Lessons from the Past?
Memory, Narrativity and Subjectivity
1st Edition
Published on 17. November 2016
IX, 234 pages
978-1-137-48322-5 (ISBN)
Description
This book reconstructs how claims to know 'the lessons' from past wrongdoings are made useful in the present. These claims are powerful tools in contemporary debates over who we are, who we want to be and what we should do. Drawing on a wide range of spoken and written texts from Austria, Denmark, Germany and the United States, this book proposes an abstract framework through which such claims can be understood. It does so by conceptualising four rhetorics of learning and how each of them links memories of past wrongdoings to opposition to present and future wrongdoings. Drawing extensively on narrative theory,
Lessons from the Past?
reconstructs how links between past, present and future can be narrativised, thus helping to understand the subjectivities and feelings that these stories facilitate. The book closes by considering if and how such rhetorics might live up to their promise to know 'the lessons' and to enable learning, offering a revised theory of collective learning processes.
Reviews / Votes
"Lessons from the past? addresses questions that are urgently raised, yet rarely tackled explicitly, in the ever-expanding body of literature on collective memory. In the process, Forchtner provides a valuable conceptual apparatus not only for scholars of memory but also sociologists of culture, politics, and knowledge more generally." (Christina Simko, European Journal of Cultural and Political Sociology, Vol. 5 (03), 2018)More details
Series
Language
English
Place of publication
London
United Kingdom
Publishing group
Palgrave Macmillan UK
Target group
Professional and scholarly
Product notice
Reflowable
Illustrations
IX, 234 p. 8 illus.
File size
8,98 MB
ISBN-13
978-1-137-48322-5 (9781137483225)
DOI
10.1057/978-1-137-48322-5
Schweitzer Classification
Other editions
Additional editions
Book
11/2016
Palgrave Macmillan
€128.39
Shipment within 10-20 days
Person
Bernhard Forchtner is Lecturer at the School of Media, Communication and Sociology, University of Leicester, UK. He has published in the field of memory studies, environmental communication, the far right in Europe and at the interface of sociological theory and critical discourse studies.
Content
1. Lessons from the past? Introducing the rhetorics of learning.- 2. On plot grammars and their modes of emplotment.- 3. The rhetoric of judging.- 4. The rhetoric of failing.- 5. The rhetoric of penitence.- 6. The rhetoric of judge-penitence.- 7. From 'lesson talk' to collective learning processes.- 8. The end: looking back and looking forward
