history memory
TRANSCRIPT
Module C ~ Representation and
Text
History
and
Memory
B.Stanners
“Details, details. Fecks, Fecks”.
History can be cold, detached and clinical while memories provide us with a unique example of human endurance and triumph.
„You read, you read. Books, books everywhere.
But do you know how it feels?‟ B.Stanners
“It always begins in blackness until the first light
illuminates a hidden fragment of memory.”
The modern
historian Michel
Foucault has
argued, “…. with its
moments of intensity,
its lapses, its
extended periods of
feverish agitation, its
fainting spell,
memory fails to be
objective…”
B.Stanners
Memory can give:
• Appreciation and insight
• Contextual understanding
• Perspective of personalized experience
• Immediacy – the past is brought to life
• Empathetic connection to other times, places and events
• A humanized version of academic (recorded) history
Memory produces:
• A fuller, more informed understanding of human nature and the impact of events
and personal experience
• Subjectivity and emotional engagement with how people face crisis
• Truth can be perceived through fictionalized accounts of real people/events
• Empathy can become the trigger for reflection, re-evaluation and emotional
understanding
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THE HOLOCAUST
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Tactics: What happened to new
arrivals?
Deception &
Selection
At Auschwitz the trains
pulled into a mock up
of a normal station.
The Jews were helped
off the cattle trucks
by Jews who were
specially selected to
help the Nazis
At some death camps
the Nazis would play
records of classical
music to help calm
down the new arrivals.
At Auschwitz the new
arrivals were calmed
down by a Jewish
orchestra playing
classical music.
All new arrivals went
through a process
known as ‘selection.’
Mothers, children, the
old & sick were sent
straight to the
‘showers’ which were
really the gas
chambers.
The able bodied were
sent to work camp
were they were killed
through a process
known as ‘destruction
through work.’ B.Stanners
"...to remain silent and indifferent is the
greatest sin of all...” Elie Wiesel shown aged 15
„the murder of 6 million Jews must never
be reduced to a statistic.‟ Simon Wiesenthal B.Stanners
Resilience: The endurance of the human spirit
„History is the witness that
testifies to the passing of
time; it illuminates reality,
vitalizes memory, provides
guidance in daily life, and
brings us tidings of antiquity.‟
Cicero B.Stanners
Elie Wiesel,
Holocaust survivor, winner of the Nobel Peace Prize:
„Ask any survivor and he will tell you, he who
has not lived the event will never know it.
„And he who went through it will not reveal it,
not really, not entirely. Between his memory
and his reflection there is a wall and it cannot
be pierced.‟
Baker tells us his mother, „is more consumed by
the past ... She has always been a lone
survivor, an ageing woman longing for a
childhood buried in a distant sepulchre.‟ B.Stanners
Baker‟s methods
„Shadowy figures grope in the dark, forming a sea of human pillars held upright in a wooden cage.‟ Baker re-creates the scene of transportation, filling the gap that cannot easily be filled by hard data.
He has entered the story rather than reporting it through historical means. The language is emotionally evocative rather than factual-evocative. The clinical sterility of evidence has been humanized.
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Memory is
represented for both
parents as a tactile
place, a „site‟ given
the status of a real
thing equated with
factual veracity.
Father traverses the
painful „landscape of
his past‟ while his
mother‟s memories
are described as „the
territory she is
reclaiming from her
past‟. B.Stanners
The act of remembering can be painful as shown
by Baker‟s use of light/dark symbolism
•Baker’s mother recalls, ‘Pitch black. Pitch black’ and visions from a ‘horrible nightmare’. •Dark, hiding in the cupboard it was all dark, while outside we could hear the footsteps, the shots, the screams.’
•‘For my father, the rivers have not thawed, until now, when his words break out from their glacial silence, releasing a torrent whose flow runs backward into his darkest nights.’
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Baker uses an imaginative combination of typical and
atypical non-fiction representation methods has meant…
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Appropriate Related Texts? B.Stanners
There are 350,000 survivors of the
Holocaust alive today...
There are 350,000 experts who just want
to be useful with the remainder of their
lives. Please listen to the words and the
echoes and the ghosts.
Steven Spielberg, Academy Award
acceptance speech B.Stanners
Voices from the Past ~ Who and what is a survivor? someone who lives through affliction;
someone who survives in spite of adversity;
..only the survivor can bear witness,
transmit a spark of the flame,
tell a fragment of the tale,
a reflection of the truth.‟
„Every individual who survived that other world, has a duty to
leave documentation behind so that future generations will
remember and will not forget.‟Tamara Deuel, Holocaust survivor
„The Buchenwald
Boys‟
Holocaust
survivors, from
left: Joe
Szwarcberg,
Henry Salter,
Szaja Chaskiel,
Simon
Michalowicz.
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Remember…. • The HSC Advanced English course is about
thinking conceptually about the IDEAS, insights, perceptions and thoughts that have been triggered by your prescribed and related texts.
• One of the key syllabus aims is to make you think critically about what and how ideas are communicated within varied texts.
• Summarising what the text is about is not what is wanted.
• Concise, informative analysis about the text is needed for it illustrates your knowledge and understanding of the conceptual ideas developed within text.
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ORTs do NOT have to deal with
the Holocaust
Texts should represent in one way or
another:
„the interplay of personal experience,
memory and documented evidence‟
Interpretive response should focus on how
„history and personal history are shaped and
represented‟
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Recapping: How do texts represent the idea of ‘history and memory’ in relation to personal experience and
documented evidence? It can be through …
• Form and medium-prose, film, song lyric, cartoon
• Themes-resilience, bearing witness
• Construction-chronology, POV, time-frame
• Characterisation-range, contrast, flaws
• Language -word choice, techniques, figurative and literal techniques
• Style-mood, imagery, symbolism, linking motifs
and… B.Stanners
Sample Questions “There are no certainties, only representations" How have different representation forms and methods in the texts you have studied been used to demonstrate conflicting perspectives. Reference needs to be made to your prescribed text and TWO related texts of your own choosing. How has your understanding of events, personalities or situations been shaped by their representations in the texts you have studied. Refer to your prescribed text and at least TWO other related texts of your own choosing. ‘History, without memory, is merely a collection of facts, and consequently without real meaning in our world.’ Discuss with reference to your prescribed text and two related texts of your own choosing.
How could you respond to these questions? B.Stanners
Sample Introduction
History is commonly defined as a methodical record of public events, characterised by factual data and archival evidence. It is also typically considered the most objective and dependable way to examine a particular event, personality or situation. Memory alternatively, is defined as a personalised recollection of the past and thereby more fragile and subjective. Memory however can illuminate and emphasise certain aspects of the past in ways that history cannot. Re-visiting one’s memories enables us to re-live experiences, to unveil the past and bring history to life. As historian Mark Baker discovered whilst composing “A Journey through Memory; The Fiftieth Gate”; history and memory merges verifiable proof with personal experience. Wide ranging typical and atypical non-fiction techniques help broaden our perspective and develop a more emotional and empathetic understanding of the truth.
Strengths? Weaknesses? How could it be improved? B.Stanners
Responding requires a…
Thesis Statement:
For Greek logicians this meant
a
“premise or proposition to be
stated and then proved through
logical analysis and
argumentation.”
“The aim or purpose of
argument is to use logic to
create reasoned communication
of ideas,
insights, and experiences so as
to produce a new understanding
of some issue for an audience.”
What is the new understanding
of your topic that you will
provide for your audience? B.Stanners