The
two main aims are
(i)
to produce empirical studies using three main types of source:
- written
(archival, press, literary, diaries, etc.),
-
individual and group interviews,
-
visual records and evidence;
(ii)
to develop and test a theoretical and methodological approach to the
study of relations between place and memory that may be applied in
other contexts.
The
objectives are to provide a much clearer understanding of place
and memory in an urban context than has been available hitherto
and to disseminate findings through appropriately diverse outputs.
All
these will be made available as resources to other researchers.
Research
Imperative and Context:
Internationally,
memory studies have proliferated in various disciplines over the past
20 years. Relatively few studies, however, have defined their object
clearly or made their presuppositions explicit, and this has justifiably
made the memory industry vulnerable to criticism. There
is frequent confusion between memory, commemoration and representation
and a questionable assumption that individual and social/cultural
memory are similar in kind and just differ in scale. Much of the historical
work to date has focussed on memories of traumatic experiences
wars, massacres, above all the Holocaust or on official sites
and rituals, such as war memorials and public commemorations. In Italy,
too, most memory research has concentrated on contested moments of
public history such as the Resistance and Nazi massacres, places
of memory of a public kind (Isnenghi 1996-7), or the memory
of particular social groups, notably the working class. Other types
of place memory, such as that of perceived boundaries or movements
within a neighbourhood, and the memory of different social groups,
have been relatively neglected. Isnenghis project mirrors that
on France edited by Nora (1984-92); in both, despite the intrinsic
quality of some of the essays, the notion of what constitutes a place
is undertheorised.
It is only very recently that the complicated connections between
memory, forgetting and place have begun to be explored in anthropology,
urban studies and archaeology (e.g. Feld and Basso 1996, Forty and
Küchler 1999, Bender 1993). As yet, though, little historical
work has been done on relations between urban space, everyday practices
and memories, although these ideas are central to the influential
writings of Benjamin (1999) and Certeau (1980). In Italy there are
strong research traditions both in oral history/popular memory and
in studies of urban places, but the two have rarely been brought together,
with a few notable exceptions (Passerini 1984, Portelli 1985, Gribaudi
1987). No cross-city work has been done, either in Italy or internationally,
on relations between memory and place.
This project is intended to fill this gap. It will look both at individual
memory narratives and at ritualised forms of social memory (Connerton
1989). We follow Casey (1993) in defining place as space
that may be occupied, or imagined as occupied, by human bodies and
events. Memory may rightly be said to inhere not in places but in
people (and consequently to be mobile rather than fixed
in buildings or streets), and yet urban places are commonly given
shape, filled out, by memory. This may be either
habitual and informal (e.g. the recalling of routes, landmarks, buildings)
or formalised (e.g. cartography, secular pilgrimages, gatherings on
particular sites). Memories are often projected onto places and places
may serve as aids or triggers to memory, like the loci of classical
mnemonics. They are also bound up with the interrelated processes
of erasure of places (e.g. the destruction of a building or a district),
repression of traumatic memories and forgetting.
The research will build on the collective project City and Identity:
Milan and Turin in the Industrial Era, directed by Dr Robert
Lumley and based at the UCL Centre for Italian Studies, to which a
British Academy Institutional Research Fellowship (total value £139,428,
awarded to UCL for John Foot) was attached in 1996-2000. In particular
it will draw on Foots earlier work on Milan, the research networks
already established and the experience of working groups, symposia
and cross-city comparisons. However, it will take the investigation
of cities in a completely new direction. It will include, alongside
Milan, four cities not studied in the first project; whereas the latter
dealt mainly with identity, migration and cultural change, this will
focus on memory, will use new methods and outputs (notably the website
and video essays) and will be explicitly concerned to advance the
theory and methodology of memory research.
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Research
methods:
(i) Archival: state and other collections (Istituto De Martino
and Fondazione Feltrinelli, Milan; Istituto Gramsci, Fondazione Basso,
Archivio audiovisivo del movimento operaio, Rome; Istituti per la
storia del movimento di liberazione, etc.) for unpublished memoirs
and diaries, transcripts of earlier oral history studies, photographs
and documentary films.
(iii)
Libraries (Italy and UK): newspapers and other printed sources,
including literary texts, maps, redevelopment plans.
(iii)
Oral history: 20 individual interviews in each city (Naples and
Rome, Year 2; Milan, Venice-Marghera, Messina, Year 3) combining life
history narratives with structured questioning. Interviewees will
be invited to give a verbal account of their memories of a given place
or event and to show and tell using mementoes and photographs.
(iv)
Group interviews. Pilot interviews will be done in Year 2 to try
out the method; groups will then be selected and interviewed in Naples
and Rome in Year 2 and the other cities in Year 3 to enable us to
test, compare and develop our findings with a common methodological
instrument. Unlike individual interviews, group interviews can show
memories emerging within an interactive context and respondents can
stimulate and deepen each others reactions.
(v)
Video essays. John Quick will supervise this part of the research
in liaison with the UCL team. Each researcher will use a digital still
and video camera to investigate relations between memory and place
and record findings. S/he will document visual and aural memories
of salient events, routes, mental maps, etc. Video will also be used
to record (subject to interviewees agreement) individual and
group interviews, objects, family snaps, etc. Maps, aerial photographs
and archive film will be incorporated. Post-production of the essays
will be done at Royal Holloway.
(vi)
Working groups. Researchers will meet regularly to discuss issues
common to all five case studies and monitor their development through
reports and work-in-progress papers. These meetings will also have
a management function, enabling the project director to keep tabs
on budget, deadlines and the work of the research assistants.
(vii)
Symposia and conference. Symposia will be held yearly for the
first three years of the project; invited speakers and discussants
will meet project researchers to discuss pre-circulated papers. The
conference, in Year 4, will help draw together the case studies, disseminate
findings and create dialogue with a wider research community.
(viii) Website to solicit feedback from the public and academic community.
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Role
of individual Project Team Members:
In addition
to their city studies, Forgacs will be responsible for liaison with
Royal Holloway, Foot for general project management and Dickie for
data management. Dines will work full-time on the project from 1/1/02
to 31/08/03 and Cerasi half-time from 1/09/02 to 31/08/05; they will
help (i) create and maintain the website; (ii) prepare individual
and group interviews (Dines Naples and Rome only); (iii) conduct and
analyse interviews (Dines in Naples only); (iv) crew one other video
essay; (v) locate research materials; (vi) organise working groups
and symposia. The technical assistant, based at Royal Holloway, will
work half-time throughout. S/he will be an experienced video maker
and editor who will provide essential creative and technical help
with the video essays. Quick will supervise and support her/his work.
For details of data collection timetable see Appendix 2 section 1.
Casual assistance for consultancies and training for group interviews
and transcription of all interviews is budgeted under Special Costs.
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References:
- Bender,
B. (ed.) Landscape: Politics and Perspectives (1993).
- Benjamin,
W., The Arcades Project [1926-38] (1999).
- Casey,
E.S., Getting Back into Place (1993).
- Certeau,
M. de, LInvention du quotidien, Vol 1 (1980).
- Connerton,
P. How Societies Remember (1989).
- Feld,
S. and Basso, K.H., Senses of Place (1996).
- Forty,
A. and Küchler, S. (eds), The Art of Forgetting (1999).
- Gribaudi,
M., Mondo operaio e mito operaio (1987).
- Isnenghi,
M. (ed.), I luoghi della memoria, 3 vols (1996-7).
- Nora,
P. (ed.), Les Lieux de mémoire, 3 vols (1984-92).
- Passerini,
L., Torino operaia e fascismo. Una storia orale (1984).
- Portelli,
A., Biografia di una città
Terni, 1830-1985 (1985).
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