Multidirectional Memory

What happens when different histories confront each other in the public sphere? Does the remembrance of one history erase others from view? When memories of slavery and colonialism bump up against memories of the Holocaust in contemporary multicultural societies, must a competition of victims ensue? Multidirectional Memory addresses these vexing questions by advancing a new theory of remembrance that challenges the basic tenets of current thinking on cultural memory and group identity. Most discussions of the relationship between memory and identity today are based on a zero-sum logic in which the evocation of one group's history is said to block other groups' histories from view. Rothberg contrasts this model of "competitive memory" with a theory of "multidirectional memory" that redescribes the public sphere as a field of contestation where memories interact productively and in unexpected ways. By making visible an intellectual and artistic countertradition that links memories of genocide and colonialism, he reveals how the public articulation of collective memory by marginalized and oppositional social groups provides resources for other groups to stake their own claims for recognition and justice. Book jacket.

Michael Rothberg is Professor of English and Director of the Unit for Criticism and Interpretive Theory at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. He is the author of Traumatic Realism: The Demands of Holocaust Representation (2000).