RT Journal Article
SR Electronic
T1 Kulturelles Gedächtnis als topographische Selbstartikulation
JF Monatshefte
FD University of Wisconsin Press
SP 554
OP 569
DO 10.1353/mon.2012.0097
VO 104
IS 4
A1 Goebel, Rolf J.
YR 2012
UL http://mon.uwpress.org/content/104/4/554.abstract
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)