Memory up close: Memory studies in Australia (Editorial)

摘要

This special issue was first conceived of over dinner in a New Zealand café in London, on a warm summer night in July 2010. During that evening, it emerged that we'd both already been thinking about the issues we raise here for some time. Rosanne, a US citizen, and now Australian citizen, who has lived and worked in Australia since the 1990s, had co-edited a book on World Memory (Bennett and Kennedy, 2003). Susannah, at that point a UK citizen working in the United Kingdom and with a fellowship in Australia, was in the midst of running a project on memory in national contexts and had recently spoken on what she sees as the thorny politics driving both memory's mobility and theories of transnational memory (Radstone, 2011). Later that evening, we were joined by another contributor to this issue, Felicity Collins, who arrived hot foot from a symposium in Dublin on disputed memory in Australia and Ireland (Holmes and Ward, 2011). Looking back, it's hard not to notice how our coming together – even in the choice of a New Zealand café in London – condensed many of the issues that pulse through this special issue. We knew that our connections were through memory research and through Australia. But knowing that didn't reveal what, if anything, might be denoted by the coupling of Australia with both memory and memory studies. There in London, in the context of theories of the transnational as they were bearing in on memory studies and as they were present – embodied, even – around our table, this special issue had its genesis.