Remembering Places
A Phenomenological Study of the Relationship between Memory and Place
By (author) Janet Donohoe
Not available to order
Publication date:
18 June 2014Length of book:
194 pagesPublisher
Lexington BooksISBN-13: 9780739187173
This book is a phenomenological investigation of the interrelations of tradition, memory, place and the body. Drawing upon philosophers such as Husserl, Heidegger, Merleau-Ponty, Gadamer, and Ricoeur, Janet Donohoe uses the idea of a palimpsest to argue that layers of the past are carried along as traditions, through places and bodies, such that we can speak of memory as being written upon place and place as being written upon memory. In dialogue with theorists such as Jeff Malpas and Ed Casey, Donohoe focuses on analysis of monuments and memorials to investigate how such deliberate places of collective memory can be ideological, or can open us to the past and different traditions. The insights in this book will be of particular value to place theorists and phenomenologists in disciplines such as philosophy, geography, memory studies, public history, and environmental studies.
Phenomenology is distinctive in that it attends not only to the everyday, ordinary, and mundane dimensions of existence, but also specifically considers such dimensions as they are experienced. Donohoe argues that the complicated relationship between memory, tradition, and place is fundamentally important to all lived experience. Place is what allows for collective memory, and such memory is what constitutes the traditions by which one finds oneself attached to specific places. Working in light of Edmund Husserl, Martin Heidegger, and Maurice Merleau-Ponty, and in conversation with the phenomenological accounts of place and memory offered by Ed Casey and Gaston Bachelard, Donohoe offers a compelling account of place as a palimpsest—a form of writing that allows what has been erased to remain visible. Suggesting that memory works in the same way, Donohoe opens productive ways to think about lived experience by considering how such experience always occurs somewhere. By focusing on location and then reflecting on the meaning generated by it, Donohoe enables phenomenology to be even more careful concerning the task of philosophizing. Summing Up: Recommended. Upper-level undergraduates through researchers/faculty.