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Collective Memory (collective + memory)
Selected AbstractsCollective Memory and Narrative: A Response to EtkindCONSTELLATIONS: AN INTERNATIONAL JOURNAL OF CRITICAL AND DEMOCRATIC THEORY, Issue 1 2009Eli Zaretsky First page of article [source] Past Times: Temporal Structuring of History and MemoryETHOS, Issue 2 2006Kevin Birth In On Collective Memory, Maurice Halbwachs asks, "Why does society establish landmarks in time that are placed close together,and usually in a very irregular manner, since for certain periods they are almost entirely lacking,whereas around such salient events sometimes many other equally salient events seem to gather, just as street signs and other signposts multiply as a tourist attraction approaches?" (1992:175). The recognition of the "irregular manner" of history and memory only emerges in contrast to a concept of the regularity of time implied by objectifying chronologies. Furthermore, such irregularity suggests that concepts of time other than chronology are crucial for understanding representations of the past, and experiences of the past in the present. This article draws on nondirected interviews conducted in rural Trinidad in which subjects discussed significant events in their lives. In examining this material, I address Halbwachs's question by emphasizing nonchronological, cultural models of time that organize autobiographical narratives. These cultural models position autobiographical narratives in space and connect them to events of historical significance. [time, memory, intersubjectivity, labor, Trinidad] [source] The (Cuban) Voice of the (Curaçaoan) People: The Making (And Taking) of a Collective MemoryJOURNAL OF HISTORICAL SOCIOLOGY, Issue 3 2009NANETTE DE JONG At the turn of the 20th century, Afro-Curaçaoans developed an affinity for Cuban culture that influenced the manner to which they came to define their own collective memory. Cuba was raised to mythological status, appropriated and adapted to fit Curaçaoan daily life, enabling a new and inventive sense of belonging. This essay speaks to the intricacies involved in memory-making, with the Cuban-inspired memory of memories on Curaçao introduced as a relative category. It points to the variegated and tenuous nature of memory, showing how the past, when negotiated with the present, can shape group goals and demarcate membership. [source] A Matter of Time: Examining Collective Memory in Historical Perspective in Postwar BerlinJOURNAL OF HISTORICAL SOCIOLOGY, Issue 1-2 2005JENNIFER A. JORDAN Clearly the content of memorial culture changes over time. So, however, do the political and bureaucratic channels through which memorial landscapes themselves are created, and thus the avenues through which states (in this case the Federal Republic of Germany and the German Democratic Republic) construct landscapes of official collective memory. Such an analysis reveals not only the changes and continuities in the form and content of official representations, but also the changing relationship between a state, its people, and the collection of officially approved objects in the urban landscape designed to convey representations of a city's and a country's past. Looking closely at these intersections also makes clear that the landscape of official memorials must not be identical with collective memory understood more broadly. [source] On Thanksgiving and Collective Memory: Constructing the American TraditionJOURNAL OF HISTORICAL SOCIOLOGY, Issue 3 2002Amy Adamczyk Relying on the approach by Maurice Halbwachs who argued that collective memory is based on contemporary interests and concerns, this article shows how Thanksgiving has changed over time in accordance with the ideas of the day. Aspects of the analysis support Barry Schwartz's theory that commemoration reflects the historical past. Similar to the pilgrims' celebration, many people commemorate Thanksgiving by, for example, feasting and praying. But in contrast to Schwartz's thought, this paper also shows that there are other elements of traditions that have minimal connection with the original event. Forms of commemoration like the Macy's Day Parade challenge the idea that commemoration and celebration contain some connection to the initial occasion. In general, the findings lend support to historical research and theories that implement social constructionist approaches. [source] Ambiguity and Remembrance: Individual and Collective Memory in FinlandAMERICAN ETHNOLOGIST, Issue 3 2000Karen Armstrong In this article, I explore the complicated relationship between individual experience and national events, the way this relationship is narrated, and how individual memory becomes part of a collective memory. By looking at memoirs written by the descendants of Thomas Rantalainen, and focusing on personal correspondence, I show how the contents of letters written 60 years ago relate to events in Finland's history that are still being discussed today. In the narrative practices of the correspondence, the individuals themselves ,through the use of a narrative We,mmerge their personal experiences with those of the community. Two themes in the letters,war and family life,illustrate how the processes of replication and analogical thinking work in bringing the past into the present. [Finland, history and analogical thinking, personal correspondence, domestic life] [source] Philosophy After Hiroshima: From Power Politics to the Ethics of Nonviolence and Co-ResponsibilityAMERICAN JOURNAL OF ECONOMICS AND SOCIOLOGY, Issue 1 2009Article first published online: 18 FEB 200, Edward Demenchonok Philosophers from many different countries came to Hiroshima, Japan, in the summer of 2007 to discuss the problems of war and peace on the occasion of the Seventh World Congress of the International Society for Universal Dialogue (ISUD). The theme was After Hiroshima: Collective Memory, Philosophical Reflection and World Peace. The essays included in this volume were originally presented at that conference and reflect some of the aspects of these discussions. In the first three parts of this introductory essay, I will address ideas conveyed by discussions during the Hiroshima conference regarding an open history, as well as various aspects of violence-prone globalization and its challenges to ethics and to peace. Then, within this context, the fourth part of this introduction will provide a brief review of some of the main themes arising out of the conference and elaborated in the essays of the volume. [source] Anniversary Journalism, Collective Memory, and the Cultural Authority to Tell the Story of the American PastTHE JOURNAL OF POPULAR CULTURE, Issue 1 2002Carolyn KitchArticle first published online: 11 APR 200 First page of article [source] Education and the Dangerous Memories of Historical Trauma: Narratives of Pain, Narratives of HopeCURRICULUM INQUIRY, Issue 2 2008MICHALINOS ZEMBYLAS ABSTRACT The purpose of this article is to explore the meanings and implications of dangerous memories in two different sites of past traumatic memories: one in Israel and the other in Cyprus. Dangerous memories are defined as those memories that are disruptive to the status quo, that is, the hegemonic culture of strengthening and perpetuating existing group-based identities. Our effort is to outline some insights from this endeavor,insights that may help educators recognize the potential of dangerous memories to ease pain and offer hope. First, a discussion on memory, history and identity sets the ground for discussing the meaning and significance of dangerous memories in the history curriculum. Next, we narrate two stories from our longitudinal ethnographic studies on trauma and memory in Israel and Cyprus; these stories are interpreted through the lens of dangerous memories and their workings in relation to the hegemonic powers that aim to sustain collective memories. The two different stories suggest that collective memories of historical trauma are not simply "transmitted" in any simple way down the generations,although there are powerful workings that support this transmission. Rather, there seems to be much ambivalence in the workings of memories that under some circumstances may create openings for new identities. The final section discusses the possibilities of developing a pedagogy of dangerous memories by highlighting educational implications that focus on the notion of creating new solidarities without forgetting past traumas. This last section employs dangerous memories as a critical category for pedagogy in the context of our general concern about the implications of memory, history and identity in educational contexts. [source] Life Stories, War, and Veterans: On the Social Distribution of MemoriesETHOS, Issue 1 2004Edna Lomsky-Feder On the basis of examining life stories narrated by 63 Israeli male veterans of the 1973 Yom Kippur War, this article delves into the social construction of personal memory. Focusing on the remembering subject will allow us to study this process by highlighting the agent who creates his or her world, but at the same time it will disclose how society frames and channels the agent's choices. My contention is that personal memory (traumatic or normalizing, conforming or critical) is embedded within, designed by, and derives its meaning from, a memory field that offers different interpretations of war. Yet this memory field is not an open space, and the remembering subject is not free to choose any interpretation he wishes. Cultural criteria "distribute" accessibility to different collective memories according to social entitlement. These "distributive criteria" dictate who is entitled to remember and what is to be remembered, thereby controlling the extent of trauma and criticism of personal memory. [source] ,I Saw a Nightmare . . .': Violence and the Construction of Memory (Soweto, June 16, 1976)HISTORY AND THEORY, Issue 4 2000Helena Pohlandt-McCormick The protests on June 16, 1976 of black schoolchildren in Soweto against the imposition of Afrikaans as a medium of instruction in their schools precipitated one of the most pro-found challenges to the South African apartheid state. These events were experienced in a context of violent social and political conflict. They were almost immediately drawn into a discourse that discredited and silenced them, manipulating meaning for ideological and political reasons with little regard for how language and its absence,silences,further violated those who had experienced the events. Violence, in its physical and discursive shape, forged individual memories that remain torn with pain, anger, distrust, and open questions; collective memories that left few spaces for ambiguity; and official or public histories tarnished by their political agendas or the very structures,and sources,that produced them. Based on oral histories and historical documents, this article discusses the collusion of violence and silence and its consequences. It argues that,while the collusion between violence and silence might appear to disrupt or, worse, destroy the ability of individuals to think historically,the individual historical actor can and does have the will to contest and engage with collective memory and official history. [source] Keeping the Peace: A Tale of Murder and Morality in Postapartheid South AfricaPOLAR: POLITICAL AND LEGAL ANTHROPOLOGY REVIEW, Issue 2 2008Michal Ran-Rubin This article examines a South African murder trial known as the Reeds Murders as a site for analyzing discourses of crime, race, and citizenship within the context of postapartheid South Africa. I show how concerns over public morality are represented within the juridical field, as well as how the defendants in this case deploy collective memories of state violence to challenge the court's vision of postapartheid justice. I conclude by exploring both how public fears of African youth emerge in the sentencing of the accused, and also how those fears map onto the contours of a postapartheid moral geography. [source] Front and Back Covers, Volume 23, Number 4.ANTHROPOLOGY TODAY, Issue 4 2007August 200 Front and back cover caption, volume 23 issue 4 COMMEMORATING THE ,POLISH POPE' The cover of this issue illustrates Ewa Klekot's article about how Pope John Paul II (Karol Jósef Wojtyla, 1920,2005) was popularly commemorated in Poland during the ,Week of Vigil', 1,8 April 2005. One of the longest-serving pontiffs of modern times, and the only non-Italian to have been elected since the Dutch Adrian VI in the 1520s, Pope John Paul II died on 2 April and was buried on 8 April in the grottoes under St Peter's Basilica in Rome, the Tomb of the Popes. During this week unprecedented expressions of grief and mourning were displayed in Polish cities. Whole streets and squares were converted into temporary shrines, decorated with burning candles, flowers, papal portraits, letters to the departed Pope and both papal and Polish flags. The front cover shows a mother and daughter paying homage by lighting and placing candles along John Paul II Avenue, one of the biggest streets in central west Warsaw. The back cover shows a spontaneous memorial in the form of a large cross in Pilsudski Square, Warsaw, where John Paul II had celebrated mass during his first visit to Poland in 1979, the year after he was elected Pope. The memorial incorporates lanterns, flower offerings and a commemoration board made by primary school children. In constructing unofficial, vernacular and temporary commemorative sites from candles and flowers, Polish citizens re-enacted both the rituals of All Saints Day and the tradition of arranging flowers and candles in public places. The latter is, in the Polish context, more than an expression of grief provoked by deaths of important Polish personalities: it is also historically a way of expressing popularly shared feelings and values, and of asserting a degree of autonomy from the government of the day. Until 1990, Pope John Paul II symbolized powerful nationalist-Catholic sentiments that had helped Polish citizens stand up to communism. However, the slogan ,I didn't mourn the pope' which appeared on T-shirts made by a young Polish artists' group suggests that this new alliance between religion and official politics is being contested. Mourning rituals surrounding public figures frequently have a multivocal quality, and are barometers of change. As part of its ongoing engagement with public events, ANTHROPOLOGY TODAY invites debate on how collective memories are punctuated and shaped by historical moments such as these. [source] Resistance to the influences of others: Limits to the formation of a collective memory through conversational rememberingAPPLIED COGNITIVE PSYCHOLOGY, Issue 5 2010Felipe Muller People often form collective memories by sharing their memories with others. Warnings about the reliability of one conversational participant can limit the extent to which conversations or other forms of postevent information can influence subsequent memory. Although this attenuation is consistently found for prewarnings, there are substantial reasons to suspect that, by carefully manipulating both individual characteristics of the listener in a conversation and the dynamics of the postevent conversation, one can restrict the effect even prewarnings have on the influence a speaker might have on the memory of a listener. Indeed, in situations in which a speaker contributes substantially to a conversation and the quality of memory of a listener is poor, prewarnings have the paradoxical effect of increasing the influence of the speaker on a listener's memory. Warnings may not always limit the formation of a collective memory. Copyright © 2009 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd. [source] Remembering What One Knows and the Construction of the Past: A Comparison of Cultural Consensus Theory and Cultural Schema TheoryETHOS, Issue 3 2000Professor Linda C. Garro Cultural consensus theory and cultural models theory present distinct perspectives about the nature of individual and cultural knowledge. Anthropologists have not really explored the implications of these differences, nor have they examined these differing perspectives in situations where both are plausible alternatives. Through an analysis of patterns in how individuals diagnosed with diabetes and living in an Anishinaabe (Ojibway) community talked about diabetes and the judgments they made about the relevancy of culturally plausible illness causes, I find, for this data set at least, that cultural models theory provides a better fit. Nevertheless, cultural consensus analysis played a critical role in this determination. Some ideas about the nature of collective memory are examined in light of my findings. [source] Melancholy, Topography and the Search for Origin in Ingeborg Bachmann's Drei Wege Zum SeeGERMAN LIFE AND LETTERS, Issue 2 2009Katya Krylova ABSTRACT Bachmann's Drei Wege zum See is a text insistently preoccupied with questions of identity, origin and origination. Operating along a topographical structure that both frames and drives the narrative, its concern is a walking through personal and collective history in search of an elusive point of origin. This attempt is always necessarily melancholic, standing under the perennial threat of missed or failed homecomings. Using psychoanalytic conceptions of psychic topography and Walter Benjamin's conception of origin, this essay explores the intersections of memory, place and identity in Drei Wege zum See, as well as drawing on related theories of melancholy and nostalgia. The present article builds on previous explorations of identity, intertextuality and collective memory in Drei Wege zum See, shedding a new light on these through consideration of the text's psychotopographical preoccupation. I explore how an attempt to reconstruct a personal narrative with the aid of a topographical frame is one that will always resist totalisation, where reconstruction may only ever be partial, never complete. Finally, I argue that topographical melancholy is a highly productive mode of identity formation, serving to subvert and overturn falsifying constructions of personal and collective identity. [source] MEMORY, AMNESIA AND IDENTITY IN HERMANN BROCH'S SCHLAFWANDLER TRILOGYGERMAN LIFE AND LETTERS, Issue 2 2008Graham Bartram ABSTRACT Through its three novels, set in 1888, 1903 and 1918, Broch's Schlafwandler trilogy traces a progressive fragmentation of social values in late modernity. This article investigates a key marker of this fragmentation: the figuration of individual and collective memory, which undergoes a radical shift between Part I and Part III. In Part I the depiction of memory engages the reader with the protagonist's psychological and moral conflicts and the formation of his individual identity. In Part II memory features as abstract and collective, in allegorical meditations on man's existence in time; in Part III the theme of remembering is largely displaced by that of amnesia, emphasising the isolation of the individual in the era of ,Wertzerfall'. This depiction of cultural disintegration is, however, counterbalanced by the symbolic unity of Die Schlafwandler, whose aesthetic structures play an essential part in what Broch saw as the novel's ,cognitive' task. Here memory features within the reading process itself. To conclude we examine some of the trilogy's densely intersecting leitmotifs that activate the reader's memory in defiance of disintegration and amnesia, and thereby contribute a vital element to the realisation of the ,cognitive novel'. [source] Finding Meaning in Memory: A Methodological Critique of Collective Memory StudiesHISTORY AND THEORY, Issue 2 2002Wolf Kansteiner The memory wave in the humanities has contributed to the impressive revival of cultural history, but the success of memory studies has not been accompanied by significant conceptual and methodological advances in the research of collective memory processes. Most studies on memory focus on the representation of specific events within particular chronological, geographical, and media settings without reflecting on the audiences of the representations in question. As a result, the wealth of new insights into past and present historical cultures cannot be linked conclusively to specific social collectives and their historical consciousness. This methodological problem is even enhanced by the metaphorical use of psychological and neurological terminology, which misrepresents the social dynamics of collective memory as an effect and extension of individual, autobiographical memory. Some of these shortcomings can be addressed through the extensive contextualization of specific strategies of representation, which links facts of representation with facts of reception. As a result, the history of collective memory would be recast as a complex process of cultural production and consumption that acknowledges the persistence of cultural traditions as well as the ingenuity of memory makers and the subversive interests of memory consumers. The negotiations among these three different historical agents create the rules of engagement in the competitive arena of memory politics, and the reconstruction of these negotiations helps us distinguish among the abundance of failed collective memory initiatives on the one hand and the few cases of successful collective memory construction on the other. For this purpose, collective memory studies should adopt the methods of communication and media studies, especially with regard to media reception, and continue to use a wide range of interpretive tools from traditional historiography to poststructural approaches. From the perspective of collective memory studies, these two traditions are closely related and mutually beneficial, rather than mutually exclusive, ways of analyzing historical cultures. [source] ,I Saw a Nightmare . . .': Violence and the Construction of Memory (Soweto, June 16, 1976)HISTORY AND THEORY, Issue 4 2000Helena Pohlandt-McCormick The protests on June 16, 1976 of black schoolchildren in Soweto against the imposition of Afrikaans as a medium of instruction in their schools precipitated one of the most pro-found challenges to the South African apartheid state. These events were experienced in a context of violent social and political conflict. They were almost immediately drawn into a discourse that discredited and silenced them, manipulating meaning for ideological and political reasons with little regard for how language and its absence,silences,further violated those who had experienced the events. Violence, in its physical and discursive shape, forged individual memories that remain torn with pain, anger, distrust, and open questions; collective memories that left few spaces for ambiguity; and official or public histories tarnished by their political agendas or the very structures,and sources,that produced them. Based on oral histories and historical documents, this article discusses the collusion of violence and silence and its consequences. It argues that,while the collusion between violence and silence might appear to disrupt or, worse, destroy the ability of individuals to think historically,the individual historical actor can and does have the will to contest and engage with collective memory and official history. [source] Seeing History: Malaika Favorite's Furious Flower Poetry Quilt Painting and Pan-African MemoryINTERNATIONAL JOURNAL OF ART & DESIGN EDUCATION, Issue 2 2010Maureen G. Shanahan Malaika Favorite's Furious Flower Poetry Quilt (2004) is an acrylic painting that depicts 24 portraits of leading poets of the African Diaspora. Commissioned by Dr Joanne Gabbin, English professor and director of the Furious Flower Poetry Center at James Madison University, the painting is part of a larger programme of poetry education. The painting's interweaving of the portraits with fragments from the poets' writing functions to create an interactive visual-textual body of poets and poetry, a collection which has been taught at all levels of education from primary school to university. Its quilt structure pays homage to the historic role of women in preserving history and memory. The painting also serves to construct a pan-African identity and collective memory about slavery, African American history and empowerment. [source] Political accountability, public constitution of recent past and the collective memory of socio-political events: A discursive analysisJOURNAL OF COMMUNITY & APPLIED SOCIAL PSYCHOLOGY, Issue 5 2010Cristian Tileag Abstract This paper presents a discursive analysis of a political news interview as a site for the interactional organization of the public constitution of recent past. In a context of commemoration and finding out the truth about the past, the focus is on how the collective memory of socio-political events and political accountability is managed and what discursive practices representatives of nation-states draw upon to understand and construct ideological representations of socio-political events, namely the Romanian ,revolution' of 1989. The analysis shows how the possibility versus the actuality of knowing the truth about the events, (political) accountability and stake for actions are discussed, framed and given significance by constituting the ,events' of 1989 as ,revolution'. The analysis further reveals how this ascribed categorial meaning is used by the interviewee as background for delegitimizing critical voices and sidestepping responsibility for past actions and knowing the truth. Social and community psychologists can learn more about how individuals and communities construct ideological versions of socio-political events by considering the interplay between questions of political accountability and arguments over the meaning of political categories, and engaging with the accounting practices in which the meaning of socio-political events is being negotiated by members of society Copyright © 2010 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd. [source] Formalisation and Use of Experience in Forest Fires ManagementJOURNAL OF CONTINGENCIES AND CRISIS MANAGEMENT, Issue 3 2001Jean-Luc Wybo This paper presents a study of the learning process in emergency management with an application to forest fire fighting. The first part presents the methodology used to determine the mental image of fire fighting management and to propose a model of representation of the individual experience gained during operations. The second part introduces a method to capitalise experience of fire management, which uses a prototype of GIS application. The third part of the article presents the different types of support that can be provided by a collective memory of individual experience and a reasoning method that includes this experience to provide several levels of support to forest fire managers. This study was undertaken in co-operation with organisations in Canada and Spain. [source] The (Cuban) Voice of the (Curaçaoan) People: The Making (And Taking) of a Collective MemoryJOURNAL OF HISTORICAL SOCIOLOGY, Issue 3 2009NANETTE DE JONG At the turn of the 20th century, Afro-Curaçaoans developed an affinity for Cuban culture that influenced the manner to which they came to define their own collective memory. Cuba was raised to mythological status, appropriated and adapted to fit Curaçaoan daily life, enabling a new and inventive sense of belonging. This essay speaks to the intricacies involved in memory-making, with the Cuban-inspired memory of memories on Curaçao introduced as a relative category. It points to the variegated and tenuous nature of memory, showing how the past, when negotiated with the present, can shape group goals and demarcate membership. [source] Religious Identity as an Historical Narrative: Coptic Orthodox Immigrant Churches and the Representation of HistoryJOURNAL OF HISTORICAL SOCIOLOGY, Issue 2 2006GHADA BOTROS This paper looks at how the Coptic Church narrates this history particularly as it transcends the national boundaries of Egypt to serve migrant Copts in Western societies. The historical narrative of the Coptic Church celebrates its contributions to early Christianity; defends its stance in the Chalcedon Council in 451 CE; and celebrates a legacy of triumph and survival after the Arab conquest. Building on theories on collective memory, this paper shows how the present and the past shape one another in a very complex way. The paper is based on interviews with both lay and clerical members of Coptic immigrant communities in Canada and the United States and on textual analysis of books, bulletins and websites launched on and by the Church. [source] A Matter of Time: Examining Collective Memory in Historical Perspective in Postwar BerlinJOURNAL OF HISTORICAL SOCIOLOGY, Issue 1-2 2005JENNIFER A. JORDAN Clearly the content of memorial culture changes over time. So, however, do the political and bureaucratic channels through which memorial landscapes themselves are created, and thus the avenues through which states (in this case the Federal Republic of Germany and the German Democratic Republic) construct landscapes of official collective memory. Such an analysis reveals not only the changes and continuities in the form and content of official representations, but also the changing relationship between a state, its people, and the collection of officially approved objects in the urban landscape designed to convey representations of a city's and a country's past. Looking closely at these intersections also makes clear that the landscape of official memorials must not be identical with collective memory understood more broadly. [source] On Thanksgiving and Collective Memory: Constructing the American TraditionJOURNAL OF HISTORICAL SOCIOLOGY, Issue 3 2002Amy Adamczyk Relying on the approach by Maurice Halbwachs who argued that collective memory is based on contemporary interests and concerns, this article shows how Thanksgiving has changed over time in accordance with the ideas of the day. Aspects of the analysis support Barry Schwartz's theory that commemoration reflects the historical past. Similar to the pilgrims' celebration, many people commemorate Thanksgiving by, for example, feasting and praying. But in contrast to Schwartz's thought, this paper also shows that there are other elements of traditions that have minimal connection with the original event. Forms of commemoration like the Macy's Day Parade challenge the idea that commemoration and celebration contain some connection to the initial occasion. In general, the findings lend support to historical research and theories that implement social constructionist approaches. [source] The Vanished Kingdoms of Patrick O'Farrell: Religion, Memory and Migration in Religious HistoryJOURNAL OF RELIGIOUS HISTORY, Issue 1 2007HILARY M. CAREY This article considers the place of religion and memory in the history of religious immigration to Australia. It begins with a discussion of the work of Patrick O'Farrell and his family memoir, Vanished Kingdoms and its evocation of family, place, and religion in New Zealand and Australia. It reviews recent writing on collective memory by the religious sociologist Danièle Hervieu-Léger, theologian Paul Ricoeur, and the Australian historian Peter Read, raising possibilities for the analysis of sources relating to the memory cultures of migrants to Australia in the nineteenth century. This article takes a small sample of testimonies from the letters of Irish migrants, including those edited by Patrick O'Farrell, and the speeches and correspondence of some members of the higher clergy and concludes with some speculation about the way in which migrants to Australia forged the chains of memory that constitute their religious communities. [source] Beyond Comfort: German and English Military Chaplains and the Memory of the Great War, 1919,1929JOURNAL OF RELIGIOUS HISTORY, Issue 3 2005PATRICK PORTER How did German and English military chaplains commemorate the Great War? The established historiography broadly interprets war commemoration in the post-war period in two ways. One approach presents commemoration as a ritual of healing that soothed the bereft. The other emphasizes the political function of commemoration, interpreting it as a way of reshaping the war in collective memory to legitimize the status quo , by venerating sacrifices made for the nation, it put the nation beyond question to strengthen allegiance to the established order. Both interpretations treat the language of war commemoration as one of consolation and comfort. Military chaplains, however, espoused a more ambitious mission. For them, the purpose of war commemoration was to inculcate dissatisfaction, guilt, and discomfort. This was because they remembered the war as a contest of ideas embodied in the clash of nations, a contest that was still unsettled. Their purpose was therefore the antithesis to consolation and conventional patriotism: to mobilize the living to honour their "blood debt" to the dead through the language of agitation. They themselves had participated in a war regarded by the churches as a campaign of regeneration through blood, in which sacrifice and suffering would revitalize their nations by bringing them to repentance, piety, and social cohesion. Because they were implicated personally in that incomplete crusade, they were especially anxious to realize the mission and complete the sacrifices of the dead. Anglican ex-chaplains predominantly implored their congregations to ensure a permanent peace that had been purchased by blood, whereas German Protestants invoked a resurrected Volk reclaiming its status as a chosen people. Each articulated a politics of remembrance, one formed on the vision of a war to end all wars, the other on a vision of a war to resurrect the Reich as the Kingdom of God. While the political content of their memories was different, they shared an attitude to the function of remembrance, as a ritual to mobilize and arouse rather than console. Both groups preached that the peace was a continuation of an unfinished moral and spiritual struggle. Furthermore, while always honouring the dead, they stressed that the worth of their sacrifices was no longer guaranteed but contingent upon the conduct of living and future generations. Despite the divergences that emerged from their different confessional and national traditions, and from their respective circumstances, they shared a common moral language. [source] The time of the interval: Historicity, modernity, and epoch in rural FranceAMERICAN ETHNOLOGIST, Issue 1 2010MATT HODGES ABSTRACT With recognition that historical consciousness, or "historicity," is culturally mediated comes acknowledgment that periodization of history into epochs is as much a product of cultural practice as a reflection of historical "fact." In this article, I examine popular "modernist" invocations of epoch in rural France,those positing traditional pasts against fluid presents with uncertain futures,which scholars frequently subordinate to analyses of collective memory and identity politics. Submitting this "response" to French modernity to temporal analysis reveals an additional critique in this periodization, one that valorizes enduring social time over processual temporalities, with implications for the temporal frameworks and ideology of anthropologists. [source] Ambiguity and Remembrance: Individual and Collective Memory in FinlandAMERICAN ETHNOLOGIST, Issue 3 2000Karen Armstrong In this article, I explore the complicated relationship between individual experience and national events, the way this relationship is narrated, and how individual memory becomes part of a collective memory. By looking at memoirs written by the descendants of Thomas Rantalainen, and focusing on personal correspondence, I show how the contents of letters written 60 years ago relate to events in Finland's history that are still being discussed today. In the narrative practices of the correspondence, the individuals themselves ,through the use of a narrative We,mmerge their personal experiences with those of the community. Two themes in the letters,war and family life,illustrate how the processes of replication and analogical thinking work in bringing the past into the present. [Finland, history and analogical thinking, personal correspondence, domestic life] [source] | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||