Metaphors of Memory, Comparative Literature and Heritage
Different metaphors have been used to represent, describe or conceptualise memory and its processes, from blank slate or wax tablet receiving impressions, to book where events are recorded and organised in narrative form, to canvas of images; from spatial loci or architectural structures – rooms, palaces, theatres – that organise and facilitate the retrieval of existing memories, to depths, sometimes traumatic, hidden in our unconscious, shaping our behaviour without us fully realising their force. Episodes, images or words are “etched” in one’s memory, suggesting unchangeability, but our memory can be “like a sieve”, unable to retain certain information. Memory needs help (aide-mémoire) but helps us know who we are. Monuments stand for and aim to preserve collective memories, asserting national, ethnic or historical identities, although those memories can be contested, as we witness when statues are pulled down. Mnemosyne, mother of the Muses, embodies the myth of the generative power of art and literature to encode and transmit – transfer, carry across – cultural identity. But amnesia is inextricable from memory, and heritage remains a contested field of preservation, transformation, misrepresentation, oblivion and active erasure.
Metaphor implies analogy, indirect comparison; it signals both connection and needing interpretation to identify the connection; it carries within it, in its etymology (Greek metapherein), the concept of transfer, travel, carrying over across a boundary; etymologically, it is mirrored by the Latin translatio, carrying or transferring words and meanings across languages.
Both metaphors and memories imply distance and bridging distances, movement across and connection across boundaries, spatial and temporal.
This online conference, part of collaboration between the International Comparative Literature Association and the UNESCO Memory of the World programme, will reflect on metaphors of memory from the perspective of, or to explore, relationships between comparative literature (broadly understood, including interdisciplinary approaches) and heritage.
The conference is organised by Lucia Boldrini, Ipshita Chanda and Longxi Zhang, and is part of the AILC-ICLA/Memory of the World Series, and will be hosted online by the Centre for Comparative Literature, Goldsmiths, University of London.
Registration will open soon
Programme
(draft)
Abstracts will be added shortly
9.10-9.20 – Welcome and Introduction
9.20-10.50 – Panel 1: Archives, Remembrances, Metaphors
Sven Christian (Universidade Católica Portuguesa, Portugal), “One final act of love”
Ana Rita Figueira (University of Lisbon, Portugal), “Clay Metaphors. Attic vases as portable channels of (inherited) memory”
Anita Purcell-Sjölund (Dalarna University, Sweden), “Relational Preservation: Pasifika Memory, Narrative, and Oceanic Archives”
10.50-11.05 – Short break
11.05-12.35 – Panel 2: Narratives of Fragmented Memory
Cristina Martín Hernandez (University of Salamanca, Spain) “Memory in a Shoebox: Affective Archives and Memory Mestiza in Norma Elía Cantú’s Canícul”
Tuba (Tara) Mozafari (Tarbiat Modares University, Iran), “Fragmented Voices and Failing Archives: Metaphors of Memory in Annie Ernaux’s The Years and Sarah Kane’s Crave”
Patricia Georgina Rico León (Complutense University, Spain), “Echoing Loss: The Echo as a Metaphor of Memory in Valeria Luiselli’s Lost Children Archive”
12.35-13.05 – Lunch break
13.05- 14.35 – Panel 3: Poetry, Memory and Translation
Anjali (Jawaharlal Nehru University, India), “Dead Metaphors: Waldeinsamkeit, Ecological Memory, and the Heritage of Romantic Nature in Judith Schalansky's Verzeichnis einiger Verluste”
Ornela Barisone (Universidad Nacional de San Martín, Argentina), “Archipelagic Archives and Burning Poems: Metaphors of Fragile Memory in Latin American Experimental Poetry”
Assumpta Camps (University of Barcelona, Spain), “Translation and/as Memory in Giuseppe Ungaretti’s work”
14.35-14.50 – Short break
14.50-16.20 – Panel 4: Archives of Ruins, Silence and Loss
Nina Alihodžić-Hadžialić (University of Sarajevo, Bosnia), “Traces of Absence: The Spectrality of the Archive and Memorial Posthumanism”
Pari Argyarkaky (Democritus University of Thrace, Greece), “Mapping as an Aide-Mémoire: Reconstructing Lived Space in the Lost City of Smyrna through Archives”
Raphaëlle Killick (Researcher and Exhibition Writer, UK), “‘Morts pour la France’: Remembering African colonial soldiers in contemporary Senegal”
16.20-16.35 – Short break
16.35- 17.35 – Panel 5: Metaphors of Memory and the Shaping of Comparative Literature and Translation
Hassna Mohamed Ech Cherrate (Sultan Moulay Slimane University, Morocco), “Translating the Traces of Time: Conceptual Metaphors of Memory in Franco-Arabic Literary Translation”
Raluca Duna (The Romanian Academy, Bucharest, Romania), “The Aleph of Memory”
17.35-17.45 – Concluding remarks
The ICLA/MoW Series is coordinated jointly by Professor Lucia Boldrini (Honorary President, AILC-ICLA; Honorary Director, Centre for Comparative Literature, Goldsmiths, University of London), Professor Ipshita Chanda (AILC-ICLA President, 2025-28) and Professor Lothar Jordan (Chair of the MoW Sub-Committee for Education and Research, SCEaR).
More information on the ICLA/ MoW collaboration
For further information please contact [email protected]