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Historical Consciousness (historical + consciousness)
Selected AbstractsThe Mobilisation of the Intellectuals 1914,1915 and the Continuity of German Historical ConsciousnessAUSTRALIAN JOURNAL OF POLITICS AND HISTORY, Issue 3 2002John A. Moses There is renewed historical interest in the role played by intellectuals in all belligerent countries in the period leading up to and during the First World War. Whereas prior to the war scholars from all countries engaged in civilised scientific discourse, immediately after the outbreak of war they appeared to re,discover their own fatherlands and became passionately patriotic, placing their expertise at the service of their respective countries for the prosecution of the war. On closer scrutiny, however, the case of the German intellectual elite appears significantly different from their counterparts in other belligerent countries. They perceived themselves, more than, say, the British academic community, and certainly earlier than these, as virtual prophets called to justify their nation's war policies. This paper investigates the perceptions of German intellectuals, their explanation for the war and their various war,aims programs. It is suggested that the intellectuals/academics contributed in no small way to the formation of German political will. [source] 1. THE DEFINING CHARACTER OF CHINESE HISTORICAL THINKING1HISTORY AND THEORY, Issue 2 2007CHUN-CHIEH HUANG ABSTRACT Imbued with profound historical consciousness, the Chinese people are Homo historiens in every sense of the term. To be human in China, to a very large extent, is to be historical, which means to live up to the paradigmatic past. Therefore, historical thinking in traditional China is moral thinking. The Chinese historico-moral thinking centers around the notion of Dao, a notion that connotes both Heavenly principle and human norm. In view of its practical orientation, Chinese historical thinking is, on the one hand, concrete thinking and, on the other, analogical thinking. Thinking concretely and analogically, the Chinese people are able to communicate with the past and to extrapolate meanings from history. In this way, historical experience in China becomes a library in which modern readers may engage in creative dialogues with the past. [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] 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] Australian Reporting of the Indonesian Killings of 1965,66: The Media as the "First Rough Draft of History"AUSTRALIAN JOURNAL OF POLITICS AND HISTORY, Issue 2 2008Ross Tapsell This article examines Australian press coverage of the Indonesian killings of 1965,66, and considers its legacy for the historical consciousness of events in Indonesia. The Indonesian killings of 1965,66 occurred on Australia's doorstep, at a time when the Cold War dominated the front pages of Australian newspapers. By examining articles from one of Australia's leading newspapers, The Sydney Morning Herald, we show that press coverage of the killings was both limited and distorted. Comments made by correspondents reporting from Indonesia at the time suggest reasons why this was the case. In the rush to write a "first rough draft of history", the killings in Indonesia were treated as background to the story of leadership change in Jakarta and the defeat of Communism. [source] | ||||||||||