Overview

When we think of getting older, we know we will slowly lose more and more of our memory--and with it, our sense of where we belong and how we connect to others. We might relax a little if we considered the improvements in computer data storage, which may lead us into a future when the limits of our memory become less constricting. In this book, John Scanlan explores the nature of memory and how we have come to live both with and within it, as well as what might come from memory becoming a process as simple as retrieving and reading data. Probing the ways philosophers look at memory, Scanlan reveals that some argue that being human means having the ability to remember, to see oneself as a being in time, with a past and future. At the same time, he shows, our memories can undo our present sense of time and place by presenting us with our past lives. And in a digital age, we are immersed in a vast archive of data that not only colors our everyday experiences, but also supplies us with information on anything we might otherwise have forgotten--breaking down the distinction between the memories of the individual and the collective. Drawing on history, philosophy, and technology, ""Memory"" offers an engaging investigation of how we comprehend recollection and how memory, as a phenomenon, continually remakes everyday life.

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9781861892058

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Reviews

The ways in which memory inheres in all parts of the built environment is expressed clearly and this is an absorbing, sobering and scholarly book. --Leslie Sklair Political Studies Review (05/01/2007)

Bevan wisely doesn''t push his case to the point of strict consistence; his weighting of the role of architecture in war is not absolutely uniform from case to case, nor does it need to be. . . . It is sobering to have so many apparent facts and figures in one book. . . . Where power belongs to the aggressor, the destruction of one family''s home might be taken as the first embodiment of a genocide. In reminding us of this Bevan has performed a valuable service, no matter what we may think about a rebuilt Warsaw or a cherished ruin. . . . If we accept that there is no architecturally embodied identity of a nation or people, that our current historical existence is not vitally wrapped up in relics of an imagined past except as nostalgia, then we are unlikely to worry about the occasionally destruction of buildings. Bevan''s book makes clear that such insouciance (and nostalgia) is the privilege of the secure and well-defended nation-states where the continuity of home and shelter is assumed. --London Review of Books -- Timothy Brittain-Catlin Architectural Review (06/01/2006)

Bevan wisely doesn't push his case to the point of strict consistence; his weighting of the role of architecture in war is not absolutely uniform from case to case, nor does it need to be. . . . It is sobering to have so many apparent facts and figures in one book. . . . Where power belongs to the aggressor, the destruction of one family's home might be taken as the first embodiment of a genocide. In reminding us of this Bevan has performed a valuable service, no matter what we may think about a rebuilt Warsaw or a cherished ruin. . . . If we accept that there is no architecturally embodied identity of a nation or people, that our current historical existence is not vitally wrapped up in relics of an imagined past except as nostalgia, then we are unlikely to worry about the occasionally destruction of buildings. Bevan's book makes clear that such insouciance (and nostalgia) is the privilege of the secure and well-defended nation-states where the continuity of home and shelter is assumed. -- London Review of Books --Timothy Brittain-Catlin Architectural Review (06/01/2006)

The sheer volume and scope of the material Bevan has gathered on the destruction of architectural heritage as a form of 'cultural cleansing' makes The Destruction of Memorya valuable resource. . . . The mass of absolutely fascinating, morally complex, and, to me at least, often unfamiliar material . . . makes Bevan well worth reading. . . . And yet the book is worth reading, because Bevan uses vivid narrative detail to bring ot our attention the important insight that 'the destruction of the cultural artifacts of an enemy people or nation' can be a kind of analog to genocide or ethnic cleansing. --Diana Muir History News Network (05/14/2007)

Author Information

Robert Bevan is a journalist, author and heritage-led regeneration consultant. He is an architecture critic for national newspapers in the UK and writes for publications internationally.

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