Remembering the Socialist Past - Bad request! - University of Exeter

presents one particular version of past events as more authentic than others, and
challenges alternative perspectives. The ‘reflexive mode’ draws attention to the
processes of remembering, thereby, for example, highlighting the potential
unreliability of memory or the multiple ways in which one event can be
remembered by different people or in different contexts.
42
The concept of ‘mimesis of memory’ has been used by both Erll and
Neumann to describe how literary texts both represent and actively create
memories: ‘Novels do not imitate existing versions of memory, but produce, in the
act of discourse, that very past which they purport to describe.’ 48 Mimesis of
memory works on the basis that literary texts create narrative representations
which refer to the world outside the text; these representations are then ‘refigured’
by the reader. 49 Erll explains the effects of this refiguration:
The meanings ascribed by readers [...] affect not only their understanding of
the text. Literary works can also change perceptions of reality and in the end
– through the readers’ actions, which can be influenced by literary models –
also cultural practice and thereby reality itself. 50
The literary production of memory can also be understood in terms of ‘frameworks
of remembering’, as Erll argues: ‘Literary stories and their patterns are represented
in our semantic and episodic memory systems. They shape knowledge, life
experience, and autobiographical remembering.’ 51 This means that the text is
offering another story which makes sense of the past (according to the needs of
present context) and this story has the potential to affirm, challenge or modify
readers’ existing perceptions of the past, whether that is a past understood only
48 This is based upon on Paul Ricoeur’s ‘circle of mimesis’ as described in his Time and
Narrative, 3 vols (Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press, 1984–88). See Erll, Memory in
Culture, pp. 152–57 and see Neumann, pp. 334–35. The citation here is Neumann, p. 334.
49 See Erll, Memory in Culture, pp. 152–57.
50 Ibid., p. 155.
51 Ibid., p. 161.