Memory Frictions in Contemporary Literature

This volume explores the multifarious representational strategies used by contemporary writers to textualise memory and its friction areas through literary practices. By focusing on contemporary narratives in English from 1990 to the present, the essays in the collection delve into both the treatment of memory in literature and the view of literature as a medium of memory, paying special attention to major controversies attending the representation and (re)construction of individual, cultural and collective memories in the literary narratives published during the last few decades. By analysing texts written by authors of such diverse origins as Great Britain, South-Korea, the USA, Cuba, Australia, India, as well as Native-American Indian and African-American writers, the contributors to the collection analyse a good range of memory frictions —in connection with melancholic mourning, immigration, diaspora, genocide, perpetrator guilt, dialogic witnessing, memorialisation practices, inherited traumatic memories, sexual abuse, prostitution, etc.— through the recourse to various disciplines —such as psychoanalysis, ethics, (bio)politics, space theories, postcolonial studies, narratology, gender studies—, resulting in a book that is expected to make a ground-breaking contribution to a field whose possibilities have yet to be fully explored.

“The book achieves a remarkable unity by supporting a polyphonic and multidirectional approach to memory, and paying due attention both to the narrative, structural and literary peculiarities of the material, and its thematic, geographic and political scope. … I am looking forward to sequels of Memory Frictions by the authors of this profound and inspirational collection.” (Julia Kuznetski, Miscelánea, Vol. 62, 2020)

“Probing the tensions and sticking points in the contemporary field of memory studies, this volume opens up the need for complex, trans-cultural and trans-historical approaches to reading memory. Mapping sites of friction, but also positioning conflict and contestation as potentially generative forces, this collection is a welcome and timely addition to the field.” (Anne Whitehead, Senior Lecturer in Modern and Contemporary Literature, Newcastle University UK)

 “This excellent volume reassesses the notion of traumatic memory, centring on such varied contexts as Cuba, South Korea and India, as well as the legacy of slavery in the USA and the Holocaust. In doing so, it brings out the disjunctions, rather than the consonances, between different memories of this kind. In its focus on frictions and controversies in this way, the collection makes a very innovative and distinctive contribution to memory and trauma studies.” (Sue Vice, Professor of English Literature, University of Sheffield, UK)

Dr. María Jesús Martínez Alfaro is Senior Lecturer at the Department of English and German Philology of the University of Zaragoza. Her research focuses on contemporary narrative in English, more specifically on memory, ethics and trauma in relation to the novels of Martin Amis, A.S. Byatt, Charles Palliser, Jane Yolen, Cynthia Ozick and Rachel Seiffert, among others. She has widely published in journals such as Twentieth-Century Literature, Symbolism, Journal of Narrative Theory, EJES.

Dr. Silvia Pellicer-Ortín is Lecturer at the Department of English and German Philology in the Faculty of Education of the University of Zaragoza. Her main research interests are related to contemporary narrative in English, focusing on trauma and Holocaust studies, British-Jewish women writers, and feminism. She has delivered several papers and published articles on these topics in international forums such as Atlantis, CCS, Critical Engagements and Humanities. She recently published her monograph entitled Eva Figes’ Writings: A Journey through Trauma (2015).