Memory in the Twenty-First Century: New Critical Perspectives from the Arts, Humanities, and Sciences

This book maps and analyses the changing state of memory at the start of the twenty-first century in essays written by scientists, scholars and writers. It recontextualises memory by investigating the impact of new conditions such as the digital revolution, climate change and an ageing population on our world.

Table of Contents:
List of illustrations Foreword; N. Katherine Hayles Acknowledgements Notes on Contributors Introduction: Memory in the Twenty-first Century; Sebastian Groes PART I: METAPHORS OF MEMORY 1. Metaphors of Memory: From the Classical World to Modernity; Corin Depper 2. Proust, the Madeleine, and Memory; Barry C. Smith 3. Proust Recalled: A Psychological Revisiting of that Madeleine Memory Moment; E. Leigh Gibson 4. The Persistence of Surrealism: Memory, Dreams and the Dead; Jeannette Baxter 5. 'There Was Nothing Hidden That Might Not Be Revealed': The Brain Observatory and the Imaginary Media of Memory Research; Flora Lysen 6. Memory and the Fictional Imagination: Creating Memories; Peter Childs 7. Misled by Metaphor; Nicholas Carr 8. Calling Gaia: World Brains and Global Memory; Stephan Besser PART II: MEMORY IN THE DIGITAL AGE 9. What's in a Brain?; Will Self 10. Will Self and his Inner Seahorse; Hugo Spiers 11. Navigation Aids in Neuropsychological Rehabilitation; Ineke van der Ham 12. Living Digitally; Wendy Moncur 13. Death and Memory in the Twenty-first Century; Stacey Pitsillides 14. The Oceanic Literary Reading Mind: An Impression; Michael Burke 15. Memory and the Reading Substrate; Adrian van der Weel 16. Memory, Materiality the Ethics of Reading in the Digital age; Sebastian Groes PART III: ECOLOGIES OF MEMORY 17. Time that is Intolerant; Claire Colebrook 18. 'The Winters Were Colder and the Snows Deeper'; Mike Hulme 19. Memories of Snow: Nostalgia, Amnesia, Re-reading; Greg Garrard 20. Writing Climate Change; Maggie Gee 21. Against Nostalgia: Antony Gormley, Ian McEwan and J. G. Ballard's Climate Change Art; Sebastian Groes PART IV: MEMORY AND THE FUTURE 22. The Trace of the Future; Mark Currie 23. Simulation and the Evolution of Thought; Joanna J. Bryson 24. Imaginative Anticipation: Rethinking Memory for Alternative Futures; Jessica Bland 25. Memory is No Longer What it Used to Be; Patricia Pisters 26. 'We Can Remember It, Funes, Wholesale': Borges, Total Recall and the Logic of Memory; Adam Roberts 27. Remembering Without Stored Contents: A Philosophical Reflection on Memory; Daniel D. Hutto PART V: FORGETTING 28. Remembering; Larry R. Squire and John T. Wixted 29. Directed Forgetting; Karen R. Brandt 30. Remembrance in the Twenty-first Century; Peter Childs 31. Memory, Hither Come: The Body and the Page in Poetry Readings as Remembrance of Composition; Holly Pester 32. Our Plastic Brain: Remembering and Forgetting Art; Heather H. Yeung 33. Amnesia and Identity in Contemporary Literature; Jason Tougaw 34. Amnesia in Young Adult Fiction; Alison Waller 35. Remembering Responsibly; Thomas F. Coker and Heather H. Yeung PART VI: TWENTY-FIRST CENTURY SUBJECTIVITIES 36. Losing the Self? Subjectivity in the Digital Age; Claire Colebrook 37. Memory and Voices: Challenging Psychiatric Diagnosis Through the Novel; Patricia Waugh 38. Rereading the Self: On Remembering Multiple Selves In and Out of Young Adult Fiction; Alison Waller 39. Neuroscience and Posthuman Memory; Robert Pepperell 40. The Confabulation of Self; Joanna J. Bryson 41. Malingering and Memory; Neander Abreu 42. Trauma and the Truth; Martijn Meeter Conclusion: 'The Futures of Memory'; Sebastian Groes References Index

About the Author :
Sebastian Groes is Senior Lecturer in English Literature at Roehampton University, UK. He specialises in modernist and contemporary fiction, has written on authors including Ian McEwan and Kazuo Ishiguro, and published The Making of London. He is the Principal Investigator of the AHRC and Wellcome Trust-funded The Memory Network.

Review :
"As teacher, writer and editor, Sebastian Groes is one of the most interesting figures of his generation. His project, it seems, is to restore English studies (still languishing after its long dalliance with 'theory') to a central role in our intellectual culture. To achieve this he has drawn widely from other disciplines including the cognitive sciences. He has enlisted poets, novelists, psychologists, neuroscientists and philosophers to his cause. He has brilliantly enlivened and widened that contested space where science and the humanities meet. Memory and consciousness have always been the lifeblood of literary expression; in the past thirty years they have become subjects of scientific enquiry. Groes's passion for both modes of exploration has resulted in this superb collection of essays." — Ian McEwan, Booker Prize-winning author of Enduring Love, Atonement and The Children Act   "Memory in the Twenty-First Century, edited by Sebastian Groes, is a remarkable achievement. Bringing together an interdisciplinary mix of scientists, cultural critics, philosophers, writers and literary critics, it ranges across a diverse set of topics, including memory as metaphor, anticipation, ecology, subjectivity and even memory's seeming antithesis, forgetting. Readers will find an equally rich range of references, including novels, films, poems and art works, in addition to what seems like the entire scholarly repertoire of works on, about, and relating to memory across the centuries in Western culture." — N. Katherine Hayles, Professor of Literature and Director of Graduate Studies, Literature Program, Duke University, USA