For the most part, critical discourse has embraced the transcultural turn, which places emphasis on the significance of transcultural experience, its dynamism, fluidity, and awareness of the other. A similar interest has been expressed within memory studies, where transcultural memory is conceived not as “site-bound” or “nation-bound” but as “travelling,” “moving across and beyond territorial and social borders” (Erll 2011, 15, 10). In light of these theoretical views that highlight the potential effects of de-territorialized, mobile, multidimensional memory, this presentation draws attention to the fundamental role “just memory” plays in the development of transcultural memory and the formation of transcultural identity. Drawing on Viet Thanh Nguyen’s definition of “just memory” as “memory work that recalls both one’s own as well as others” (Nguyen 2013, 144), I examine his nonfiction writings in combination with his Pulitzer Prize winning novel, The Sympathizer (2015). These texts, I propose, cultivate an ethics of remembrance that recalls “the past in a way that does justice to the forgotten, the excluded, the oppressed, the dead, the ghosts” (150), and makes the case for the need to develop “just memory” as the foundation of a truly transcultural self. 

Works Cited

Erll, Astrid. 2011. “Travelling Memory.” Parallax 17 (4): 4-18.

Nguyen, Viet Thanh. “War and the Ethics of Remembrance.”  American Literary History Vol. 25, No.1 (2013): 144-163.

Theodora Tsimpouki is Professor of American Literature and Culture at the Department of English Language and Literature, National and Kapodistrian University of Athens, Greece.  For her graduate and postgraduate studies, she was funded by the Board of Greek State Scholarships Foundation (I.K.Y) and the Fulbright Foundation, respectively. She specializes in American realism, modernism and contemporary literature, the 1960s, theories of space and contemporary literary theory. She has co-edited a number of edited volumes, the most recent of which are American Studies after Postmodernism (Palgrave/Macmillan, 2023) and The War on the Human: New Responses to an Ever-Present Debate (2017). Her research interests are in American Literature, Postmodern Fiction, urban literature and Transculturalism. Her articles have also appeared as scholarly volumes and journals. She is also one of the chief editors of Ex-Centric Narratives: Journal of Literature, Culture, and Media. She was the Book Reviews editor of the European Journal of American Studies from 2001 to 2021. She is currently president of the Hellenic Association for American Studies (HELAAS).