Enacting Past and Present: The Memory Theaters of Djuna Barnes, Ingeborg Bachmann, and Marguerite Duras

This far-reaching study of three women’s texts sheds new light onto the ways we think about memory, modernism, postmodernism, feminism, practice, and memory. In Enacting Past and Present, author Michaela Grobbel discusses writings by Djuna Barnes, Ingeborg Bachmann, and Marguerite Duras. According to the author, their work shows us that fascinating shifts in memory texts have been taking place in the twentieth century, indicating the need for different approaches to understanding memory. Through a discussion of Walter Benjamin, Sigmund Freud, Mieke Bal, and others, Grobbel focuses on these texts as types of performance that lead to interesting forms of re-presenting memory.