| Religion and Cultural Memory: Ten Studies Contributor(s): Assmann, Jan (Author), Livingstone, Rodney (Translator) |
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ISBN: 0804745234 ISBN-13: 9780804745239 Publisher: Stanford University Press OUR PRICE: $23.75 Product Type: Paperback - Other Formats Published: November 2005 Annotation: In ten brilliant essays, Jan Assmann explores the connections between religion, culture, and memory. Building on Maurice Halbwachs's idea that memory, like language, is a social phenomenon as well as an individual one, he argues that memory has a cultural dimension too. He develops a persuasive view of the life of the past in such surface phenomena as codes, religious rites and festivals, and canonical texts on the one hand, and in the Freudian psychodrama of repressing and resurrecting the past on the other. Whereas the current fad for oral history inevitably focuses on the actual memories of the last century or so, Assmann presents a commanding view of culture extending over five thousand years. He focuses on cultural memory from the Egyptians, Babylonians, and the Osage Indians down to recent controversies about memorializing the Holocaust in Germany and the role of memory in the current disputes between Israelis and Palestinians in the Middle East and between Protestants and Catholics in Northern Ireland. |
| Additional Information |
| BISAC Categories: - Social Science | Sociology Of Religion - Religion | Comparative Religion |
| Dewey: 306.6 |
| LCCN: 2005024771 |
| Series: Cultural Memory in the Present |
| Physical Information: 0.52" H x 5.94" W x 8.98" (0.71 lbs) 240 pages |
| Descriptions, Reviews, Etc. |
| Publisher Description: Through a commanding view extending over five thousand years, Jan Assmann explores the connections between religion, culture, and memory, in ten brilliant essays. |