PT  - JOURNAL ARTICLE
AU  - Goebel, Rolf J.
TI  - Kulturelles Gedächtnis als topographische Selbstartikulation
AID  - 10.1353/mon.2012.0097
DP  - 2012 Dec 21
TA  - Monatshefte
PG  - 554--569
VI  - 104
IP  - 4
4099  - http://mon.uwpress.org/content/104/4/554.short
4100  - http://mon.uwpress.org/content/104/4/554.full
AB  - In contrast to theories according to which urban memory is merely an arbitrary projection of historical meanings on architectural surfaces devoid of any inherent meaning, high-modernist writers like Kafka, Benjamin, Kracauer, and Rilke conceive of memory as networks of historical voices, traces, and echoes that are being articulated by material urban topographies figuring as quasi-subjects. In analogy to the hermeneutic act of reading (literary) texts, these topographic selfarticulations are translated through various media and discourses—exemplified here by the novel, the essay, and poetry—into social discourses. Memory, then, is not only a temporal process but also a spatially located act of resisting modernity’s hyper-acceleration. Reconstructing aspects of this aesthetic tradition opens up new ways of authentic interrogations of the past that may be of significant methodological value for intermedial cultural studies. (RJG; in German)