In postmodern fragmentation, the library becomes a contested space for forging historical identity.
Evidence
How can some sense of identity be forged and sustained in such a world? Two spaces assume a peculiar significance in this regard. The library - a repository of historical knowledge and collective memory - is a space into which many are evidently drawn (even angels seem to take their rest there). An old man enters the library. He is to play an extremely important, though ambiguous role. He sees himself as the story-teller, the muse, the potential guardian of collective memory and history, the representative of ‘everyman.’ But he is disturbed at the thought that the tight circle of listeners who used to gather round him has been broken up and dispersed, he knows not where, as readers who do not communicate with each other. Even language, the meanings of words and sentences, he complains, seem to slip and slide into incoherent fragments. — David Harvey, The Condition of Postmodernity, 2006
Categorization
- XREF: The library as guardian of collective memory in an alienated world recalls the archive themes threaded through A Midwife’s Tale and the role of preserved records. — connects to: Libraries remain targeted symbols of cultural power in modern conflicts. — Andrew Pettegree, Arthur der Weduwen, The Library- A Fragile History, 35; Rebuilt libraries become new formations bearing memory rather than restorations — Jamal Awil, The Whispering Archive: The Complete…, 1402; Postmodernism is modernity’s completion, erasing the archaic that modernism still struggled against. — Fredric Jameson, Postmodernism, or, The Cultural Logic…, 675
Broader Connections
- Libraries remain targeted symbols of cultural power in modern conflicts.
#expands(0.80) — Andrew Pettegree, Arthur der Weduwen, The Library- A Fragile History, 35 - Rebuilt libraries become new formations bearing memory rather than restorations
#expands(0.75) — Jamal Awil, The Whispering Archive, 1402 - Postmodernism is modernity’s completion, erasing the archaic that modernism still struggled against.
#qualifies(0.70) — Fredric Jameson, Postmodernism, or, The Cultural Logic…, 675