ABSTRACT

The argument has been made that memoir reflects and augments the narcissistic tendencies of our neo-liberal age. Mediating Memory: Tracing the Limits of Memoir challenges and dismantles that assumption. Focusing on the history, theory and practice of memoir writing, editors Bunty Avieson, Fiona Giles and Sue Joseph provide a thorough and cutting-edge examination of memoir through the lenses of ethics, practice and innovation. By investigating memoir across cultural boundaries, in its various guises, and tracing its limits, the editors convincingly demonstrate the plurality of ways in which memoir is helping us make sense of who we are, who we were and the influences that shape us along the way.

chapter |10 pages

Introduction

section I|63 pages

Craft

chapter 1|16 pages

Memory’s Fracture

Instability in the Contemporary Memoir

chapter 2|14 pages

Teaching Memoir in Neoliberal Times

chapter 3|16 pages

The Ghost in the Memoir Machine

Exploring the Relationship between Ghostwritten Memoir and Biography

section II|63 pages

Boundaries

chapter 5|14 pages

The Other-Directed Memoir

Victim Impact Statements and the Aesthetics of Change

chapter 6|13 pages

After He Shot Arthur Calwell

Peter Kocan’s Use of the Second Person

chapter 7|19 pages

Memoir for Your Ears

The Podcast Life

chapter 8|15 pages

The ‘I’ and the ‘Eye’

Mediated Perspective in the Documemoir

section III|66 pages

Sites

chapter 9|16 pages

Eco-Memoir

Protecting, Restoring, and Repairing Memory and Environment

chapter 10|16 pages

‘Stories’

Social Media and Ephemeral Narratives as Memoir

chapter 11|19 pages

Memoir 2.0

The Writing of the Self as Brand

chapter 12|13 pages

Travel Memoir and Australia

From Twain to Tracks and the Present Day

section IV|61 pages

Bloodlines

chapter 13|14 pages

Holding the Memories

Death, Success, and the Ethics of Memoir

chapter 14|16 pages

First-person Narratives and Feminism

Tracing the Maternal DNA

chapter 15|14 pages

To Begin to Know

Resolving Ethical Tensions in David Leser’s Patriographical Work

section V|61 pages

Recuperation

chapter 17|15 pages

Happy, Funny, and Humane

South African Childhood Narratives Which Challenge the ‘Single Story’ of Apartheid

chapter 18|15 pages

Redressing the Silence

Racism, Trauma, and Aboriginal Women’s Life Writing

chapter 19|16 pages

Lest We Forget

Mateship, Masculinity, and Australian Identity

chapter 20|13 pages

Bridges across Broken Time

Armenian ‘Minor-Memoirs’ of the Turn of the 21st Century