Paradoxes of the self: the autobiographical construction of the subject in the Italian Communist Party and in Italian neo-feminism

Modern Italy ◽  
2018 ◽  
Vol 23 (1) ◽  
pp. 69-84
Author(s):  
Walter Stefano Baroni
Keyword(s):  
Twentieth Century ◽  
Communist Party ◽  
Second World War ◽  
The Self ◽  
The Political ◽  
First Person ◽  
World War ◽  
The Subject ◽  
The 1960S ◽  
Second World

This article compares the autobiographical practices used by the Partito Comunista Italiano (PCI) in the aftermath of the Second World War with those developed by Italian neo-feminism from the late 1960s onwards. The former involved a repeated injunction for activists to write about and express themselves upon joining the party, in what amounted to self-criticism. The latter, meanwhile, took shape as a result of self-consciousness exercises practised by feminist groups in various cities across Italy. The terms of comparison of this article aim to describe what changed and what remained the same in the technologies used to produce the political self within the Italian Left in the twentieth century, beginning from its split in the 1960s. In this context, the paper reveals that the communist and feminist experiences were supported by the same discursive mechanism, which hinged on a paradoxical enunciation of the self. Communist activists and feminists thus faced the same difficulty in political self-expression, which was resolved in two different ways, both equally unsatisfactory. In conclusion, examining the communist autobiographical injunction allows a radical critical reappraisal of the idea that the use of the first person and the political affirmation of subjectivity are determining features exclusively bound to the feminist experience.

scholarly journals The archaeology of Afghanistan revisited

Antiquity ◽  
2020 ◽  
Vol 94 (376) ◽  
pp. 1084-1087
Author(s):  
J. Eva Meharry
Keyword(s):  
Twentieth Century ◽  
Turning Point ◽  
International Community ◽  
Second World War ◽  
World War ◽  
Archaeological Practice ◽  
The Subject ◽  
The 1960S ◽  
Afghan Civil War ◽  
Second World

The discipline of archaeology in Afghanistan was at a turning point when the original editions of The archaeology of Afghanistan and the Archaeological gazetteer of Afghanistan were published in 1978 and 1982, respectively. The first three decades of modern archaeological activity in Afghanistan (1920s–1940s) were dominated by French archaeologists who primarily focused on the pre-Islamic past, particularly the Buddhist period. Following the Second World War, however, Afghanistan gradually opened archaeological practice to a more international community. Consequently, the scope of archaeological exploration expanded to include more robust studies of the prehistoric, pre-Islamic and Islamic periods. In the 1960s, the Afghan Institute of Archaeology began conducting its own excavations, and by the late 1970s, national and international excavations were uncovering exciting new discoveries across the country. These archaeological activities largely halted as Afghanistan descended into chaos during the Soviet-Afghan War (1979–1989) and the Afghan Civil War (1989–2001); the Afghan Institute of Archaeology was the only archaeological institute continuing operations. The original editions of the volumes under review were therefore timely and poignant publications that captured the peak of archaeological activity in twentieth-century Afghanistan and became classic texts on the subject.

Conclusion

War Tourism ◽  
2018 ◽  
pp. 213-226
Author(s):  
Bertram M. Gordon
Keyword(s):  
Local Governments ◽  
Ethical Issues ◽  
New Technology ◽  
Second World War ◽  
Tourism Industry ◽  
The Self ◽  
The Political ◽  
World War ◽  
Self Image ◽  
Second World

The study of memory tourism to war sites should not exclude the study of tourism during wartime. Both are components of war tourism, imparting meaning to war for both victors and vanquished. Both reflect their eras, whether through the gazes of the curious individual or the political and economic configurations sustaining the tourism industry. Germans who described a newfound appreciation of their homeland after touring occupied France show how tourism worked in two directions, impacting not only on the sites visited but also the self-image of the visitor. Local governments in France now reach a larger tourism public with new technology. A powerful hold of Second World War imagery in France continues to face ethical issues of sustainability and trivialization.

Bringing It All Back HomeorAnother Side of Bob Dylan: Midwestern Isolationist

1992 ◽  
Vol 26 (3) ◽  
pp. 337-355 ◽  
Author(s):  
Tor Egil Førland
Keyword(s):  
Foreign Policy ◽  
Political Influence ◽  
The United States ◽  
Second World War ◽  
World War ◽  
Contemporary World ◽  
Bob Dylan ◽  
The Subject ◽  
The 1960S ◽  
Second World

The subject of this article is the foreign policy views of singer and songwriter Bob Dylan: a personality whose footprints during the 1960s were so impressive that a whole generation followed his lead. Today, after thirty years of recording, the number of devoted Dylan disciples is reduced but he is still very much present on the rock scene. His political influence having been considerable, his policy views deserve scrutiny. My thesis is that Dylan'sforeign policyviews are best characterized as “isolationist.’ More specifically: Dylan's foreign policy message is what so-called progressive isolationists from the Midwest would have advocated, had they been transferred into the United States of the 1960s or later. I shall argue that Bob Dylan is just that kind of personified anachronism, seeing the contemporary world through a set of cognitive lenses made in the Midwest before the Second World War – to a large extent even before the First (or, indeed, before the American Civil War).

My Journey

2021 ◽  
pp. 101-136
Keyword(s):  
Twentieth Century ◽  
Family Life ◽  
School System ◽  
Second World War ◽  
The Political ◽  
Educational Practices ◽  
World War ◽  
Early Twentieth Century ◽  
Second World

This chapter concerns the larger political, social, and religious setting in which Vera Vasilevskaia and Elena Men lived. It provides a more intimate picture of the political and social framework of the early twentieth century and later Stalinist times in which the descriptions and analyses are intensely personal and evocative. It also illustrates the school system in late tsarist Russia and educational practices, their classmates, and their teachers in the 1920s that had a lifelong influence. The writings of Vera and Elena are transparent about their struggles, presenting a first-hand view of family life, society, and religious quest in Russia during the revolutionary years, the 1920s, the Second World War, and the late 1940s. The chapter notes how Vera and Elena wrote for the “desk drawer” with the intention of keeping a personal record of their experiences with catacomb priests and the community.

H. N. Brailsford and Russia: The Problem of Objectivity

1973 ◽  
Vol 5 (2) ◽  
pp. 81-96 ◽  
Author(s):  
F. M. Leventhal
Keyword(s):  
Twentieth Century ◽  
World War I ◽  
Second World War ◽  
The Political ◽  
World War ◽  
Considerable Part ◽  
Daily News ◽  
The Balkans ◽  
Political Left ◽  
Second World

In a journalistic career which spanned seven decades, Henry Noel Brailsford devoted a considerable part of his writing to Russian affairs and to the relations of the British and Russian peoples. In scores of articles and in two books based on first-hand observations, he helped to mold Western attitudes — especially of those on the political Left — to the often maligned, frequently enigmatic giant of the East. Few English journalists in the twentieth century could match the knowledge, personal contacts, and audience of a man who published several articles a week from the late 1890s to the early 1950s for a host of papers, including, to name the most important, the Manchester Guardian, the Speaker, the Daily News, the Nation, the Herald, the New Republic, the New Leader, Reynolds News, and the New Statesman. While Brailsford's field of competence encompassed the whole range of international and imperial affairs, he was preoccupied with the Balkans, with Russia, and with India, and of these only Russia commanded his attention throughout his life. The Balkan question belongs to the years before World War I, India to the 1930s and 1940s, but Russia remained of consuming interest from the revolution of 1905 until after the Second World War.

scholarly journals Herosi czy ofiary? Kapitał moralny Polaków w narracji Muzeum II Wojny Światowej w Gdańsku

2019 ◽  
Vol 63 (2) ◽  
pp. 163-190
Author(s):  
Barbara Markowska
Keyword(s):  
Moral Status ◽  
Second World War ◽  
Forced Labor ◽  
The Political ◽  
World War ◽  
The Subject ◽  
Heroic Narrative ◽  
Second World ◽  
Political Scene ◽  
Moral Capital

The author analyzes the narrative of the Museum of the Second World War in Gdańsk using the category of moral capital, which is defined as a supply of moral stories influencing the moral status of the collective entity described as perpetrator or victim of a given event. The author considers that the decision, in 2008, to create the museum was one of the most important initiatives of Polish historical policy. From the beginning, the idea of the museum was the source of disputes, primarily concerning the shape of the Polish narrative about the war. Discussions on the subject and divisions in the political scene led to a spectacular “takeover” of the museum shortly after its opening in 2017. The management was changed and numerous alterations to the main exhibitions were made. The first version of the exhibition stressed the universalism of the experiences of civilians, including Poles, as victims of war-time terror, poverty, fear, occupation, forced labor, or extermination. After analyzing the narrative content of the exhibition opened in March 2019, the author of the article claims that in the modified version we can observe the (re)construction of a heroic narrative, aimed at reinforcing the moral capital of Poles.

The Soviet Myth and the Making of Communist Lives in Italy, 1943–56

2021 ◽  
pp. 002200942110683
Author(s):  
Rosario Forlenza
Keyword(s):  
Communist Party ◽  
Cultural Anthropology ◽  
Second World War ◽  
The Political ◽  
Ordinary People ◽  
Political Struggle ◽  
World War ◽  
Top Down ◽  
The Social ◽  
Second World

This article explores the emergence and consolidation of the Soviet myth, and the related myth of Stalin, within Italy's Communist culture, in the period between the upheavals of the Second World War and 1956. Countering the traditional top-down approaches, which have seen political myths as weapons in the political struggle and devices for deceiving ordinary people, it examines the Soviet myth as a narrative that encapsulated the meaning of the experiences of the Italian Communist Party rank and file, as well as its elite, in extraordinary times. Drawing on the social and cultural anthropology of Victor Turner, it examines the establishment and strength of the Soviet myth and argues that it emerged as a new marker of certainty for groups and individuals in response to the liminal conditions of political and existential uncertainty experienced during the Second World War.

Auschwitz and the Politics of Martyrdom and Memory 1945–1947

2007 ◽  
pp. 149-172
Author(s):  
Jonathan Huener
Keyword(s):  
Second World War ◽  
Concentration Camp ◽  
The Political ◽  
World War ◽  
The Future ◽  
The Subject ◽  
Second World

MORE THAN sixty years after the liberation of Auschwitz, in an era replete with public ceremony, observance, and written recollection, the need for a memorial at the site of Nazi Germany’s largest concentration camp and extermination centre appears obvious. To Poles in 1945, the need was obvious as well, for it was clear in the immediate aftermath of the Second World War that the Auschwitz complex had to be preserved in some fashion and to serve as a memorial to those who had suffered and perished there at the hands of the German invaders. Decisions about the future of the site were driven to a great extent by politics, and the future of the Auschwitz site was at times the subject of a vigorous public conversation. That conversation reflected both the political demands of the time and the dilemmas facing the site’s organizers. Moreover, it set the stage for the pedagogy, iconography, and public reception of Auschwitz in subsequent years and decades....

scholarly journals THE “DURABLE HOMOPHOBIA” OF PSYCHOANALYSIS

2018 ◽  
Vol 17 (1) ◽  
pp. 215-219
Author(s):  
REGINA KUNZEL
Keyword(s):  
Twentieth Century ◽  
Cold War ◽  
Human Nature ◽  
Second World War ◽  
World War ◽  
Therapeutic Practice ◽  
Politics And Culture ◽  
1960S And 1970S ◽  
The 1960S ◽  
Second World

Psychoanalysis is at once a system of thought, a toolkit for cultural diagnosis and criticism, and a therapeutic practice. In Dagmar Herzog's exciting new book Cold War Freud: Psychoanalysis in an Age of Catastrophes, psychoanalysis is among the most transformative intellectual events of the twentieth century and is itself transformed by that century's roiling forces, shaping and profoundly shaped by politics and culture. Foregrounding the historicity of psychoanalysis requires Herzog to wrest psychoanalysis from its own claims to historical transcendence. “While psychoanalysis is often taken to be ahistorical in its view of human nature,” Herzog writes, “the opposite is the case” (2). After Freud's death, during the heyday of psychoanalysis in the 1940s and 1950s, through challenges to its authority in the 1960s and 1970s, to what Herzog calls its “second golden age” in the 1980s, the analytic frame offered by psychoanalysis (and the debates it generated) helped people grapple with the aftermath of the horrors of the Second World War and offered novel ways of thinking about the most important questions of the postwar decades: about aggression, guilt, trauma, the capacity for violence, indeed about “the very nature of the human self and its motivations” (1).

T. T.

2021 ◽  
pp. 93-98
Author(s):  
William Klinger ◽  
Denis Kuljiš
Keyword(s):  
Soviet Union ◽  
Baltic Sea ◽  
Communist Party ◽  
Second World War ◽  
The Political ◽  
World War ◽  
The Baltic Sea ◽  
The Soviet Union ◽  
The Baltic ◽  
Second World

This chapter reviews the successful coup in Mitrovica prison, where “differentiation” was carried out and the “Petkovites” had been temporarily subdued. It discusses the outbreak of the Second World War, which finds Marshal Tito on the Baltic Sea and on his way to the Soviet Union. It also analyzes Tito's new assignment on establishing a strictly subversive organization intended to prepare the Communist Party of Yugoslavia (CPY) for armed engagements behind enemy lines. The chapter talks about the elimination of differences between the political and intelligence network and the subversive military network as the they had been integrated on the same operational axis. It recounts the signing of the Molotov–Ribbentrop Pact after Tito left Moscow.

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