A Looming Crash or a Soft Landing? Forecasting the Future of the Memory “Industry”*
A Looming Crash or a Soft Landing? Forecasting the Future of the Memory “Industry”*
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内存“行业”的未来是迫在眉睫的崩盘还是软着陆？
DOI：
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发表时间：
2009
期刊：
影响因子：
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通讯作者：
Gavriel D. Rosenfeld
中科院分区：
文献类型：
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作者：
Gavriel D. Rosenfeld
早在20世纪90年代末，当我作为一名新晋博士进入就业市场时，我安排了一次与一家主要大学出版社编辑的午餐会议，推销我的第一本关于战后慕尼黑建筑和纳粹主义记忆的书手稿。听了几分钟后，编辑有点坐立不安，直截了当地问：“你不认为现在对记忆的迷恋已经结束了吗？”我吃了一惊，回答说我认为这门学科才刚刚开始受到重视，还有几年的发展时间，我必须承认，编辑看起来对我的回答不太信服。他接着把我们的谈话转移到另一个轨道上，不久，我们关于记忆研究未来的交流就结束了。对我来说，我继续追求我对这个问题的兴趣，没有第二个想法。我们见面后不久，我出版了我的第一本关于记忆的书，此后又出版了第二本。所有迹象表明，编辑对记忆研究前景的怀疑并没有影响我随后的学术生涯。然而，最近我开始回想我和这位编辑的谈话，重新审视他对记忆研究未来的怀疑。我这样做并不是因为我已经开始怀疑他是对的，现在要为他辩护已经太晚了，而是因为我开始怀疑记忆研究还能在当代学术界保持它作为跨学科学术研究中更有影响力的领域之一的地位多久。众所周知，在过去的二十年里，记忆的主题在人文和社会科学中已经上升到一个非常突出的位置。对记忆的研究如此有影响力
Back in the late 1990s, as I was just entering the job market as a newly minted PhD, I arranged a lunch meeting with the editor of a major university press to pitch my first book manuscript on architecture and the memory of Nazism in postwar Munich. After listening to me for several minutes, the editor, fidgeting somewhat, flatly asked, “Don’t you think the current infatuation with memory has already played itself out?” Taken aback, I replied that I thought the subject was only beginning to come into its own and had years of growth ahead of it. The editor, I must confess, did not look very convinced by my answer. He proceeded to shift our conversation onto a different track, and before long our exchange about the future of memory studies had come to a close. For my part, I continued to pursue my interest in the subject without a second thought. Not too long after our meeting, I published my first book on memory and have since published a second.1 By all indications, the editor’s skepticism about the prospects of memory studies failed to influence the subsequent course of my scholarly career. Of late, however, I have begun to think back on my conversation with the editor and revisit his skeptical thoughts about the future of memory studies. I have done so not because I have developed a sneaking suspicion that he was right—it is much too late for him to be vindicated—but rather because I have begun to wonder how much longer memory studies will be able to maintain its position as one of the more influential fields of interdisciplinary scholarship in contemporary academia. As is well known, the topic of memory has risen to an extremely prominent position within the humanities and social sciences over the course of the last two decades. So influential has the study of memory