Memory and Identity: Ghosts of the Past in the English-Speaking World

This book examines the ways in which ghosts haunt and shape cultural identities and memory, considering the manner in which the fluctuations of such identities sometimes imply the rethinking or rewriting of the past.

Drawing on case studies in historical, political, literary and linguistic studies, it explores the narratives that produce imagined communities and identities and the places in which cultural identities are constructed through memory, asking how far these identities and memories disinherit or exclude otherness, and how far ghosts disturb orderly narratives, inviting multiple readings of the past. Thematically organized to consider the persistence of ghosts within present memory and identity, the creation of new identities through intertwining narratives of the past, and the reclamation of identities in postcolonial contexts, Memory and Identity: Ghosts of the past in the English-speaking world offers a multi-disciplinary examination of the concept of haunting.

Memory and Identity will appeal to scholars of sociology, anthropology, cultural studies and history with interests in memory and identity.

Linda Pillière is Professor of English Language and Linguistics at Aix-Marseille Université, France. She is the co-editor of Standardising English: Norms and Margins in the History of the English Language and Standardisation and Variation in English Language(s) and author of Intralingual Translation of British Novels: A Multimodal Stylistic Perspective.

Karine Bigand is Senior Lecturer in Irish Studies at Aix-Marseille Université, France. She has recently co-authored Faces and Places. Northern Ireland, 1975-2020.