ABSTRACT

This article affords particular attention to the relationship between memory, the narrativization of news and its linear construction, conceived as journalism’s ‘memory-work’. In elaborating upon this ‘work’, it is proposed that the Hegelian notion of retroactive causation (as used by Slavoj Žižek) can examine how analyses of news journalists ‘retroactively’ employ the past in the temporal construction of news. In fact, such retroactive (re)ordering directs attention to the ways in which journalists contingently select ‘a past’ to confer meaning on the present. With regard to current literature, it is noted that a retroactive analysis can highlight two important dialectics within the practice of news journalism: (1) the relation between contingency and necessity; and, (2) the relation between content and form. Indeed, it is argued that this theoretical account offers a novel approach to examining the significance of memory in news journalism as well as the inconsistencies which underscore journalism’s memory-work. It is in accordance with such inconsistency that broader reflections on time, temporality and our relations to the past can be made.

摘要

本文特别关注记忆，新闻叙事及其线性结构之间的关系，这些关系被认为是新闻业的“记忆工作”。在阐述这项“工作”时，建议使用黑格尔的追溯因果关系概念（由SlavojŽižek使用）可以检验对新闻记者的分析如何在新闻的时间结构中“追溯地”利用过去。实际上，这种追溯（重新）排序将注意力集中在记者不断选择“过去”以赋予当下意义的方式上。关于当前文献，应该指出的是，追溯分析可以突出新闻新闻实践中的两个重要的辩证法：（1）偶然性与必要性之间的关系；（2）内容与形式之间的关系。的确，有人认为，这种理论解释提供了一种新颖的方法来检验新闻新闻中记忆的重要性以及强调新闻业记忆工作的矛盾之处。正是由于这种矛盾，才可以对时间，时间性和我们与过去的关系进行更广泛的反思。