Andreas Huyssen and the Genres of Historical Memory Joshua Synenko History, so far as it serves life, serves an unhistorical power. (Nietzsche) Memory fatigue has set in. (Huyssen) 1. Twilight’s Discipline The study of memory has only recently matured into a definable academic field. Its widening sphere of influence has led to a number of self-critical reflections, investigating the contributions of memory-related topics within literary and cultural studies over a period of twenty years. Claiming to have a privilege over interpreting present-day concerns, the establishment of memory studies as a transdisciplinary phenomenon has also led to systematic and often aggressive campaigns to canonize its literature. Susannah Radstone for one has questioned this approach in a recent diagnosis of the rhetoric of transdisciplinarity in memory research. Following similar concerns voiced over the years, she argues that “without careful disciplinary embedding and testing,” the concepts developed under the umbrella of memory “may appear to explain more than they actually can” (Radstone, “Memory Studies: For and Against” 35). To illustrate her point, Radstone uses the example of so- called “traumaculture,” in which pervasive melancholia toward a diminished public sphere becomes fodder for an emphatic discourse that has very little to do with “trauma” at all (“Memory Studies: For and Against” 36). Holo- caust testimony, on the other hand, and the forging of therapeutic practices in the clinical sphere do have such a claim on the field. Though traumaculture is merely one in a series of traveling concepts linked to memory studies, Radstone is optimistic about finding ways to engage the topics of memory research that move beyond this rhetorical gesture, particularly in her own discipline of film and media studies. She finds that “memory research might currently be most productively practiced within the disciplines,” serving as a marker for the coherence of its many related themes (Radstone, “Memory Studies: For and Against” 35).