Title page and contents of the issue

Er(r)go...
… we are reaching into the depths of memory and of the archive, here and there brushing against ideology. What a variety: there is collective memory and, of course, individual memory, transactive memory and interactive memory, deep memory, narrative memory, live memory, cultural memory, declarative memory, memory enchanted in the body and intellectual memory, communicative memory, common memory, memory beyond-the-self, generational memory, cultural memory, mythical memory, somatic memory and semantic memory, prosthetic memory, shared memory, observable memory, family memory, community memory, diffuse memory and total memory, tactile memory and mediated memory, involuntary memory and voluntary memory, and on top of these post-memory, anti-memory, meta-memory, as well as a selection of recollections, memory recyclings, generational nostalgias, nostalgic affirmations, mnemonic structures of pain and trauma, memory crystallisation points, practices of commemorating, artistic anamneses, anchors of memory, but also desacralisation and instrumentalization of memory, history without shame, memory loss, non-memory, amnesia, creative forgetfulness – and all that among the crumbs of the past, accidental trivialities, reminiscences and afterimages.

Interesting things also happen in arts, film and the media: poles of good and evil are reversed, suburban ideologies are exposed, femininity is trimmed to match the expectations of an age which in turn loses its innocence, savages are being tamed and Taiwanese aborigines united, heads are chopped off with machetes, bodies stabbed with knives and bayonets. Fearless warrior Buta undergoes a magical transformation and becomes a rainbow, lone cowards enter the world of the dead, during a massacre one woman sings of life and death while the other – already domesticated – suffers from a problem with no name. A director creates an opera with the use of virtual media – a person can passively watch the piece while petting the dog or eating a sandwich (wow!) – and the opera-singer declares: I am the voice of the vampire. Picasso tries to climb up on the throne and argues with Matisse, creating Arcadia in a brothel, Saturn castrates his father and throws into the sea his mutilated genitals (Venus! Venus!), and female genitals are the ones that return our look even though we do not accept painting as exorcism. Fans apply cultural acupuncture and their ideology reaches far beyond a mouse click. This is the great power of poiēsis! It is through poiēsis that they are able to locate meaning in their being-there, and Hermione Granger transforms from a fictional character to an apt vehicle capable of igniting social change. Game designers face a tough one: enter the player who forgot they have amnesia, immersing in the game world, taking decisions in Dark Knight’s shoes, and the sight of their own bowels, wrapped around their wrist like some ghastly bracelet, makes them sick. Paranoid Incarnation creates a diary, locked up in a dodecahedron, as a trap for other incarnations, Marta the Seamstress collects teeth and other parts of corpses. The Walking Dead turns out to be one big swindle. And Camille Lemonnier rightly notes that nothing is less nude than a woman emerging from a pair of drawers. Near Smoleńsk time moves backwards and loops itself, and the Polish national hero follows the path of passion and ends up in Eden. That’s how it works: if you don’t know yourself, you are lost. But the narrative will sell anyway.

Literature does not fall behind either: grotesque and repulsive descriptions of the mother here, attempts to re-create oneself a-new without ancestral burden there, then the past locked up in a castle cellar and life tainted with trauma, and on top of these, lecherous songs, circumcision as inscription, a ghost full of venom, redness of a lipstick which allows for a kiss, creation as a gloriously cancerous proliferation and then trauma again, but this time a hauntological one. A lot is happening here, too. Nailcruncher speaks highly of Gamaliel while the latter warns his son against the deceitful charm of feminine beauty, the past haunts the protagonist like a boomerang, and scars on a female protagonist’s back shape up as a cherry tree, the subject hauntologically encounters its own spectres and stops being identical with itself, Britain sinks in the fog breathed out by the she-dragon Querig, and yet Sir Gawain and the monks keep her alive. And then an invisible force ferociously hurls a dog against the wall, naked and smiling Beloved is exiled, women take pictures of pictures, cream fudge candies “carambar” and “makagiga” metaphorically connect Górzański and Perec, who remembers hating the taste of sour cabbage, and the third generation remembers the things they never lived through. And so the archive becomes the experience of the future.

Various personae are watching all this: Nietzsche, Kierkegaard, Heidegger, Aristotle, Plato, Parmenides, Anaximander, Heraclitus, Husserl, Freud, Bergson, Ricoeur, Derrida, Lacan, Horkheimer, Adorno, Halbwachs, Sacks, Taylor, Barthes, and even Athena and Theseus. Someone makes a constatation: in many countries, those who are heard (and in charge) are those who conquer memory and nurture hatred. So let us rejoice: after all, it is not truth that is in question.

Wojciech Kalaga
https://orcid.org/0000-0003-4874-9734

The starting point is the assumption that the cinema is an important voice in the debate about historical memory as it shows an ambivalent attitude to the past and is a medium of communication that raises political and cultural issues. In my article, I assume a postcolonial perspective which takes into account the heritage of Far Eastern imperialism rather than its Western variant. Secondly, I point to significant similarities between the different types of violence that lead to subordination or destruction of the culture of a conquered nation. Thirdly, I focus on the ways history is presented in films and whether it is possible to restore memory with the help of film art. The main subject of my analysis is the film by a Taiwanese director Wei Te-sheng Warriors of the Rainbow: Seediq Bale (2011), in which I see the example of modern political cinema (as it was understood by Gilles Deleuze).

Abstract: Among others, retromania means bringing back the past eras and constructing the memory of them in contemporary popculture. The critical retro is considered here as a set of cinematic devices used in order to manage collective memory and create a certain imagery of the relatively recent past. The critical retro of the 21st century American cinema “aesthetically colonizes” the past, yet in doing so, it does not reflect any nostalgic vision of collective memory. Movies analysed in the article are characteristic for their careful use of the retro fashion and their employment of such devices as extreme or excessive stylization, particular narration, and familiar narrative patterns (family melodrama) in order to influence collective memory of the past. At the same time, what they offer in terms of the story, character, and the perception of the depicted era, is highly subversive because they openly address issues that were either omitted or ignored in the previous years for a number of reasons.

In this work my aim is to analyse tools that are used to improve the processes of memory in video games. The discussion will open with a look at the methods used by game developers to reconcile the antithetic trends of the discourse – the structural narrative and the interactive nature of the medium. Consequently, narrative cliches in the form amnesia, as well as innovative techniques that use tools characteristic to interactive entertainment will be analysed.

The second part will present perspectives on the specific role of memory not only in game narratives, but also in aspects of games as a medium. This analysis will focus on texts that present non-traditional perception of memory and represent the transition from memory as a database to memory as an interactive process, leading to the construction of new forms and narrative mechanisms. Here I will examine phenomena such as the creation of collective and transactive memory in interactive entertainment subcultures.

The main thesis of this analysis is that in comparison to traditional narratives, the processes of memory loss, forgetting and consequent emergence of post-memory, play a more important role in video games. This way of reinterpreting memories will largely shape our perception of the concept of temporality in interactive entertainment. It will require a departure from the traditional perspective of time and a transition to the interpretation of time from the perspective of Bergson and Deleuze.

This article draws its inspiration from both Heidegger’s theses introduced in his landmark essay, “The Question Concerning Technology” (1977 [1956]) and his interpretation of poiēsis, a concept discussed throughout a range of works in the later portion of his career, in order to demonstrate the multidimensional foundation that drives successful online activist campaigns. In the contemporary era, among the most pressing concerns, as professed by Taylor (2018) and Dreyfus and Kelly (2011), is a widespread lack of existential commitment. Channeling Heidegger, and to an extent Kierkegaard, they proclaim that all things, including ourselves and our interests, are increasingly malleable and subject to revision depending on their applicability of being wielded as commodities in various social circumstances, specifically for the accruement of social capital. This phenomenon shows itself with remarkable clarity in a practice referred to as “mouse-click solidarity” (Herzogenrath-Amelung 2018), online communal engagement that lacks any substantive devotion or involvement. Fan activism, or cultural acupuncture, as it has been coined by Jenkins (2011), demonstrates a unique opportunity to explore social movements imbued with and inspired by sincere and legitimate commitment. Fan activism, in contrast to mouse-click solidarity (or slacktivism), is a form of online social media engagement that relies upon a user’s previously established devotion to a text, as well as an understanding of how its themes are applicable to understand real world issues. Such a combination has a unique ability to not only foster an irresistible desire to participate with likeminded others in order to ensure specific issues are addressed, but also an awareness of how individuals are involved in the cultivation of world. A Heideggerian interpretation of poiēsis is the critical component that sparks and sustains fan activist campaigns, as this concept unveils how we are both affected by world and compelled to engage, or dwell, with it. Through an analysis of fan activist campaigns, this chapter argues that revitalizing poiēsis in our everyday life, in particular as it concerns our communal self, is critical for reviving a sense of commitment in the world and, subsequently, to once again position and understand human beings as uniquely transformative agents.

Can erroneous memories be true? What is the foundation of culture – a lasting myth or perhaps the changing everyday life? Is it possible to create a collective autobiography? And if so, what would be the distinctive features of such a genre? The author of the article attempts to answer these questions carrying out a theoretical analysis and an interpretation of Je me souviens (1978) by Georges Perec in the light of Jan Assmann’s categories of communicative memory and cultural memory, applied with regard to the problems of individual vs. collective memory and the types of memory that genuinely connect generations and cultures.

The present article aims to present a study of several, crucial themes in the writings by Albert Cohen, in the light of Jacques Derrida’s concept of the archive. The presence of the experience of the Jewish nation is fixedly important in Cohen’s work. In this article, my objective is to prove that Cohen’s writing process significantly exceeds the common patterns of thinking about the past or even about the Jewish identity, of which an important component is the continuity of the relationship with the ancestors. Owing to the Derridean concept of the archive, it becomes possible to observe the significance of the past activity and its consequences for the subject’s identity.
entity.

Abstract:

Memory and forgetting in Kazuo Ishiguro’s The Buried Giant

The article examines the theme of memory and forgetting in Kazuo Ishiguro’s 2015 novel The Buried Giant. The novel offers a reflection on the role of forgetting in dealing with a traumatic past, an issue which remains relevant for individuals and societies alike. Although Ishiguro does not provide easy answers to the question of whether it is better to remember or to erase difficult memories, temporary amnesia emerges in the novel as a legitimate strategy: it allows individuals to maintain relationships and helps to prevent feuding nations from resuming violence. The other related issues that the article discusses include the problem of memory which inevitably returns after temporary amnesia/amnesty with its entrapment in competing politics of memory, the issue of collective memory and the relationship between memory and forgetting as well as the role of involuntary memory in the undermining of official discourses about the past. Twentieth-century conceptions and discourses on memory – Maurice Halbwachs’, Walter Benjamin’s, Marcel Proust’s, as well as Galen Strawson’s – have been mobilized to illuminate the concerns that the novel raises.  

Reconciliating with one’s self. Hauntological decoding of Toni Morrison’s Beloved.

This article focuses on Toni Morrison’s novel Beloved and its reading that may be uncovered through the theory of hauntology. As a novel, Beloved inscribed itself into the discussion of the image of memory in literature thanks to its retrospective nature. The reality observed in this work by Toni Morrison is actively shaped by the past and haunted by the specters of past atrocities and deceased characters. Among the problems tackled in this article are the differences between memory and interpretation; traumatic memories; and the relation between one’s memory and identity. Events and characters present in this book are characterized by their ambiguity, their contestation of binary oppositions, such as presence/absence; life/death; freedom/slavery, and being defined through a plethora of meanings and traces. Despite all these characteristics pointing towards deconstructionism as the proper theory with which the novel may be decoded, the article proposes to dissect Beloved through hauntology. This work presents hauntology as a theory applicable to literary criticism that is capable of producing a captivating reading of the discussed novel, as well as outlines the main differences between hauntology and trauma theory, with the latter being the dominant approach used in analyzing Morrison’s book. This article employs the theory of hauntology in the shape in which it is proposed by Jacques Derrida, Mark Fisher, Jodey Castricano and Andrzej Marzec.

The crash of the presidential aircraft that took place on April 10, 2010 is an event that has become a permanent part of Polish collective memory. However, the narratives regarding it are not homogenous or consistent, and are constantly negotiated by various social actors, including poets and filmmakers. For instance, Antologia smoleńska. 96 wierszy [The Smolensk Anthology. 96 poems] and the movie Smolensk directed by Antoni Krauze have the ambition to inscribe the discourse of the Smolensk tragedy as an assassination into the dominant, valid and widely accepted collective memory. Both the cinematographic and poetic language have an explanatory potential and lend sense to the reality shaken by the tragic event. Reaching back to the romantic tradition as well as martyrological and religious discourses of Poland, both Krauze’s movie and the Smolensk poetry may be interpreted as a transcription and as an effect of the process of the mythologization of history and of its transformation into the matter of collective memory, presented then as an objective historical truth.

What happens when the music production processes and spaces of a traditionally live art form such as opera are digitized? What is the relationship between community and isolation for artists when their workspace is lifted from the theatre—with its interpersonal connections—and placed in the virtual world? What opportunities and what risks does this pose for performers? Are there parallels to other art forms that developed or expanded as the result of new media technologies? This article will explore these issues by considering the production processes of the animated YouTube opera/movie Todd and the Vampire, composed and created by Ronen Shai, with contributions by musicians and visual artists working simultaneously, but independently, around the world. How does this piece utilize technology to challenge and transcend traditional notions of space and identity? What are the implications of this somewhat disembodied process for performers, audiences, and for the art form itself?

The paper argues against interpretations of Les Demoiselles that look for its meaning in Picasso’s state of mind and treat it as the expression of a struggle with his personal demons. Rather, it interprets both versions of the painting as a response and contrast to Matisse’s Le Bonheur de vivre, which is proposed as the main intertext of Les Demoiselles. Moreover, an excursus into Lacanian theory allows the author not only to explain the supposed inconsistencies of Les Demoiselles, but also to propose that in its final version it is a meta-painting which analyses the way representation comes into being.

A critical note dedicated to Małgorzata Fabiszak's and Anna Weronika Brzezińska's book, Cmentarz, park, podwórko. Poznańskie przestrzenie pamięci, Wydawnictwo Naukowe Scholar, Warszawa 2018. (in Polish).

A critical note dedicated to Monika Jaworska-Witkowska's monograph Przechwytywanie tekstów. Powidoki czytania, Wydawnictwo Kujawsko-Pomorskiej Szkoły Wyższej w Bydgoszczy, Bydgoszcz 2016. (in Polish).

Polish abstracts of the research articles of the issue.

Info for the Contributors to Er(r)go and the journal's stylesheet.

The colophon of the issue.

The article presents the findings of research carried out in Palestine with the use of the tools of visual anthropology. The analysis demonstrates the potential of the application of the concepts of “the third generation” and “post-memory” to describe the experience of young Palestinian women. The argument focuses upon the strategies resorted to by women who, in the course of the study, agreed to present the key values that they profess, and consented to share them publicly in the form of a photo-interview. Their narratives are presented in the context of the reinterpretation of the events of the Nakba.