« TEXTS, CULT TENDENCIES: IDENTITIE Series Editor: Peter Brooker This series focuses on the making and unmaking of individual, social and national identities and fhe ways in which changed subjectivities are being articulated in literary and cultural texts, themselves subject to change. Books in the series concentrate on tendencies in contemporary writing and cultural forms, including their new generic and intertextual relations, principally in the work of recent and living authors, artists and cultural workers over the last two decades. Memory, Narrativ Identity Remembering the Self Nicola‘King It is commonly accepted that identity or a sense of self is constructed by and through narrative - the stories we tell ourselves and each other about our lives. But our notions of identity also depend on assumptions about the nature of memory itself, and the kind of access it can give us to the past. This book explores the complex relationships that exist between memory, nostalgia, writing and identity. The author examines a range of autobiographical and first-person fictional texts from holocaust literature, women’s writing and popular fiction. Each text foregrounds issues of memory, history and trauma in the construction of identity. There are close readings of texts including Sylvia Fraser’s My Father's House, Margaret Atwood’s Cat's Eye, Barbara Vine’s A Dark Adapted Eye, Toni Morrison's Beloved, George Perec’s W Or the Memory of Childhood, and Anne Michaels’ Fugitive Pieces. Reading these texts of memory shows that ‘remembering the self’ depends Not on restoring an original identity, but on ‘re-membering’, or putting past and Present selves together, moment by moment, in a process of provisional reconstruction. This is a powerful contribution to the growing field of trauma and holocaust studies and to explorations of the workings of memory. It will be of relevance to those working in the areas of literary and cultural studies, which are witnessing a steady growth of interest in autobiography, theories of narrative, and the relationship between trauma, history and memory. Nicola King is Senior Lecturer in English at the University of the West of England. Cover photograph taken by Nicola King Pepe adereeeeereieeuence URUANEM EAA Edinburgh University Press,© Nicola King, 2000 Edinburgh University Press Ltd 22 George Square, Edinburgh Typeset in Melior by Pioneer Associates, Perthshire, and printed and bound in Great Britain by MPG Books, Bodmin ACIP Record for this book is available from the British Library ISBN 0 7486 1115 0 (paperback) The right of Nicola King to be identified as author of this work has been asserted in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988. OXFORD UNIVERSITY Hee -TI REY. IONContents Acknowledgements Series Editor’s Introduction Introduction: ‘But we didn’t know that then’ 1. Memory in Theory 2. Present Imperfect Translation: Ronald Fraser’s In Search of a Past and Carolyn Steedman’s Landscape for a Good Woman 3. ‘A life entire’: Narrative Reconstruction in Sylvia Fraser’s My Father’s House and Margaret Atwoad’s Cat’s Eye 4. Myths of Origin: Identity, Memory and Detection in Barbara Vine’s A Dark Adapted Eye and Asta’s Book 5. Holocaust, Memory, Representation: Georges Perec’s W or The Memory of Childhood and Anne Michaels’ Fugitive Pieces 6. Rememory and Reconstruction: Toni Morrison’s Beloved Afterword Bibliography Index vii 11 33 61 93 119 150 175 182 194