Publicação
“The Shifting Light of History”: addressing philosophy of memory in Julian Barnes’s Elizabeth Finch
| dc.contributor.author | Bollinger, Elena | |
| dc.date.accessioned | 2025-05-19T15:47:05Z | |
| dc.date.available | 2025-05-19T15:47:05Z | |
| dc.date.issued | 2024-09 | |
| dc.description.abstract | This article discusses the narrative construction of various philosophical reflections on cultural memory in Julian Barnes’s novel Elisabeth Finch. It addresses the dichotomy between recollection and oblivion, presenting a memory process as a the “problem of forgotten evidence”, thoroughly discussed in today’s Cultural and Memory Studies. While contemporary scholars and philosophers aim at reflecting on the role of memory in metaphysics and epistemology, mainly relating the process of recollection either to personal identity, or the experience of time, space and epistemic rationale, the dimension of collective memory, and its foregrounding role in everyone’s self-perceptiveness, receives a considerably reduced critical attention. The literary analysis of Elizabeth Finch seeks to problematize this divisive understanding of functions of memory, proposing instead to consider the semantic complementarity of various processes of recollection/forgetting, connecting the narrative representation of events that one has personally experienced and the officially stated collective renderings of factual memory. It resists considering personal remembering and collective forgetting as ostensibly competing rationales, proposing to delve deeper into a tightly crafted relationship between the perception of one’s identity in time and epistemological framework of collective experience mostly focused on the officially stated dimension of memory. Revisiting discourses on religion associated with the narrative construction of borderlands in Julian Barnes’s Elizabeth Finch, this article contributes to reconsider collective memory and counter-memory not as mutually exclusive, but as synthetized and put into productive motion narrative dimensions. The intertextual articulation of discourses on religion fosters new theoretical perspectives for rethinking counter-memory not only as a mode of recovering silenced and contested versions of the European history, but also as a means of providing multidimensional and transcultural interpretation of the collective past. Perceived as a form of discursive resistance to any kind of political and social dominance, the narrative construction of “forgotten evidence” elucidates the complex post-dialectical relationship between official collective memory and marginalized counter-memory. | pt_PT |
| dc.description.sponsorship | This work is financed by national funds through the FCT – Foundation for Science and Technology, I.P., within the scope of the projects UIDB/00114/2020 and UIDP/00114/2020 | pt_PT |
| dc.description.version | info:eu-repo/semantics/publishedVersion | pt_PT |
| dc.identifier.citation | Bollinger, E. (2024). “The Shifting Light of History”: Addressing Philosophy of Memory in Julian Barnes’s Elizabeth Finch. English Language, Literature & Culture, 9(4), 108-117. https://doi.org/10.11648/j.ellc.20240904.12 | pt_PT |
| dc.identifier.doi | https://doi.org/10.11648/j.ellc.20240904.12 | pt_PT |
| dc.identifier.eissn | 2575-2413 | |
| dc.identifier.issn | 2575-2367 | |
| dc.identifier.uri | http://hdl.handle.net/10400.5/100791 | |
| dc.language.iso | eng | pt_PT |
| dc.peerreviewed | yes | pt_PT |
| dc.publisher | Science Publishing Group | pt_PT |
| dc.relation | University of Lisbon Centre for English Studies | |
| dc.relation.publisherversion | https://www.sciencepublishinggroup.com/article/10.11648/j.ellc.20240904.12 | pt_PT |
| dc.rights.uri | http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/ | pt_PT |
| dc.subject | Elizabeth Finch | pt_PT |
| dc.subject | Discourses on religion | pt_PT |
| dc.subject | Collective memory and forgetting | pt_PT |
| dc.subject | Counter-memory | pt_PT |
| dc.subject | Forgotten evidence | pt_PT |
| dc.title | “The Shifting Light of History”: addressing philosophy of memory in Julian Barnes’s Elizabeth Finch | pt_PT |
| dc.type | journal article | |
| dspace.entity.type | Publication | |
| oaire.awardTitle | University of Lisbon Centre for English Studies | |
| oaire.awardURI | info:eu-repo/grantAgreement/FCT/Concurso de avaliação no âmbito do Programa Plurianual de Financiamento de Unidades de I&D (2017%2F2018) - Financiamento Base/UIDB%2F00114%2F2020/PT | |
| oaire.awardURI | info:eu-repo/grantAgreement/FCT/6817 - DCRRNI ID/UIDP%2F00114%2F2020/PT | |
| oaire.citation.conferencePlace | New York | pt_PT |
| oaire.citation.endPage | 117 | pt_PT |
| oaire.citation.startPage | 108 | pt_PT |
| oaire.citation.title | English Literature, Language and Culture | pt_PT |
| oaire.citation.volume | 9(4) | pt_PT |
| oaire.fundingStream | Concurso de avaliação no âmbito do Programa Plurianual de Financiamento de Unidades de I&D (2017/2018) - Financiamento Base | |
| oaire.fundingStream | 6817 - DCRRNI ID | |
| person.familyName | Bollinger | |
| person.givenName | Elena | |
| person.identifier.orcid | 0000-0002-2356-0516 | |
| project.funder.identifier | http://doi.org/10.13039/501100001871 | |
| project.funder.identifier | http://doi.org/10.13039/501100001871 | |
| project.funder.name | Fundação para a Ciência e a Tecnologia | |
| project.funder.name | Fundação para a Ciência e a Tecnologia | |
| rcaap.rights | openAccess | pt_PT |
| rcaap.type | article | pt_PT |
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