The Objects of Return: Architectonics of Postmemory in Anne Enright's The Gathering

Document Type : علمی - پژوهشی

Authors

Shahid Beheshti University

Abstract

This part is to investigate Anne Enright's novel The Gathering in the light of postmemory. I argue that The Gathering is a post-mnemonic text in which not only postmemory is used by the narrator to preserve the past but also to reveal the post-mnemonic truth or untruth and this apocalyptic revelation is also a way of coming to terms or reconciling with one's past and finally the acceptance of death as an omnipresent fact. To analyze the text, Marianne Hirsch's concept of postmemory is used to shed light on the mechanism and strategies that postmemory applies in the many different generations in a family and the beyond, that is, to develop familial and affiliative connections among generations. Thus postmemory in the familial level is the Hagarty family and its three generations, and in the affiliative level postmemory can include the Irish society in general in the Celtic Tiger era and the subsequent post-Celtic era which reveals the truths and untruths about the optimism of the Celtic Tiger economic boom and its underlying corruption and sex scandal of the Catholic Church and the very gendered society of which the main character in order to cope with it has recourse to not only drinking alcohol but also to the post-mnemonic narrative to reconcile with the past, the present and the forthcoming future for the next generations.

Highlights

Assmann, Aleida. "Re-framing memory: between individual and collective forms of constructing the past." Performing the Past: Memory, History, and Identity in Modern Europe, edited by Karin Tilmans, Frank van Vree, Jay Winter, Amsterdam University Press; Illustrated edition, 2010, pp. 35-50.

Assmann, Jan. Das kulturelle Gedächtnis. C.H.Beck, 1999.

Barthes, Roland. Camera Lucida: Reflections on Photography. Translated by Richard Howard, Hill and Wang, 1982.

Connerton, Paul. How Societies Remember. 17th ed., Cambridge University Press, 2009.

Costello-Sullivan, Kathleen. Trauma and Recovery in the Twenty-First-Century Irish Novel. Syracuse University Press, 2018. JSTOR, www.jstor.org/stable/j.ctt20p5774. Accessed 6 Feb. 2021.

Dell'Amico, Carol. “Anne Enright's ‘The Gathering’: Trauma, Testimony, Memory.” New Hibernia Review / Iris Éireannach Nua, vol. 14, no. 3, 2010, pp. 59–74. JSTOR, www.jstor.org/stable/20779266. Accessed 5 Feb. 2021.

Didi-Huberman, Georges. Images in Spite of All: Four Photographs from Auschwitz. Translated by Shane B. Lillis, University of Chicago Press, 2012.

English, Bridget. Laying Out the Bones: Death and Dying in the Modern Irish Novel from James Joyce to Anne Enright. Syracuse University Press, 2017. JSTOR, www.jstor.org/stable/j.ctt1pk868h. Accessed 9 Feb. 2021.

Enright, Anne. The Gathering. Black Cat, New York, 2007.

Ganteau JM. (2017) Remembrance Between Act and Event: Anne Enright’s The Gathering. In: Onega S., del Río C., Escudero-Alías M. (eds) Traumatic Memory and the Ethical, Political and Transhistorical Functions of Literature. Palgrave Studies in Cultural Heritage and Conflict. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-55278-1_8

Gardam, Sarah C. “Default[ing] to the Oldest Scar”: A Psychoanalytic Investigation of Subjectivity in Anne Enright’s The Gathering", Études irlandaises [Online], 34.1 | 2009, Online since 30 June 2011, connection on 01 May 2019. URL: http://journals.openedition.org/etudesirlandaises/2590 ; DOI :

10.4000/etudesirlandaises.2590

Heidegger, Martin. On Time and Being. Translated by Joan Stambaugh, New York: Harper and Row, 1972.

Hirsch, Marianne. The Generation of Postmemory: Writing and Visual Culture After the Holocaust. Columbia University Press, 2012.

Hoffman, Eva. After Such Knowledge: Memory, History, and the Legacy of the Holocaust. PublicAffairs, 2004.

Kant, Emmanuel. Critique of Pure Reason. Translated by Paul Guyer, and Allen W. Wood, Cambridge University Press, 1999. 

Kunz, Julia. “The Ghost as a Metaphor for Memory in the Irish Literary Psyche.” Ghosts - or the (Nearly) Invisible: Spectral Phenomena in Literature and the Media, edited by Maria Fleischhack and Elmar Schenkel, Peter Lang AG, Frankfurt Am Main, 2016, pp. 107–114. JSTOR, www.jstor.org/stable/j.ctv2t4d7f.13. Accessed 8 Feb. 2021.

Mansouri, Shahriyar. "Joyce, Contra-Joyce: Time and Untime in Ulysses". Critical Language and Literary studies, 14, 18, 2017, 261-285.

Matin Parsa, Lida, and Narges Montakhabi. "Cognitive Dissonance and Cognitive Huge Leap in Ian McEwan’s Saturday: A Reconstruction of 9/11 Trauma". Critical Language and Literary studies, 17, 25, 2021, 261-292. doi: 10.29252/clls.17.25.261

Mianowski, Marie. "Time and Sense in Anne Enright’s The Gathering." Bertrand Cardin et Sylvie Mikowski. Ecrivaines Irlandaises. Irish women writers, Presses Universitaires de Caen, 2014, pp.163-178.

Spivak, Gayatri Chakravorty. “Acting Bits/Identity Talk.” Critical Inquiry, vol. 18, no. 4, 1992, pp. 770–803. JSTOR, www.jstor.org/stable/1343830. Accessed 24 Feb. 2021.

Stiegler, Bernard. Technics and Time, 1: The Fault of Epimetheus. Translated by Richard Beardsworth and George Collins, Stanford University Press, 1998.

Keywords

References

Assmann, Aleida. "Re-framing memory: between individual and collective forms of constructing the past." Performing the Past: Memory, History, and Identity in Modern Europe, edited by Karin Tilmans, Frank van Vree, Jay Winter, Amsterdam University Press; Illustrated edition, 2010, pp. 35-50.
Assmann, Jan. Das kulturelle Gedächtnis. C.H.Beck, 1999.
Barthes, Roland. Camera Lucida: Reflections on Photography. Translated by Richard Howard, Hill and Wang, 1982.
Connerton, Paul. How Societies Remember. 17th ed., Cambridge University Press, 2009.
Costello-Sullivan, Kathleen. Trauma and Recovery in the Twenty-First-Century Irish Novel. Syracuse University Press, 2018. JSTOR, www.jstor.org/stable/j.ctt20p5774. Accessed 6 Feb. 2021.
Dell'Amico, Carol. “Anne Enright's ‘The Gathering’: Trauma, Testimony, Memory.” New Hibernia Review / Iris Éireannach Nua, vol. 14, no. 3, 2010, pp. 59–74. JSTOR, www.jstor.org/stable/20779266. Accessed 5 Feb. 2021.
Didi-Huberman, Georges. Images in Spite of All: Four Photographs from Auschwitz. Translated by Shane B. Lillis, University of Chicago Press, 2012.
English, Bridget. Laying Out the Bones: Death and Dying in the Modern Irish Novel from James Joyce to Anne Enright. Syracuse University Press, 2017. JSTOR, www.jstor.org/stable/j.ctt1pk868h. Accessed 9 Feb. 2021.
Enright, Anne. The Gathering. Black Cat, New York, 2007.
Ganteau JM. (2017) Remembrance Between Act and Event: Anne Enright’s The Gathering. In: Onega S., del Río C., Escudero-Alías M. (eds) Traumatic Memory and the Ethical, Political and Transhistorical Functions of Literature. Palgrave Studies in Cultural Heritage and Conflict. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-55278-1_8
Gardam, Sarah C. “Default[ing] to the Oldest Scar”: A Psychoanalytic Investigation of Subjectivity in Anne Enright’s The Gathering", Études irlandaises [Online], 34.1 | 2009, Online since 30 June 2011, connection on 01 May 2019. URL: http://journals.openedition.org/etudesirlandaises/2590 ; DOI :
10.4000/etudesirlandaises.2590
Heidegger, Martin. On Time and Being. Translated by Joan Stambaugh, New York: Harper and Row, 1972.
Hirsch, Marianne. The Generation of Postmemory: Writing and Visual Culture After the Holocaust. Columbia University Press, 2012.
Hoffman, Eva. After Such Knowledge: Memory, History, and the Legacy of the Holocaust. PublicAffairs, 2004.
Kant, Emmanuel. Critique of Pure Reason. Translated by Paul Guyer, and Allen W. Wood, Cambridge University Press, 1999. 
Kunz, Julia. “The Ghost as a Metaphor for Memory in the Irish Literary Psyche.” Ghosts - or the (Nearly) Invisible: Spectral Phenomena in Literature and the Media, edited by Maria Fleischhack and Elmar Schenkel, Peter Lang AG, Frankfurt Am Main, 2016, pp. 107–114. JSTOR, www.jstor.org/stable/j.ctv2t4d7f.13. Accessed 8 Feb. 2021.
Mansouri, Shahriyar. "Joyce, Contra-Joyce: Time and Untime in Ulysses". Critical Language and Literary studies, 14, 18, 2017, 261-285.
Matin Parsa, Lida, and Narges Montakhabi. "Cognitive Dissonance and Cognitive Huge Leap in Ian McEwan’s Saturday: A Reconstruction of 9/11 Trauma". Critical Language and Literary studies, 17, 25, 2021, 261-292. doi: 10.29252/clls.17.25.261
Mianowski, Marie. "Time and Sense in Anne Enright’s The Gathering." Bertrand Cardin et Sylvie Mikowski. Ecrivaines Irlandaises. Irish women writers, Presses Universitaires de Caen, 2014, pp.163-178.
Spivak, Gayatri Chakravorty. “Acting Bits/Identity Talk.” Critical Inquiry, vol. 18, no. 4, 1992, pp. 770–803. JSTOR, www.jstor.org/stable/1343830. Accessed 24 Feb. 2021.
Stiegler, Bernard. Technics and Time, 1: The Fault of Epimetheus. Translated by Richard Beardsworth and George Collins, Stanford University Press, 1998.
Critical Language and Literary studies
Volume 18, Issue 27
February 2022
Pages 213-238

Files

Share

How to cite

Statistics