Memory, Cognition and Modernism in Virginia Woolf
A guest lecture by Dr. Avishek Parui
On Saturday, the 9th of October, The English Literary Association at LSR organised a session on “Memory, Cognition, and Modernism in Virginia Woolf”, that was conducted by Dr. Avishek Parui, from the Centre for Memory Studies at IIT Madras.
Dr. Parui sought to explore theories in memory and cognition studies by mapping them onto the Modernist works of Woolf, particularly her novel Mrs. Dalloway. He began by stating that the primary challenge in these fields was to find an interface between the inherently incongruous micro (individual) and macro (collective) levels of memory and cognition, and then discussed Mrs. Dalloway as foregrounding the incompatibility of the micro and macro levels of memory by portraying Septimus Warren Smith as a character unable to move beyond the spectral memory of war in a London that collectively sought to forget it. He further discussed the novel as a critique of masculinist as well as imperialist politics. Another interesting theme that Dr. Parui explored was the location of Woolf’s modernist works in the context of the technology of cinema and the visual discourse that it offered. The visual graphs of the interiority of the individual mind, as well as the the vast spectacle of London intersect with each other in the novel to disrupt notions of spacial and temporal linearity.
Dr. Parui also used the frameworks of spectrality and hauntology to discuss modernist works in general. The lecture also drew attention to the gendered discourses of medical politics in early twentieth century England, manifest in the novel, as class politics as well.
Dr. Parui sought to explore theories in memory and cognition studies by mapping them onto the Modernist works of Woolf, particularly her novel Mrs. Dalloway. He began by stating that the primary challenge in these fields was to find an interface between the inherently incongruous micro (individual) and macro (collective) levels of memory and cognition, and then discussed Mrs. Dalloway as foregrounding the incompatibility of the micro and macro levels of memory by portraying Septimus Warren Smith as a character unable to move beyond the spectral memory of war in a London that collectively sought to forget it. He further discussed the novel as a critique of masculinist as well as imperialist politics. Another interesting theme that Dr. Parui explored was the location of Woolf’s modernist works in the context of the technology of cinema and the visual discourse that it offered. The visual graphs of the interiority of the individual mind, as well as the the vast spectacle of London intersect with each other in the novel to disrupt notions of spacial and temporal linearity.
Dr. Parui also used the frameworks of spectrality and hauntology to discuss modernist works in general. The lecture also drew attention to the gendered discourses of medical politics in early twentieth century England, manifest in the novel, as class politics as well.
Written by Meher Nandrajog