultural Trauma, in: Alexander Jeffrey C. et al. (eds.): Cultural Trauma and
Collective Identity, University of California Press, L.A., 2004, pp. 31-59.