Research Methods for Cultural Studies

178 emily keightley
ethical and political questions as representations of the past do clearly have
atransactional value in the present. For example, the ways in which the
Holocaust is remembered both privately and publicly have enduring repercussions
for our understanding of it in the present. Memory narratives which seek
to deny its existence or attenuate its severity must be adjudged politically dangerous
and ethically unsound.
These political and ethical criteria provide us with a starting point from
which to take our bearings for the assessment of memory. Like other forms of
representation, we can recognise an intimate relation between memory and
lived experience, but rather than seeking to measure this in terms of an objective,
verifiable truth-for-all-time, we can consider the transactional potential
of memory, and its capacity for transformation in the present and future.
Memories can be assessed in pejorative ways, as for instance when a lost past is
mourned without taking bearings for the present and future, when a memory
denies the experience of others or when it supports conservative or regressive
action in the present. Positive valuations of memory can be made where the dialogic
relation between past and present is being maintained as the present and
future are not isolated from the act of remembrance, where remembering is
creative and the past is being used as a resource in the service of progressive
aims, or where the remembering act is characterised by empathy as a recognition
of the experience of others.
Jameson’s (1991) postmodern account of memory privileges the former valuation
of memory in contemporary life. In a world of surface style and pastiche,
he claims the dialogic relationship between temporal fields has been curtailed.
Historicity becomes impossible and cultural amnesia inevitable. In this
dystopian account we have abandoned our memories in favour of a simulated
version. In stark contrast is Lipsitz’s (1991, 1994) recognition of the potential
for social and cultural memory to be articulated in and through mediated texts
and technologies. Both of these accounts are feasible as the resources are available
in contemporary society both for the articulation of memory, and for
its abandonment. It is these alternatives that make the study of memory so
important for cultural studies. The theoretical possibilities available for historical
engagement in contemporary life have been claimed, but it is for cultural
studies to investigate the everyday mnemonic activities which are performed
under these conditions and the temporal moorings that they provide for those
who engage in them.
To operationalise this evaluative framework, we must also modify our
understanding of truth and authenticity in terms of what memory can provide.
The truth to which traditional historiography makes a claim is an enduring one,
fixed through time. Memory’s claims to truth are fleeting, transient and
contingent, where the meanings of memories are valid only for the dialogic
moment of remembrance. As time moves on, so does memory; it takes on new