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Most, if not all, writings by Jamaican writer Michelle Cliff are connected by a subterranean desire to re-write Afro-Caribbean history from new untold perspectives in reaction to the immense loss and/or distortions that marked the region's history for entire centuries. In this paper, I meticulously read four of Cliff's texts--"Abeng" (1984), its sequel "No Telephone to Heaven" (1987), "Claiming an Identity They Taught Me to Despise" (1980) and "The Land of Look Behind" (1985)--to look at how Cliff retrieves her black ancestors' submerged history and erased past. I particularly explore the methods Cliff deploys to re-center a history deliberately erased/or distorted by what she ironically calls "the official version" ("Free Enterprise," 1994, p. 138) in allusion to the Eurocentric narratives about the twin imperial projects of slavery and colonialism. Finally, I investigate the wealth of possibilities offered by fiction, unrecorded memory, oral story-telling and imagination to out-tell Eurocentric historiography and re-write Afro-Caribbean history from the victims' perspective: slaves, colonial subjects, marginalized female figures, black Diasporic characters, etc.

Copyright of Acta Poética is the property of Instituto de Investigaciones Filologicas - UNAM and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

Copyright of Perspectivas de la Comunicación is the property of Journal Perspectivas de la Comunicacion, PhD in Communication, University of La Frontera and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

The narrative of Dubravka Ugrešić's novel The Museum of Unconditional Surrender (1997) revolves around three core motifs: the problem of memory and remembering, the experience of temporality, and the notion of exile, developed in relation to the dichotomy of fact versus fiction. While most theoretical approaches to the novel focus on the motif of exile in the context of dominant ideological patterns of the new national states formed after the breakup of Yugoslavia, this paper represents a shift in interpretative focus to the problem of memory and the experience of temporality in the perspective of the dynamics of history and fiction. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The present work deals with the genre of literary testimony and explores its double literary-historical status, as well as its unique position at the crossroads between memory and imagination. The paper analyses the specificity of Jorge Semprún's literary testimonies and focuses itself on the phenomenon of the imaginary memories and the image of snow, considering emblematic examples of the fusion of mnemonic and imaginary faculties. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The Holocaust can be seen as a transnational crime, and a collective trauma of universal extension. Therefore national approaches could be seen only as an example out of many others. The year 2000 was the starting point of a new area, since the transformation of Holocaust memory went global. A sensitive subject is the problem of poetization and aestheticization of the Holocaust between fact and fiction. In the meantime the generation of the grandchildren and great-grandchildren has taken over the responsibility in memorizing the Holocaust. New literary approaches are made in different artistic forms and expressions, expressing the Holocaust in forms of the satire, humor, irony, and grotesque, and we may state a remarkable 'visual turn', too. Giving evidence is still very important to prevent collective amnesia, also reacting on forms of Holocaust fatigue. In my paper I am concentrating mainly on Polish literature after two turning points (1989 and 2000). Representatives of the younger generations want to find out more about the former lives of their relatives, searching for traces and lost places. Another important issue is the massacre of Polish Jews in 1941 in Jedwabne as well as the literary anticipation of the Holocaust. Joseph Conrad's writing deeply affected Arendt's analysis of imperialism as an element of totalitarianism and the banality of evil. Interesting items of writing about the Holocaust are books written for children. Next to concentration camps and the former Jewish shtetl, also ghettos became a popular place in contemporary Polish Holocaust literature. The power of words, in all likelihood holograms, will become the only way of hearing a testimony in the future, making sure that the Holocaust is not forgotten. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The process of recovering the historical memory in biographical and autobiographical writtings is no longer restricted to an exclusive field of research. Authors such as Georges Bataille, John Hersey and Beatriz Sarlo scrutinize the correlations between History and memory in the literature, evaluating ethical matters and issues of social nature. In the light of this studies, this paper comments some excerpts of Assombrações do Recife Velho (1955), work of the sociologist Gilberto Freyre and Baú de ossos (1972), first volume of Pedro Nava's memoirs. The objective is to expose how fictional and historical elements are articulated in both works. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Since the scar literature of the early 1980s, fiction and fictionalised autobiography have played an important role in bringing to light the mass violence of the Cultural Revolution. However, these texts remained within a well-defined framework in which the political system itself was not questioned. Over the last decade, by contrast, the Chinese literary field has focused more specifically on the 1950s, with works such as Yang Xianhui's Chronicles of Jiabiangou (Tianjin, 2002), and Yang Jisheng's Tombstone (Hong Kong, 2008). This paper focuses on Yan Lianke's Four Books (Hong Kong, 2010), a full-fledged fictionalisation in a fantastic mode of the famine of the Great Leap Forward in a village on the Yellow River. Considering literature in the context of theories of the public sphere, it suggests that Yan's book aims to broaden decisively the discussion on certain previously out-of-bounds aspects of the Mao era, an aim only partially thwarted by its failure to be published within mainland China. Four Books, like Yang Jisheng and Yang Xianhui's works, thus represents an attempt to call into question the original legitimacy of the PRC polity and to create debate within the Chinese-speaking public sphere on the foundations of the current regime. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The Holocaust can be seen as a transnational crime, and a collective trauma of universal extension. Therefore national approaches could be seen only as an example out of many others. The year 2000 was the starting point of a new area, since the transformation of Holocaust memory went global. A sensitive subject is the problem of poetization and aestheticization of the Holocaust between fact and fiction. In the meantime the generation of the grandchildren and great-grandchildren has taken over the responsibility in memorizing the Holocaust. New literary approaches are made in different artistic forms and expressions, expressing the Holocaust in forms of the satire, humor, irony, and grotesque, and we may state a remarkable ‘visual turn’, too. Giving evidence is still very important to prevent collective amnesia, also reacting on forms of Holocaust fatigue. In my paper I am concentrating mainly on Polish literature after two turning points (1989 and 2000). Representatives of the younger generations want to find out more about the former lives of their relatives, searching for traces and lost places. Another important issue is the massacre of Polish Jews in 1941 in Jedwabne as well as the literary anticipation of the Holocaust. Joseph Conrad’s writing deeply affected Arendt’s analysis of imperialism as an element of totalitarianism and the banality of evil. Interesting items of writing about the Holocaust are books written for children. Next to concentration camps and the former Jewish shtetl, also ghettos became a popular place in contemporary Polish Holocaust literature. The power of words, in all likelihood holograms, will become the only way of hearing a testimony in the future, making sure that the Holocaust is not forgotten.

A mediados del siglo XX la fotografía familiar se había popularizado en Europa. Ello produjo una modernización en los códigos de representación; se fotografía con más espontaneidad, los retratos pierden su carácter idealizado y solemne y, paulatinamente, desparece también el carácter ritual del acto fotográfico. En cambio, en la España del primer franquismo la fotografía familiar muestra una pervivencia de antiguos usos, técnicas y estéticas. Se mantienen valores anacrónicos (carácter ritual, confianza en su carácter probatorio y consideración como objeto de culto) que remiten a la concepción decimonónica del medio.El presente estudio pretende, a partir de fotografías familiares españolas de esta época, identificar y describir estos anacronismos. También explicar cómo estos valores llevaron a los españoles a considerar la fotografía como el medio ideal para representar y (re)construir la unidad de la familia, quebrada tras la guerra por el exilio o la muerte. In the middle of the 20th, family photography has been popular in Europe. This popularization led to a change in the codes of representation; the photos become more spontaneous, portraits lose their idealization and the act of shooting, gradually, lose their cult conception. In contrast, in Spain during the first years of Franco regime, family photography shows the survival of ancient practices, techniques and aesthetics. Some anachronistic values that refer to the nineteenth-century conception of the medium, (ritual character, confidence in his probative value and the consideration as an cult item) survives in photography.This paper demonstrates these anachronisms with a collection of family photographs from this period. Also explain how these values led the Spaniards to consider photography as the ideal for representing and (re)build the unity of the family, broken after the war by exile or death.