In the sixth of his “Theses on the Philosophy of History”, Walter Benjamin writes: “To articulate the past historically does not mean to recognize it ‘the way it really was’ (Ranke). It means to seize hold of a memory as it flashes up at a moment of danger.” Suggesting that we all are at such a moment of danger today, I will discuss what role and function literary memory can play or fulfill in an age of right-wing extremism, climate change, authoritarian governments, and social media. In this talk, I will discuss contemporary texts by three different Swedish writers: Lars Norén, En dramatikers dagbok 20052012 (2013); Ulf Lundell, Vardagar 2 (2019); and Åsa Linderborg, Året med tretton månader (2020). In these works, the contemporary world has become threatening, provoking acts of remembrance of what was before. My aim is to understand what their respective “memory work” entails, and what the “danger” that they risk confronting could mean, and whether literature can form into a defense against cumulative moments of danger.
Ulf Olsson is Emeritus Professor of literary studies at Stockholm University and writer of essays as well as literary critic for daily paper Expressen. His research is focused on modern Swedish literature from August Strindberg to Birgitta Trotzig and Lars Norén. He has also published on Western literature in a more general sense, investigating forms of linguistic violence and coercion in writers such as Austen, Melville, Musil, Handke, and others: see his Silence and Subject in Modern Literature: Spoken Violence (New York: Palgrave Macmillan 2013). His book on the American rock group The Grateful Dead, Listening for the Secret: The Grateful Dead and the Politics of Improvisation (Oakland: University of California Press 2017), explores the political significance of the counter-culture formed around the band, with musical improvisation as its center. His latest book is again on Strindberg: Paradoxography: Strindbergs sena verk, 2019. It looks at Strindberg as a “reactive” writer, always responding to exterior stimulus. Discussing The Occult Diary, the Chamber Plays, and A Blue Book, Olsson here also investigates the growing presence of an administrative discourse in Strindberg’s works.