Intersections of cultural memory and human rights. The case of Dave Eggers

Start - End 
2012 - 2016 (ongoing)
Research Focus 
Research Period 
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English literature
Cultural memory
Human rights

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Abstract

Sean Bex's PhD project explores the intersections of cultural memory and human rights through the lens of the oeuvre of the American author Dave Eggers. At the core of this research lies a two-pronged hypothesis. Firstly, that literary representations of traumatic memories in works such as Eggers’s What Is the What (2006) and Zeitoun (2009) can provide historical grounding for abstract human-rights discourses. Secondly, that human-rights discourse can in turn help memories to be articulated within a political and institutional framework. Additionally, Sean examines the ethical problems and questions arising from the literary form of Eggers’s recent works, which are conceived as collaborative testimonies in which a successful white, male, American author and a disadvantaged person of colour join forces in bearing witness to the latter’s traumatic past.

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