Memory studies: For and against

This article examines the opportunities and risks afforded by the consolidation of memory research into the subject area of `memory studies'. Debates about memory culture outside the academy and within academic memory research have hinged on its perceived over-personalization of the political. However, memory research is often informed by a broader ethical turn that understands itself to be transforming politics. The article argues that this split results in part from the over-generalizations produced by the travelling concepts of a transdisciplinary memory studies. It concludes that the politics of memory culture and of memory research might be best analysed and practiced within the disciplines and by means of the research methods from which memory studies borrows.