In the trap of Beatrice: On Florence Conard’s war memories and disciplinary turns

Abstract

This article examines the relationship between the family archive and Memory Studies. It analyzes the archive of a young woman, Florence Elizabeth Conard, whose writings of the Spanish Civil War (1936–1939) are archived in the Kautz FamilyYMCA Archive in Minneapolis, Minnesota. Her story is narrated and edited by her father affirming her existence as a literary witness. We, the authors, use Borges’ reading of The Divine Comedy as a productive analogy to approach memory through the lens of literature, opening a path for further interrogation of narrative and moving from that which is narrated to that which is narratable and redactable. It illustrates how the mnemonic practices of memory reside in their narratability. Just the same, the academic field of Memory Studies grappling with these practices is not a fashionable product of the twentieth-century traumas, but has existed as a practice before the archive, which gives it a space.