Welcome to the website of the Beyond Postmemory Research Group
Literature, with its unique ability to creatively retell historical events and explore conflicting memories, has become one of the most meaningful ways to remember (and forget) the impact of war, both on an individual and collective level.
However, concerns regarding the representation of traumatic war memories have sparked extensive debate among literary scholars, especially in terms of ethical and aesthetic considerations.
Our project is motivated not only by our interest in conflict but also by our concern regarding the way the major wars and conflicts of the twentieth and twenty-first centuries have been portrayed since the late 1980s and early 1990s up to the present day.
Our research was originally conducted within the (Re)Writing War Research Group, recognized by the Spanish Ministry of Education (FFI2017-8552-P) and led by Professor Andrew Monnickendam from 2017 to 2021. Now under the coordination of Dr. Cristina Pividori and Dr. David Owen, the project remains committed to exploring how contemporary literature reimagines war memories, while introducing new perspectives on war representation.
We specifically focus on second- and later-generation Anglophone writers because they offer, either through the examination of their family history or through historical and cultural identification, a more nuanced and complex mediation of war memories, which differs from first-hand testimonies due to their temporal and physical detachment.
These narratives from subsequent generations have highlighted challenges in the application of Marianne Hirsch’s postmemorial framework (1997, 2012), particularly concerning issues related to the misappropriation of postmemory as inherited trauma, their subjective interpretation of the past, and their overidentification with the pain and suffering of others.
This project aims to problematise certain assertions made by Hirsch regarding postmemory, primarily those related to its affiliative aspects, by reviewing and revising its theoretical framework and its application within contemporary English literature about conflict.
In recent years, later generations have shown a declining interest in preserving specific historical details, shifting the focus from a preoccupation with the traumatic past to a greater emphasis on ethical responsibilities toward present and future generations.
Consequently, our research has gradually shifted from postmemory towards new ways of engaging with the past grounded in three theoretical categories of analysis:
- The Performative: Examining how silence, rituals, and performative acts shape war memory, drawing on Jay Winter’s idea of “performative non-speech acts.”
- The Transcultural/Transnational Model: Investigating how war memories cross national and cultural borders, particularly in postcolonial and diasporic literature.
- The Imagined Model: Exploring how literature reinterprets war through historical fiction, post-apocalyptic narratives, and nostalgia-infused storytelling, inspired by Svetlana Boym’s concepts of “restorative” and “reflective” nostalgia.
We advocate for an ethical, yet empathetic, handling of memories related to war and conflict, and aspire to deepen our understanding of how postmemory evolves in the (post) postmodern age, despite its inherent complexity.
We contend that the interaction between readers and memory facilitated through literature has the potential not only to enhance comprehension of the factors contributing to conflict but also to shed light on the processes involved in building peace.
