Deja Vu: Aberrations Of Cultural Memory (Electronic Mediations) [Paperback]

Peter Krapp (Author)

Book Description

Series: Electronic Mediations | Publication Date: May 5, 2004

Referring to a past that never was, déjà vu shares a structure not only with fiction, but also with the ever more sophisticated effects of media technology. Tracing the term from the end of the nineteenth century, when it was first popularized in the pages of the Revue philosophique, Peter Krapp examines the genealogy and history of the singular and unrepeatable experience of déjà vu. This provocative book offers a refreshing counterpoint to the clichéd celebrations of cultural memory and forces us do a double take on the sanctimonious warnings against forgetting so common in our time.

Disturbances of cultural memory—screen memories, false recognitions, premonitions—disrupt the comfort zone of memorial culture: strictly speaking, déjà vu is neither a failure of memory nor a form of forgetting. Krapp’s analysis of such disturbances in literature, art, and mass media introduces, historicizes, and theorizes what it means to speak of an economy of attention or distraction. Reaching from the early psychoanalytic texts of Sigmund Freud to the plays of Heiner Müller, this exploration of the effects of déjà vu pivots around the work of Walter Benjamin and includes readings of kitsch and aura in Andy Warhol’s work, of cinematic violence and certain exaggerated claims about shooting and cutting, of the memorial character of architecture, and of the high expectations raised by the Internet.

--This text refers to the Hardcover edition.

Editorial Reviews

About the Author

Peter Krapp, lecturer in the Department of Cultural Studies and Comparative Literature at the University of Minnesota, coedited "Medium Cool," a special issue of the South Atlantic Quarterly on contemporary media theory. He has published in the fields of German studies, media studies, and literary theory and, since 1995, has acted as editor of the Hydra Web site for theories of literature and media. --This text refers to the Hardcover edition.

Product Details

• Paperback: 296 pages
• Publisher: Univ Of Minnesota Press; 1 edition (May 5, 2004)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0816643350
• ISBN-13: 978-0816643356
• Product Dimensions: 8.8 x 5.8 x 0.6 inches
• Shipping Weight: 12 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 5.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (1 customer review)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #1,478,962 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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5.0 out of 5 stars a few reviews, January 13, 2011

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This review is from: Deja Vu: Aberrations Of Cultural Memory (Electronic Mediations) (Hardcover)

"Déjà Vu displays a rare conceptual strength and the ability to read both canonical and more obscure documents in a unique and forceful fashion."
- Jean-Michel Rabaté, University of Pennsylvania

"An original and learned study that brings together a broad range of themes and authors under this seemingly unremarkable experience."
- Gregory Ulmer, University of Florida

"Bold and highly provocative. Compelling and refreshing."
- Afterimage

"No less ambitious than an Arcades Project looking at the cultural history of the twentieth century: an ambition that constitutes this book's greatest achievement."
- Colloquy

"A truly interdisciplinary project, revealing how the study of mediality - when complemented with aesthetic theory, cultural history, literature, and psychoanalysis - can critically construct a past that is yet to come."
- Cultural Critique

"One comes out of the other side of the book witha productively destabilized understanding of déjà vu."
- Janus Head