Technologies of Memory in the Arts: An Introduction

Abstract

‘Remember me,’ the ghost famously says to Hamlet in Shakespeare’s tragedy, and like so many contemporary Hamlets, we obey the spectral past’s call to remembrance. The seemingly simple imperative to remember, however, obscures the fact that remembering can be a tricky business. Sometimes we remember in order to honour the past, even as we remember selectively and distort the past. At other times, we disremember, failing to remember what seems of little importance, or forgetting altogether. We may remember because we refuse to forget. Or we may forget what we wish to remember. By remembering, we form an idea of our self and shape a sense of our identity; thus, we end up embodying the memory that inhabits us. Yet, memory is a dynamic phenomenon for any individual, but also for a culture as a whole. Memory is affected by politics, ideology, technology, or art and popular culture. By changing over time, memory may unsettle received ideas of the past, and consequently also of the present and even the future.

The tyranny of memory will have endured for only a moment — but it was our moment.

(Nora, 1996, p. 637)