Not Even Past Yet

Dados Bibliográficos

ID4494516
AutoresBill Schwarz (autor correspondente)
Ano2004
Volume57
Fascículo1
Páginas101-115
Data de publicação2004-03-01
Peer ReviewedSim
Open AccessNão
TipoARTICLE
PeriódicoHistory Workshop Journal (JOURNAL)
Identificadores do periódicoISSN: 1363-3554 • E-ISSN: 1477-4569
EditoraOxford University Press (PUBLISHER • GB)
DOI10.1093/hwj/57.1.101
OpenAlexW2076216586
IdiomaEN
Citações recebidas4
Referências citadas16

This article, based on the 2003 Raphael Samuel Memorial Lecture, begins with the issue of memory, but also asks: what are the limitations of studying memory? I suggest that smuggled in to current memory studies are a range of issues which are, in fact, analytically distinct from the problem of memory itself: historical temporality, consciousness of time, and consciousness of history. Underlying all these distinct problems is the overarching question of how we can conceive of ‘the past’ existing in ‘the present’. I explore this in relation to two Caribbean thinkers. I look first at C. L. R. James’s monumental and wonderful history book, The Black Jacobins, which works closely within the Hegelian idea of ‘world-history’. An alternative conceptualization can be found in George Lamming’s more phenomenological approach, manifest most in his novel, In The Castle of My Skin. These two polarities – history on the world-stage, and history in subjective mode – continue to underwrite our understanding of the-past-in-the-present. I close by turning to the work of Raphael Samuel, and suggest that his celebrated volumes, Theatres of Memory, are more concerned with the-past-in-the-present than they are with memory itself.

Art · Conceptualization · Consciousness · Epistemology · Hegelianism · Literature · Philosophy of history · Psychoanalysis · Relation (database) · Temporality · Anthropological Studies and Insights · Caribbean and African Literature and Culture · History · Philosophy · Postcolonial and Cultural Literary Studies · Psychology