Enacting Past and Present: The Memory Theaters of Djuna Barnes, Ingeborg Bachmann, and Marguerite Duras

This far-reaching study of women’s literature sheds new light onto the ways we think about memory, modernism, postmodernism, feminism. In Enacting Past and Present , author Michaela M. Grobbel discusses novels by Djuna Barnes, Ingeborg Bachmann, and Marguerite Duras. According to the author, these works show us that fascinating shifts in “memory texts” have been taking place in the twentieth century, indicating the need for different approaches to understanding memory. Through a discussion of Walter Benjamin, Sigmund Freud, and the work of contemporary scholars in feminism and cultural studies, Grobbel focuses on these texts as types of performance that lead to interesting forms of “re-presenting” memory. These theaters of memory foreground the present but also critically demonstrate the complex relationship of the present to the past. Grobbel offers her readers new ways to think about autobiography, performance, and the process of memory, enriching currrent scholarship on feminism and literary modernism.