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Overview
Based on ten years of research, The Touch of the Past considers how historically traumatic events uniquely summon forgetting and remembrance. Within a specific focus on events of systemic mass violence, Roger Simon examines how testimonies of historic events influence learning as communities struggle with "difficult histories." The Touch of the Past is a serious and compelling contribution to research in education, historical consciousness, and memory/trauma studies.
Synopsis
Simon (culture, communications and critical education, U. of Toronto) takes an interdisciplinary approach as he examines the social practice of remembrance, and how both remembrance and forgetfulness figure in traumatic events. In this collection of eight essays he examines the relationship between civic life and the pedagogical promise of historical memory in the Columbus Quincentenary, the call to witness in Chagall's White Crucifixion, witnessing testimonies in historical trauma, living in the transactional sphere, remembrance as praxis and the ethics of the interhuman, and the audiovisual element of Holocaust survivor video testimony. Annotation ©2005 Book News, Inc., Portland, OR
Editorials
From the Publisher
"Roger Simon's pioneering work is distinguished by profound attention to ethical relations of learning, deep theoretical knowledge, and a demanding theoretical exposition. . . . [The Touch of the Past] is a major contribution to the cultural studies of pedagogy and ethics . . . [it is a] text of great distinction . . . rigorous in its scholarly commitment and profound in its topic." --Deborah P. Britzman, Professor of Education, York University, and author of After-Education: Anna Freud, Melanie Klein and Psychoanalytic Histories of Learning.