TY  - BOOK
AU  - Matsuda,Matt K.
TI  - The memory of the modern
SN  - 019509364X (cloth)
AV  - DC33.6 .M34 1996
U1  - 944.0812 22
PY  - 1996///
CY  - New York
PB  - Oxford University Press
KW  - Memory
KW  - History
KW  - Technology
KW  - Social aspects
KW  - France
KW  - 19th century
KW  - Civilization
KW  - 1830-1900
KW  - Third Republic, 1870-1940
KW  - Philosophy
N1  - Includes bibliographical references (p. 209-241) and index; Introduction: Histories: The Philosophy of Today --; 1; Monuments: Idols of the Emperor --; 2; Numbers: The Temple of Time --; 3; Words: The Grammar of History --; 4; Bodies: The Third Convolution --; 5; Testimonies: Deserving of Faith --; 6; Identities: Doctor, Judge, Vagabond --; 7; Distances: In the Revolutionary Garden --; 8; Spectacles: Machineries of Magic --; 9; Desires: Last Tango at the Academie --; Afterword: Memories: The History of the Present
N2  - Memory has a history. The Classical world ordered and valued events differently than the Medieval world; which, in turn, was replaced by "the memory" of the Renaissance. Matt Matsuda's compelling, multidisciplinary argument in The Memory of the Modern is that the understanding, value, and uses of memory changed yet again at the end of the nineteenth and the beginning of the twentieth centuries, becoming distinctively "modern." Matsuda proves his argument by visiting a remarkable array of "memory-sites": the destruction of a monument to Napoleon during the 1871 Paris Commune; the frantic selling of futures on the Paris stock-exchange; the state's forensic search for a vagabond rapist and murderer; a child's perjured testimony on the witness stand; a scientist's dissecting of the human brain; the invention of cameras and the cinema. Each chapter studies a distinct moment when new representations of the past were forged, contested, and put to cultural and ideological use. And all these diverse events cohere as Matsuda repeatedly shows which "memories" were celebrated and which forgotten, which traditions invented and appropriated and which discarded. More importantly, he explains why, and in doing so answers the broader question, Who controls what is remembered and who is believed?
ER  -