Antony Rowland – författare

The Holocaust was the defining cataclysm of modernity. Now, more than three quarters of a century later, the immersive, interactive technologies of the digital age are dramatically refashioning our memory of that genocide. Virtual Holocaust Memory offers the first comprehensive account of a unique historical juncture, as twenty-first century digital culture meets the edge of living Holocaust memory. The book considers a range of projects that are being developed by museums, archives, businesses, and educational organizations in the USA and Europe, including interactive video testimony, Virtual Reality films, Augmented Reality apps, museum installations, and online exhibitions. Drawing on an original conceptual framework that incorporates connective memory, palimpsestic testimony, and a notion of 'truthfulness' first applied to testimonial writing by the survivor Charlotte Delbo, this groundbreaking book argues that the value of virtual Holocaust memory--that is to say its truthfulness--will ultimately come to rest on the connections that it establishes across a complex set of subject positions. These range from 'new bystanders', who encounter Holocaust memory from a position of relative safety, to the traumatized victims whose extreme physical and psychological experiences made communicating so difficult in the first place.

The Holocaust was the defining cataclysm of modernity. Now, more than three quarters of a century later, the immersive, interactive technologies of the digital age are dramatically refashioning our memory of that genocide. Virtual Holocaust Memory offers the first comprehensive account of a unique historical juncture, as twenty-first century digital culture meets the edge of living Holocaust memory. The book considers a range of projects that are being developed by museums, archives, businesses, and educational organizations in the USA and Europe, including interactive video testimony, Virtual Reality films, Augmented Reality apps, museum installations, and online exhibitions. Drawing on an original conceptual framework that incorporates connective memory, palimpsestic testimony, and a notion of 'truthfulness' first applied to testimonial writing by the survivor Charlotte Delbo, this groundbreaking book argues that the value of virtual Holocaust memory--that is to say its truthfulness--will ultimately come to rest on the connections that it establishes across a complex set of subject positions. These range from 'new bystanders', who encounter Holocaust memory from a position of relative safety, to the traumatized victims whose extreme physical and psychological experiences made communicating so difficult in the first place.

Celebrating the twentieth anniversary of the groundbreaking Testimony, this collection brings together the leading academics from a range of scholarly fields to explore the meaning, use, and value of testimony in law and politics, its relationship to other forms of writing like literature and poetry, and its place in society. It visits testimony in relation to a range of critical developments, including the rise of Truth Commissions and the explosion and radical extension of human rights discourse; renewed cultural interest in perpetrators of violence alongside the phenomenal commercial success of victim testimony (in the form of misery memoirs); and the emergence of disciplinary interest in genocide, terror, and other violent atrocities. These issues are necessarily inflected by the question of witnessing violence, pain, and suffering at both the local and global level, across cultures, and in postcolonial contexts. At the volume’s core is an interdisciplinary concern over the current and future nature of witnessing as it plays out through a ‘new’ Europe, post-9/11 US, war-torn Africa, and in countless refugee and detention centers, and as it is worked out by lawyers, journalists, medics, and novelists. The collection draws together an international range of case-studies, including discussion of the former Yugoslavia, Gaza, and Rwanda, and encompasses a cross-disciplinary set of texts, novels, plays, testimonial writing, and hybrid testimonies. The volume situates itself at the cutting-edge of debate and as such brings together the leading thinkers in the field, requiring that each address the future, anticipating and setting the future terms of debate on the importance of testimony.

This book analyzes Holocaust poetry, war poetry, working-class poetry, and 9/11 poetry as forms of testimony. Rowland argues that testamentary poetry requires a different approach to traditional ways of dealing with poems due to the pressure of the metatext (the original, traumatic events), the poems’ demands for the hyper-attentiveness of the reader, and a paradox of identification that often draws the reader towards identifying with the poet’s experience, but then reminds them of its sublimity. He engages with the work of a diverse range of twentieth-century authors and across the literature of several countries, even uncovering new archival material. The study ends with an analysis of the poetry of 9/11, engaging with the idea that it typifies a new era of testimony where global, secondary witnesses react to a proliferation of media images. This book ranges across the literature of several countries, cultures, and historical events in order to stress the large variety of contexts in which poetry has functioned productively as a form of testimony, and to note the importance of the availability of translations to the formation of literary canons.

This book argues that Tony Harrison’s poetry is barbaric. It revisits one of the most misquoted passages of twentieth-century philosophy: Theodor Adorno’s apparent dismissal of post-Holocaust poetry as ‘impossible’ or ‘barbaric’. His statement is reinterpreted as opening up the possibility that the awkward and embarrassing poetics of writers such as Harrison might be re-evaluated as committed responses to the worst horrors of twentieth-century history. Most of the existing critical work on Harrison focuses on his representation of class, which occludes his interest in other aspects of historiography. The poet’s predilection for establishing links between the atrocities perpetrated by the Nazis, the bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, and the prospect of global annihilation is examined as a commitment to oppose the dangers of linguistic silence. Hence Harrison’s work can be read fruitfully within the growing field of Holocaust Studies: his texts enter into arguments about the ethics of representing traumatic incidents that still haunt the contemporary. Harrison’s status as a ‘non-victim’ author of the events is stressed throughout. His writing of the Holocaust, allied bombings and atom bomb is mediated by his reception of the events through newsreels as a child, and his adoption and subversion, as an adult poet, of traditional poetic forms such as the elegy and sonnet. This book also discusses the ways in which Holocaust literature engages with a number of concepts challenged or altered by the historical events, such as love, mourning, memory, humanism, culture and barbarism, articulacy and silence.

This book analyzes Holocaust poetry, war poetry, working-class poetry, and 9/11 poetry as forms of testimony. Rowland argues that testamentary poetry requires a different approach to traditional ways of dealing with poems due to the pressure of the metatext (the original, traumatic events), the poems’ demands for the hyper-attentiveness of the reader, and a paradox of identification that often draws the reader towards identifying with the poet’s experience, but then reminds them of its sublimity. He engages with the work of a diverse range of twentieth-century authors and across the literature of several countries, even uncovering new archival material. The study ends with an analysis of the poetry of 9/11, engaging with the idea that it typifies a new era of testimony where global, secondary witnesses react to a proliferation of media images. This book ranges across the literature of several countries, cultures, and historical events in order to stress the large variety of contexts in which poetry has functioned productively as a form of testimony, and to note the importance of the availability of translations to the formation of literary canons.

This book discusses contemporary British poetry in the context of metamodernism. The author argues that the concept of metamodernist poetry helps to recalibrate the opposition between mainstream and innovative poetry, and he investigates whether a new generation of British poets can be accurately defined as metamodernist. Antony Rowland analyses the ways in which contemporary British poets such as Geoffrey Hill, J. H. Prynne, Geraldine Monk and Sandeep Parmar have responded to the work of modernist writers as diverse as T. S. Eliot, H. D. and Antonin Artaud, and what Theodor Adorno describes as the overall enigma of modern art.

This book discusses contemporary British poetry in the context of metamodernism. The author argues that the concept of metamodernist poetry helps to recalibrate the opposition between mainstream and innovative poetry, and he investigates whether a new generation of British poets can be accurately defined as metamodernist. Antony Rowland analyses the ways in which contemporary British poets such as Geoffrey Hill, J. H. Prynne, Geraldine Monk and Sandeep Parmar have responded to the work of modernist writers as diverse as T. S. Eliot, H. D. and Antonin Artaud, and what Theodor Adorno describes as the overall enigma of modern art.

Celebrating the twentieth anniversary of the groundbreaking Testimony, this collection brings together the leading academics from a range of scholarly fields to explore the meaning, use, and value of testimony in law and politics, its relationship to other forms of writing like literature and poetry, and its place in society. It visits testimony in relation to a range of critical developments, including the rise of Truth Commissions and the explosion and radical extension of human rights discourse; renewed cultural interest in perpetrators of violence alongside the phenomenal commercial success of victim testimony (in the form of misery memoirs); and the emergence of disciplinary interest in genocide, terror, and other violent atrocities. These issues are necessarily inflected by the question of witnessing violence, pain, and suffering at both the local and global level, across cultures, and in postcolonial contexts. At the volume’s core is an interdisciplinary concern over the current and future nature of witnessing as it plays out through a ‘new’ Europe, post-9/11 US, war-torn Africa, and in countless refugee and detention centers, and as it is worked out by lawyers, journalists, medics, and novelists. The collection draws together an international range of case-studies, including discussion of the former Yugoslavia, Gaza, and Rwanda, and encompasses a cross-disciplinary set of texts, novels, plays, testimonial writing, and hybrid testimonies. The volume situates itself at the cutting-edge of debate and as such brings together the leading thinkers in the field, requiring that each address the future, anticipating and setting the future terms of debate on the importance of testimony.

Memory studies has become a rapidly growing area of scholarly as well as public interest. This volume brings together world experts to explore the current critical trends in this new academic field. It embraces work on diverse but interconnected phenomena, such as twenty-first century museums, shocking memorials in present-day Rwanda and the firsthand testimony of the victims of genocidal conflicts. The collection engages with pressing ‘real world’ issues, such as the furor around the recent 9/11 memorial, and what we really mean when we talk about ‘trauma’.

"This is an innovative, well structured and balanced collection of essays which presents a survey of theories and case studies underpinning the burgeoning field of memory studies. It addresses the 'big issues' including witnessing, trauma, memorials, the relation between personal and public memory, and generational transmission." * Peter Carrier, author of HOLOCAUST MONUMENTS AND NATIONAL MEMORY "This is an excellent collection of essays." * Peter Lawson, Open University, London Memory studies has become a rapidly growing area of scholarly as well as public interest. This volume brings together world experts to explore the current critical trends in this new academic field. It embraces work on diverse but interconnected phenomena, such as twenty-first century museums, shocking memorials in present-day Rwanda and the firsthand testimony of the victims of genocidal conflicts. The collection engages with pressing 'real world' issues, such as the furor around the recent 9/11 memorial, and what we really mean when we talk about 'trauma'. Richard Crownshaw is a Lecturer in English at Goldsmiths, University of London.Jane Kilby is a Senior Lecturer in the School of English, Sociology, Politics and Contemporary History at the University of Salford. Antony Rowland is Professor of Literary Studies at the University of Salford.

M is the third collection from Antony Rowland, Professor of Modern and Contemporary Poetry at Manchester Metropolitan University, whose work has been compared with poets as disparate as John Ashbery and Ezra Pound.Jeffrey Wainwright has described his poetry as "significant and powerful", and nowhere is this more apparent than in M, an ode to Manchester in the present moment and to the world it finds itself in, awash with the movement of peoples, cultures, politics and words.