Spectral Memories of Post-Crash Iceland

Memory, Identity and the Haunted Imagination in Contemporary Literature and Art
Erscheinungsjahr 2023
ISBN: 978-90-04-68548-2
Verlag: Brill

Buch, Englisch, Band 3, 228 Seiten, Format (B × H): 155 mm x 235 mm, Gewicht: 528 g

Reihe: Mobilizing Memories

How does the spectre appear in Icelandic literature and visual art created in the aftermath of the economic crash in Iceland in 2008? Why does it emerge at that specific point in time and what can it tell us about repressed collective memories in Iceland? The book explores how the crash becomes an implicit background setting in novels that address the silences and gaps of the family archive, and how crime fiction employs generic features of horror to explicitly tackle the ghosts residing in the lost homes of the financial crash. Spectral space is an apparent theme of cultural memories produced in times of crisis, and the book explores how this is made apparent in visual art of the period.

Autoren/Hrsg.

Knútsdóttir, Vera

Fachgebiete

• Geisteswissenschaften Geschichtswissenschaft Geschichtswissenschaft Allgemein
• Geisteswissenschaften Literaturwissenschaft Literaturwissenschaft: Prosa, Erzählung, Roman, Prosaautoren
• Interdisziplinäres Wissenschaften Wissenschaft und Gesellschaft | Kulturwissenschaften Kulturwissenschaften
• Wirtschaftswissenschaften Volkswirtschaftslehre Finanzkrisen, Wirtschaftskrisen

Inhaltsverzeichnis

Preface

List of Figures

Introduction

1 Spectral Memory: What and Why?

2 What is Cultural Memory?

3 Spectral Memory as a Dynamic and Transformative Encounter Between Past and Present

4 Outline of Chapters

Part 1:Spectral Memories of the Financial Crisis

1 The Spectral Spaces of the Economic Crisis: Visual Art

1 The Crash: A Collective Shock

2 The Crash: Crisis of Memory and Identity

3 Aesthetic Response to the Crash: The Spectral-Uncanny

4 Roles: Photorealist Drawings of the Unhomely Space

5 Roles: The House and the Human Subject

6 Waiting: Crash-Photographs of Emptiness and Melancholia in the Urban Space

7 Waiting: Contemporary Urban Space and Memory

8 Waiting: Capitalist Ruins

9 Spectral Mourning in the Urban Space: Conclusion

2 Ghosts and Specters of Crash Fiction: Literature

1 I Remember You: A Crash-Horror in the Time of Economic Crisis

2 I Remember You: Two Stories of Hauntings in the Wake of the Crash

3 I Remember You: The Haunted House

4 Reactions and Agency: Why Does the Ghost Return?

5 Hauntings in Ísafjörður: Three Different Types of Spectral Presence

6 Hauntings in Ísafjörður: Spectral Mourning as Haunting

7 Significance of the Haunting for the Narrative and Broader Context

8 Hvítfeld: Uncanny Family Novel

9 Hvítfeld and the Crash: The Falseness and Collapse of the Ideal

10 Hvítfeld: Unhomely Family Life and Melancholic Characters

11 Hvítfeld: Melancholic Mourning

12 Hvítfeld and the Spectral Space: The Unhomely Home

13 Literary Ghosts and Spectral Memories of the Financial Crisis:Conclusion

Part 2: Spectral Memories From the Post-Crash Archive

3 Spectral Memories From the Institutional Archive: Visual Art

1 The Archive as Storage for Spectral Memories

2 Modernisation of the Archive: Colonialism and Photography

3 Musée Islandique and Das Experiment Island by Ólöf Nordal

4 Musée Islandique

5 The Colonial Archive and Historical Context

6 Das Experiment Island

7 The Uncanny Associations of the Archive

8 What Kind of Memories?

9 Traces by Unnar Örn Auðarson

10 Fragments From the Deeds of Unrest: Part II

11 The Photograph as an Archival Record

12 Photograph as Spectre

13 Fragments From the Deeds of Unrest: The Photograph and National Imagery

14 Fragments: Murmur of a Nation

15 Spectral Memories of the Institutional Archive: Conclusion

4 Spectral Memories From the Family Archive: Literature

1 The Family Archive in Fórnarleikar: The Spectral State of Postmemories

2 Postmemory and the Family Trauma

3 Postmemory and the Family Archive

4 Family Pictures: Archived Photographs

5 Fórnarleikar: The Impossibility of Writing a Life Story

6 Spectral Memories of the Childhood Archive in Elín, Ýmislegt

7 “Enigmatic Time-Capsules” and Archive Fiction

8 Archived Material: Spectral Memories

9 Elín, Ýmislegt: A Novel on Forgetting?

10 Spectral Memories From the Family Archive: Conclusion

Conclusion

Bibliography

Index

Über Autor(innen)

Vera Knútsdóttir holds a PhD In Comparative Literature from the University of Iceland, MA in Literary Studies from the University of Amsterdam, and BA in Comparative Literature and French from the University of Iceland. She is currently a book editor at Forlagið publishing in Reykjavík and an independent researcher. Spectral Memories of Post-Crash Iceland is her latest publication.