Denis Scuto

Peripheral memories. Public and private forms of experiencing and narrating the past

Elisabeth Boesen, Fabienne Lentz, Michel Margue, Denis Scuto, and Renée Wagener’s laudable contribution to memory studies should mark a turning point in how we work through memory by introducing a new conceptual apparatus: that of peripheral memory, which is connected to a particular sense of ‘memories on the move’ (Boesen, 7). Peripheral Memories: Public and Private Forms of Experiencing and Narrating the Past, aims to develop new, exciting conceptual and theoretical adages, in addition to particular, local, and regional objects of inquiry. Altogether, the contributions consider memory as all at once an intertwining of individual and collective processes and actions, all at once a pressing matter of translation “between intrapsychic, cognitive processes on the one hand and public, cultural processes on the other” (11). The contributing authors elucidate local, regional, and peripheral memory accounts through a variety of interview-based studies of subjects whose lifeworlds are founded in memory objects, processes, places, and spaces. Each contribution makes its own set of rich theoretical insights that should give rise to a more general conversation about ‘memories on the move’ in a post-social world. The collection’s most admirable quality is its methodological innovation, which spans new empirical domains such as familial memory, intergenerational communication, autobiography, historical ethnography, and written testimony. Such a methodological variety, Boesen notes, is: