The (post)memory working group provides a platform to the scholars of memory studies to engage with the thematic and theoretical interventions in (post)memory studies. It also offers an opportunity to the scholars to embrace the complexity of (post)memory; navigate the intersections of identity; and explore the nuances of belonging in a world marked by division. The group invites the scholars to examine the ways (post)memory reflects the analogical nature of memory in postmodern world that triangulates the dominant forms including prosthetic, polyphonic and transcultural memories by revisiting the reconstruction of violence, identity, and cultural displacement. Focusing on the parenthesized ‘(post)’, the scholars will be able to articulate the transitional phase of the recollection of a memory followed by the poetic and political rationalization of an event from the past. Our aim is to weave these threads of the memory of difference through the (post)memory graduate symposium.  

To understand how (post)memory works, it is important to revisit the function of memory at the individual and collective levels the way it plays a significant role in individual and collective consciousness to build a perception of an event while revisiting it or the ways that recollection of the past responds to one’s consciousness. The (post)memory negotiates with the direct and indirect experiences of past which are overlapped at temporal, cultural and regional spaces of difference while reconstructing the past to the next generation. In order to address this aporia of (post)memory, the following questions can be addressed.

1. What are the forms of (post)memory?
2. What are the thematic concerns of (post)memory?
3. What are the characteristics of prosthetic, polyphonic and transcultural bents to (post)memory studies.
4. How does (post)memory achieve the aesthetics of an event while recollecting its past.

Potential presentations topics might include, but are not limited to:

• Prosthetic memory and role of literature in shaping (post)memory.
• Polyphonic (post)memory and its ways of negotiating plural narratives in anglophone and vernacular literatures.
• Transcultural dimensions of (post)memory in literature of Global South and Global North.
• Totality of identity and belongingness: Transcending violence, trauma and loss
• Theoretical challenges and interventions in (post)memory studies

The symposium will take place online on 15th April 2025. Please submit an abstract of no more than 250 words along with a bio of no more than 100 words to muhammad.nauman@numl.edu.pk by 1st February 2025.