Research Catalog

The memory of the modern

Title: The memory of the modern / Matt K. Matsuda.
Author: Matsuda, Matt K.
Publication: New York : Oxford University Press, 1996.

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Status	Format	Access	Call Number	Item Location
Request for On-site Use Request Scan How do I pick up this item and when will it be ready?	Text	Use in library	DC33.6 .M34 1996	Off-site

Details

Description

vi, 255 pages : illustrations; 25 cm

Summary

Memory has a history. The Classical world ordered and valued events differently than the Medieval world; which, in turn, was replaced by "the memory" of the Renaissance. Matt Matsuda's compelling, multidisciplinary argument in The Memory of the Modern is that the understanding, value, and uses of memory changed yet again at the end of the nineteenth and the beginning of the twentieth centuries, becoming distinctively "modern." Matsuda proves his argument by visiting a remarkable array of "memory-sites": the destruction of a monument to Napoleon during the 1871 Paris Commune; the frantic selling of futures on the Paris stock-exchange; the state's forensic search for a vagabond rapist and murderer; a child's perjured testimony on the witness stand; a scientist's dissecting of the human brain; the invention of cameras and the cinema. Each chapter studies a distinct moment when new representations of the past were forged, contested, and put to cultural and ideological use. And all these diverse events cohere as Matsuda repeatedly shows which "memories" were celebrated and which forgotten, which traditions invented and appropriated and which discarded. More importantly, he explains why, and in doing so answers the broader question, Who controls what is remembered and who is believed?

Subject

Genre/Form

History.

Bibliography (note)

Includes bibliographical references and index.

Contents

Introduction: Histories: The Philosophy of Today -- 1. Monuments: Idols of the Emperor -- 2. Numbers: The Temple of Time -- 3. Words: The Grammar of History -- 4. Bodies: The Third Convolution -- 5. Testimonies: Deserving of Faith -- 6. Identities: Doctor, Judge, Vagabond -- 7. Distances: In the Revolutionary Garden -- 8. Spectacles: Machineries of Magic -- 9. Desires: Last Tango at the Academie -- Afterword: Memories: The History of the Present.

ISBN

019509364X
9780195093643
0195093658
9780195093650

LCCN

95030287
9780195093643

OCLC

ocm32665087
32665087
SCSB-14586660

Owning Institutions

Princeton University Library