Hostname: page-component-78c5997874-lj6df Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-11-06T07:59:51.418Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

Racial Memory and Literary History

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  23 October 2020

Stephen Greenblatt
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Abstract

The national model of literary history—with its developmental, teleological narrative of emergence and its vision of ineffable belonging and uniqueness—has lost much of its traditional pedagogical centrality, but it has not vanished. Rather, it has migrated from the center to what was once the periphery, where it now flourishes as a way of affirming the identity claims of hitherto marginalized groups. Literary historians speaking for such groups may openly acknowledge that the terms associated with the old historical narrative—evolutionary, continuous, organic, and the like—are largely fictive, yet these writers self-consciously embrace the fiction in order to appropriate its power. But this embrace entails serious risks: cynicism, enforced performativity, and repetition compulsion. A more powerful alternative lies in the emerging practice of mobility studies.

Type
Research Article
Information
PMLA , Volume 116 , Issue 1: Special Topic: Globalizing Literary Studies , January 2001 , pp. 48 - 63
Copyright
Copyright © Modern Language Association of America, 2001

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

Works Cited

Austen, Jane. Mansfield Park. Ed. Chapman, R. W. London: Oxford UP, 1934.Google Scholar
Borges, Jorge Luis. “The Argentine Writer and Tradition.” Labyrinths. Trans. James E. Irby. Ed. Donald A. Yates and Irby. New York: New Directions, 1962. 171–79.Google Scholar
Borges, Jorge Luis. “El escritor argentino y la tradicion.” Prosa completa. Vol. 1. Barcelona: Bruguera, 1980. 215–23.Google Scholar
Burkert, Walter. The Orientalizing Revolution: Near Eastern Influence on Greek Culture in the Early Archaic Age. Trans. Burkert and Margaret E. Pinder. Cambridge: Harvard UP, 1992.Google Scholar
Diderot, Denis. The Paradox of Acting. Trans. Walter Herries Pollock. New York: Hill, 1957. Trans. of Paradoxe sur le comédien.Google Scholar
Ghosh, Amitav. In an Antique Land. London: Penguin, 1992.Google Scholar
González Echevarría, Roberto, and Enrique, Pupo-Walker. General preface. The Cambridge History of Latin American Literature. Ed. González, Echevarría and Pupo-Walker, . Vol. 1. Cambridge: Cambridge UP, 1996. xi-xvii.Google Scholar
Halbwachs, Maurice. On Collective Memory. Ed. and trans. Lewis, Coser. Chicago: U of Chicago P, 1992.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Heaney, Seamus. Introduction. Beowulf. Trans. Heaney. New York: Farrar, 2000. ix-xxx.Google Scholar
Hedges, Chris. “In Bosnia's Schools, Three Ways Never to Learn from History.” New York Times 25 Nov. 1997, East Coast late ed.: A1.Google Scholar
Hollier, Denis. “On Writing Literary History.” A New History of French Literature. Ed. Hollier. Cambridge: Harvard UP, 1994. xxi-xxv.Google Scholar
Hutcheon, Linda. “Interventionist Literary Histories: Nostalgic, Pragmatic, or Utopian?” Modern Language Quarterly 59 (1998): 401–17.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Julia, Martínez, and Francisco, Lomelí. Introduction. Chicano Literature: A Reference Guide. Ed. Martínez, and Lomeli, . Westport: Greenwood, 1985. xi-xiv.Google Scholar
Nixon, Rob. “Of Balkans and Banatustans: Ethnic Cleansing and the Crisis in National Legitimation.” Dangerous Liaisons: Gender, Nation, and Postcolonial Perspectives. Ed. Anne, McClintock, Aamir, Mufti, and Ella, Shahat. Minneapolis: U of Minnesota P, 1997. 69–88.Google Scholar
Pérez-Torres, Rafael. Movements in Chicano Poetry: Against Myths, against Margins. New York: Cambridge UP, 1995.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Perkins, David. Is Literary History Possible? Baltimore: Johns Hopkins UP, 1992.Google Scholar
Shakespeare, William. The Comedy of Errors. Shakespeare, Norton Shakespeare 690–731.Google Scholar
Shakespeare, William. Hamlet. Shakespeare, Norton Shakespeare 1668–1759.Google Scholar
Shakespeare, William. The Norton Shakespeare. Ed. Stephen, Greenblatt, Walter, Cohen, Jean, Howard, and Katharine Eisaman, Maus. New York: Norton, 1997.Google Scholar
Shakespeare, William. Othello. Shakespeare, Norton Shakespeare 2100–74.Google Scholar
Skinner, Stephen. Gazophylacium Anglicanum: Containing the Derivation of English Words, Proper and Common, Each in an Alphabet Distinct: Proving the Dutch and Saxon to Be the Prime Foundations. London, 1689.Google Scholar
Veblen, Thorstein. “The Intellectual Pre-eminence of Jews in Modern Europe.” Essays in Our Changing Order. Ed. Leon, Ardzrooni. New York: Viking, 1943. 219–31.Google Scholar