Amnesia and the Nation

1. Front Matter

   Pages i-xvii

   PDF

2. Introduction: Memory, Forgetting, and the Imagination

   • Vincent J. Cheng

   Pages 1-12

3. The Nightmare of History and the Burden of the Past

   • Vincent J. Cheng

   Pages 13-42

4. The Will to Forget: Nation and Forgetting in Ulysses

   • Vincent J. Cheng

   Pages 43-66

5. The Memory of the Past: National Memory and Commemoration

   • Vincent J. Cheng

   Pages 67-92

6. Joyce, Ireland, and the American South: Whiteness, Blackness, and Lost Causes

   • Vincent J. Cheng

   Pages 93-117

7. Slavery, the South, and Ethical Remembrancing

   • Vincent J. Cheng

   Pages 119-147

8. Afterword

   • Vincent J. Cheng

   Pages 149-150

9. Back Matter

   Pages 151-162

   PDF

This book examines the relationships between memory, history, and national identity through an interdisciplinary analysis of James Joyce’s works—as well as of literary texts by Kundera, Ford, Fitzgerald, and Walker Percy.  Drawing on thinkers such as Nietzsche, Marx, Freud, Luria, Anderson, and Yerushalmi, this study explores the burden of the past and the “nightmare of history” in Ireland and in the American South—from the Battle of the Boyne to the Good Friday Agreement, from the Civil War to the 2015 Mother Emanuel killings.

 

• James Joyce
• Ulysses
• Cultural Memory
• National identity formation
• Racism in the American South
• Good Friday Agreement
• Battle of the Boyne
• national trauma
• Dylann Roof
• Charleston Church shooting
• Emanuel African Methodist Episcopal Church
• the past and Milan Kundera
• Renan and forgetting
• Nietzsche and forgetting
• "the burden of memory"
• memory and formation of Irish national identity
• Finnegans Wake
• Battle of Aughrim
• 1916 Easter Rising
• Padraic Pearse

“Cheng’s thoughtful, meticulously researched, and clearly articulated study has succeeded in bringing into sharp relief all the complexities-virtues and dangers-of both remembering and forgetting.” (Jolanta Wawrzycka, James Joyce Quarterly, Vol. 57 (3-4), 2020)

“Anything published by Cheng will rouse the interest of Joyce scholars and Irish Studies scholars…and this book will not disappoint….It could be assigned in public school history courses across the South. The writing itself is masterful, always scholarly yet always accessible even to a non-expert reader.” (Joe Kelly, Professor in the Department of English, College of Charleston, USA, author of Our Joyce)

“Vincent J. Cheng skillfully weaves together the dynamic of remembering and forgetting with literature. Most surprising in this finely executed work is the connection he draws between the history of the Irish with the history of race… in the United States. Cheng brings fresh insights to our knowledge of Irish literature and American race relations.” (Viet Thanh Nguyen, Aerol Arnold Professor of English and American Studies and Ethnicity at the University of Southern California, USA, author of The Sympathizer (Pulitzer Prize, 2016) and Nothing Ever Dies: Vietnam and the Memory of War)

“Vincent Cheng offers a remarkably detailed and sophisticated study of the ‘desirability or usefulness of forgetting’…. His discussions are infused with a wealth of research and criticism, all presented in accessible formulations and clear prose that make this work a pleasure to read.”(Margot Norris, Chancellor’s Professor, Emerita, University of California, Irvine, USA, author of Virgin and Veteran Readings of “Ulysses” and other studies)

• University of Utah, Salt Lake City, UT, USA

  Vincent J. Cheng

Vincent J. Cheng is Shirley Sutton Thomas Professor of English at the University of Utah, USA.  He is the author of many scholarly articles and books, including Inauthentic: The Anxiety Over Culture and Identity; Joyce, Race, and Empire; and Shakespeare and Joyce.  His work addresses the intersections of postcolonial studies, race studies, twentieth-century literature, and contemporary culture. 

 

Policies and ethics