Axis of Exploration

First Axis: Memory and Forgetfulness

This theme emerges from the paradoxical observation that we live in an era, which both cultivates memory and is marked by cultural amnesia (cf. A. Huyssen). On one hand, the institutionalization of memory imposes a plethora of commemorations, of commemorative monuments, of a great many new museums, of nationally organized "lieux de mémoire" etc. On the other hand, we hear the complaint of a forgetfulness emerging in contemporary cultural practices: artists and cultural producers are manipulating "dead materials", effacing their historical content and privileging a de-historicization of culture and society (F. Jameson). A similar complaint has already been formulated by Hegel, in his Vorlesungen über die Ästhetik, regarding the crisis of romantic art. It would have to be re-examined today in light of the question of transfers.

To counterbalance the saturation of memory (Robin), our research shall proceed on the hypothesis of necessary forgetfulness, particularly in the case of endogenous transfers occurring across temporal distance. This hypothesis has already been tested in work on the resurgence of the baroque. The dynamic nature of cultural transfer carries the risk of memory fragmentation, and therefore of a partial forgetfulness, which can be localized at the process's point of initiation, at the moment when the material is selected. To select is to de-contextualize by tearing an object away from its place of belonging and thus severing its links to history and memory. At the moment of its re-insertion at the point of arrival, the re-contextualized material acquires a new value, forges different links, becomes the object of a new contextual reactivation, which can bring about a renewal of memory. Gaps in the transmission of memory lend hold to the weaving of new memorial traces. It turns out, culturally speaking, that memory and forgetfulness are not opposite terms, but rather two sides of the same process, for the law of forgetfulness states that a material's potential for reactivation is proportional to the degree of forgetting it has undergone. It is with this understanding of re-insertion that we respond to the accusations of de-historicization, for with it, we demonstrate that history is not merely a content, which is preserved, but also a permanent process of reactivation played out in the present.

Three important considerations shall guide us on this axis. Firstly, in the cultural domain-contrary to industrial recycling, which seeks to reduce objects, below their cultural identity, to raw materials-memorial traces of the object are never entirely lost. The material resists and remains recognizable, allowing for a fundamental cultural anagnoresis. Secondly, transfer always involves issues of politics and conflict, which must be considered: who erases the memory of whom? What memorial traces prevail? Who appropriates the memory of another? What forces effect the fragmentation and re-totalization of memory? Finally, considerable reflection shall be given to the paradox of organized forgetfulness, to the theoretical impossibility and the practical necessity of an ars oblivionalis (U. Eco). No system can survive without a function of forgetfulness-as Luhmann demonstrated on the subject of the media-, no subject can bear the burden of a totalizing memory. The question is to discover how systems and subjects handle the Janus of memory and forgetfulness.

It is important here that we draw a distinction between memory and archive. Memory is a process; the archive is a device-topical, material, technical. Therefore, a mnemonic appropriation by means of a technical device is an archiving rather than a memorization. This deactivation of the object pertains, in fact, to the face of memory that is forgetfulness and the new electronic stocking technologies remind us of the warning against writing in Plato's Phedra .

This theme, we might add, is very timely for Canada, a country founded on immigration and which privileges the socio-cultural model of the "mosaic" (the preservation of original cultural memories and their dynamic interaction) over that of the "melting pot" (the effacement of original memory). The work carried out in Canada on the abundant corpus of migrant literature and culture opens doors for collaborations with Canadian Studies. The Chair shall continue to collaborate with the Canadian Center for German and European Studies (York University and the University of Montréal), where the Chair holder is currently directing a team of researchers working on "Memory and media in modern Germany."

Second Axis: Identity, Difference and Alterity

If we continue to re-think the political dimension of memory-and-forgetfulness, especially if we keep in mind the fragmented mind's desire for re-totalization (J. Theodoro), we might end up in a war of memories, which would certainly bring us back to the complicated question of identities. The truth is that transfer is a cause of contamination and hybridization. By definition, it wounds and undoes identities by introducing the seed of difference and alterity. In return, however, identities are nourished by the contributions of transfer, to the point where their very constitution depends on them. This is why the issues of identity and alterity are central to the Chair's research.

Our conceptual grid shall be refined by certain distinctions: between the individual and the collective domains, between identification (a process) and identity (a result). But mostly between the pre-given identity, conceived in an essentialist way (ethnicity, race, lineage, etc.), and the identity in construction. Diverse strategies of identity construction shall be analyzed. We shall distinguish between ontological and relational strategies with privilege given to the latter, as identity cannot be defined without reference to a concomitant alterity, which can be of a radical, "opaque" type (Glissant), or which can be caught in a relation of specular difference in accordance with the Hegelian logic of negative determination.

Particular attention shall be paid to the traffic and transfer of virtual identities via digital support systems as well as to their manipulation and marketing.

In North America, an ethical dimension has recently come to the forefront of this debate: alterity has become the territory of cultural sovereignty. From this perspective, cultural transfer becomes a blameworthy practice. We shall examine how such a value system has been able to develop and become dogma in certain milieus. Transfer shall have to be disassociated from any and all peremptory judgments in order to explore its constitutive function in the construction of cultural identities. This work shall draw support from the Chair holder's critical analysis of the recent Canadian debate on cultural appropriation. The Latin American baroque is another interesting case. The result of a historical transfer, this cultural paradigm has contributed, in the twentieth century, to the construction of an American cultural identity. Alterity has thus staked off a territory, in which an American cultural identity-an "americanidad" - has planted its flag. This example shall help us explore the very timely question of the "Americanness" of the diverse cultures occupying America's geographical space. In so doing, the Chair shall have the opportunity to interact with the various research efforts currently being carried out at the University of Ottawa.

Third Axis: Materiality and De-materialization of Culture

In the theoretical section, the matter of the quid was somewhat left in the air: What is being transferred? The answer thus far has remained vague: cultural material. In this axis we intend to be more specific. The term "material" carries, first of all, an anti-idealistic connotation: this research program acknowledges the material basis and reality of culture. Secondly, in order to further refine our terms, we have chosen the French "matériau" (pl. matériaux) to denote the cultural material or materials being transferred. The term differs both from the English "material" and the French "matériel", both of which refer to a pre-cultural materiality, a raw material. "Matériau" refers, rather, to a cultural pre-construct, the vehicle of a recognizable identity, a part of a signifying materiality. Any idea, theme, structure to be transferred-M. Perniola speaks of "the things of thinking"-cannot exist without an intrinsic tie to a material support, a medium, a technical device.

However, it is the very materiality of culture, which is undergoing radical mutation in our time. Of course the text, for example (the same applies, mutatis mutandis, to the image), has always been transferable from one medium to another, remaining all the while-at least for practical purposes-the same semiotic object: engraved in stone, performed out loud, written by hand, typed, printed. As soon as it is transferred to, and transmitted by a modern medium (telephone, radio, film, video, computer), it undergoes a strange alternation between instants of materialization and de-materialization, of interface with the human body (aïsthesis) and existence in the machine. In the machine : a maximally de-materialized electron flux-des "immatériaux" (J.F. Lyotard). On the screen: a material reality, which engages the body, often with particular intensity (think of the hallucinatory power of the film image). On top of this we have the machinery, material in its very designation "hardware", which operates this de- and re-materialization. To be examined are these transfers within our culture, which is at once very material, if not materialistic, and in a process of de-materialization.

Fourth Axis: The Ontology of the Artifact

We use the term "artifact", rather than "work of art" in order to designate a vaster field than that of art alone, which, in the West, is the more restricted cultural domain. On this theme, we shall proceed on the hypothesis that we function in a culture, which is ontologically variable and unstable. We might conceive this instability in terms of a polarity between "representation" and "simulacrum". To be explored, then, are the transfers occurring between these two poles. The artifact-as-representation refers back to a pre-given reality, in relation to which the artifact is a secondary, ontologically weaker presence. The real, as origin or model, permits us to evaluate the quality and fidelity of the representation. The simulacrum, however, implodes the ontological difference fundamental to representation and introduces a regime functioning on a single ontological level: the real is reduced to the simulacrum. The simulacrum is the real, even if it generates the illusion of a bipolar system (cf. Baudrillard). Within this space play out the dynamics of diverse cultural practices conceived in different terms: simulation, second-degree artifice, the virtual and the hyper-real. They are similar, in that they all contribute-in one way or another-to the current crisis of representation, a crisis to be addressed and explored in this axis. Because both the new media and new communication technologies exacerbate the perception of these transformations, this exploration shall be carried out in collaboration with specialists in these areas.

We shall pursue the notion that a historical transfer accompanies these transfers between ontological regimes. The baroque esthetic had already exploited similar ontological instabilities, and in quite radical a way, we might add. To analyze our contemporary situation, we shall proceed on the hypothesis that only now, in our digital era, might the "potential of the baroque" be fully realized. To this end, we shall examine, among other things, certain popular films which, in the nineties, both questioned and exploited these ontological instabilities: The Truman Show, The Matrix, Existenz . In so doing, we shall continue our collaboration with Timothy Murray of Cornell University, with whom we share this hypothesis.