Amnesia and the Nation - History, Forgetting, and James Joyce

This book examines the relationships between memory, history, and national identity through an interdisciplinary analysis of James Joyce's works-as well as of literary texts by Kundera, Ford, Fitzgerald, and Walker Percy.  Drawing on thinkers such as Nietzsche, Marx, Freud, Luria, Anderson, and Yerushalmi, this study explores the burden of the past and the 'nightmare of history' in Ireland and in the American South-from the Battle of the Boyne to the Good Friday Agreement, from the Civil War to the 2015 Mother Emanuel killings.
 

Vincent J. Cheng is Shirley Sutton Thomas Professor of English at the University of Utah, USA.  He is the author of many scholarly articles and books, including Inauthentic: The Anxiety Over Culture and Identity; Joyce, Race, and Empire; and Shakespeare and Joyce.  His work addresses the intersections of postcolonial studies, race studies, twentieth-century literature, and contemporary culture.