1st Edition

Mediating Memory Tracing the Limits of Memoir

Edited By Bunty Avieson, Fiona Giles, Sue Joseph Copyright 2018
    354 Pages
    by Routledge

    354 Pages
    by Routledge

    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.

    Introduction



    Bunty Avieson, Fiona Giles and Sue Joseph





    Section One: Craft



    Chapter1. Memory’s fracture: Instability in the contemporary memoir



    Marie O’Rourke



    Chapter2. Teaching memoir in neoliberal times



    Megan Brown



    Chapter 3. The ghost in the memoir machine: Exploring the relationship between ghost-written memoir and biography



    Matthew Ricketson



    Chapter 4. Re-presenting madness in the form of a quadrilogue



    Simon Clarke





    Section Two: Boundaries



    Chapter 5. The other-directed memoir: Victim impact statements and the aesthetics of change



    Fiona Giles



    Chapter 6. After he shot Arthur Calwell: Peter Kocan’s use of the second person



    Tony Davis



    Chapter 7. Memoir for your ears: the podcast life



    Siobhan McHugh



    Chapter 8. The "I" and the "Eye": Mediated perspective in the documemoir



    Kathleen Waites





    Section Three: Sites



    Chapter 9. Eco-Memoir: Protecting, Restoring and Repairing Memory and Environment Jessica White



    Chapter 10. "Stories": Social media and ephemeral narratives as memoir



    Kylie Cardell, Kate Douglas and Emma Maguire



    Chapter 11. Memoir 2.0: the writing of the self as brand



    Georgiana Toma



    Chapter 12. Travel Memoir and Australia: From Twain to Tracks and the Present Day



    Ben Stubbs





    Section Four: Bloodlines



    Chapter 13. Holding the memories: death, success and the ethics of memoir



    Bunty Avieson



    Chapter 14. First-person narratives and feminism: tracing the maternal DNA



    Kath Kenny



    Chapter 15. To begin to know: resolving ethical tensions in David Leser’s patriographical work



    Sue Joseph and Carolyn Rickett



    Chapter 16. The epistolary thread as collaborative writing in grief memoir



    Freya Latona





    Section Five: Recuperation



    Chapter 17. Happy, funny and humane: South African childhood narratives which challenge the "single story" of apartheid



    Anthea Garman



    Chapter 18. Redressing the silence: Racism, trauma and Aboriginal women’s life writing



    Willa McDonald



    Chapter 19. Lest we forget: mateship, masculinity, and Australian identity



    Jack Bowers



    Chapter 20. Bridges across broken time: Armenian "minor-memoirs" of the turn of the 21st century



    Gülbin Kıranoğlu





    Notes on Contributors



    Index

    Biography

    Bunty Avieson, Fiona Giles, Sue Joseph