Naming of Parts; or, The Comforts of Classification: Thomas Jefferson's Construction of America as Fact and Myth

1996 ◽  
Vol 30 (3) ◽  
pp. 345-364 ◽  
Author(s):  
Susan Manning

Henry Reed's poem of the Second World War offers a studied, ironic catalogue of some parts of experience silencing others. Here are observable facts, given as imperative command; knowledge of their use is for the future, rather than a possession of the present, however: one of the many things we (or you) have not got. Here also is the beauty of nature and its utter irrelevance to the human struggle. “Naming of Parts” excludes more than it includes: what is not said constantly overbears and threatens to break through what is. But the balance of information is precariously maintained, the unspeakable, the horror which is the truth of the war being disguised, expressed, and controlled in the naming of parts.In a very different register, William Gass writes in his Habitations of the Word,Lists, then, are for those who savor, who revel and wallow, who embrace, not only the whole of things, but all of its accounts, histories, descriptions, justifications.

2021 ◽  
pp. e20200008
Author(s):  
William J. Pratt

Over 230 Canadian Army soldiers took their own lives during the Second World War. For many, soldiering seems to have exacerbated stresses and depressions. Their suicide notes and the testimony of family, officers, and bunkmates reveal that wartime disturbance was an important section of the complex array of reasons why. In attempts to explain the motivations for their tragic final actions, the instabilities brought by the Second World War and the stresses of military mobilization must be added to the many biological, social, psychological and circumstantial factors revealed by the proceedings of courts of inquiry. Major military risk factors include: access to firearms, suppression of individual agency, and disruption of the protective networks of friends and family. Some Canadians had a difficult time adjusting to military discipline and authority and were frustrated by their inability to succeed by the measures set by the army. Suicide motivations are complex and it may be too simplistic to say that the Second World War caused these deaths, however, it is not too far to say that the war was a factor in their final motivations. Some men, due to the social pressures and constructs of masculine duty, signed up for active service despite previously existing conditions which should have excused them. Revisiting these traumas can expose the difficulties that some Canadians experienced during mobilization for total war. Many brought deep personal pain with them as they entered military service and for some, the disruptions, frustrations, and anxieties of life in khaki were too great to bear. Like their better-known colleagues who died on the battlefield, they too are casualties of the Second World War.


Author(s):  
John Lucas

In chapter three, John Lucas describes the UK jazz scene following the Second World War. Lucas describes the free and unlimited qualities of jazz and makes comparative reference to Fisher’s own personal interest in the genre. The chapter goes on to state that Fisher’s writing style can arguably be linked to the many styles of jazz piano, in that the two both adhere to imaginative thought and liberation from formal constraints. As well as music, the chapter also focuses on the significance and impact of the themes of location and belonging found in Fisher’s poetry.


Author(s):  
Klaus Dodds

The notion of geopolitics has not always been well received. It has been accused of being intellectually fraudulent, ideologically suspect, and tainted with associations with Nazism and fascism. ‘An intellectual poison?’ charts a brief history of geopolitics from before the Second World War to the present day looking at its origins, development, and reception. What is critical geopolitics? Geopolitics has attracted a great deal of academic and popular attention, often with little appreciation of its controversial intellectual history. Presidents and political commentators seem to love using the term: they associate it with danger, threats, space, and power. It is often used to make predictions about the future direction of politics.


Antiquity ◽  
1944 ◽  
Vol 18 (69) ◽  
pp. 42-49 ◽  
Author(s):  
W. F. Grimes

It has long been obvious that a new policy is wanted for our museums and their buildings. The need, often discussed, now takes on a new urgency. The second world war has visited our cities with insensate destruction on a scale which we have hitherto associated only with Acts of God. Some of our museums have already suffered —and as yet we cannot say when or where more will be damaged or destroyed. Replanning schemes will see old museums rebuilt, new museums established in many places; and now, while such schemes are being blocked out, is the time to see that individually and as a body the museums are planned and developed to the best advantage. The necessary driving force must come from a comparatively small body of people. For as a nation we can hardly be called museum conscious: we have no official museum policy, and the local efforts which are the substitute for it operate so unevenly that a large part of the population is quite without a service which ought to be of great educational and cultural value to all.


1975 ◽  
Vol 35 (1) ◽  
pp. 56-85 ◽  
Author(s):  
John R. Lampe

This paper should begin with a brief defense of its title. “Variety” and “unsuccessful” are doubtful if not dirty words to most economists and many economic historians. The “success stories” of rapid development in Western Europe, Russia and Japan have been the most frequent subject of this Journal's articles on non-American topics. And the discovery of uniformity in the past, rather than variety, is admittedly essential to the development economist's search for predictability in the future that has informed so much of the economic history written since the Second World War.


2021 ◽  
Vol 9 (4) ◽  
pp. 21-39
Author(s):  
Marta Milewska

Museums of martyrdom operate on the sites of former Nazi concentration camps in Poland as memorials to the events of the Second World War. These institutions are part of the pedagogy of remembrance, which is an educational discipline connected with the theories of the German philosopher Theodor W. Adorno. The pedagogy of remembrance assumes that as part of the didactic process, it is important not only to learn about atrocities, but above all to analyse their causes. The discussion and debate surrounding the pedagogy of remembrance have allowed this article to identity the correlation between its assumptions and the shaping of students’ attitudes as well as the development of skills included in the key competences. These competences are also referred to in a broader sense as competences of the future, as they are necessary for an individual to function properly in society. The aim of this article is therefore to clarify whether and how museums of martyrdom and the pedagogy of remembrance can foster the development of the skills defined as competences of the future. This article also attempts to indicate the museum activities and didactic methods that can be used by educators at places of remembrance in order to shape attitudes and develop key competencies.


2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jaap Focke

The Jewish Orphanage in Leiden was the last one of 8 such care homes to open its doors in The Netherlands before the Second World War. After spending almost 39 years in an old and utterly inadequate building in Leiden’s city centre, the inauguration in 1929 of a brand-new building, shown on the front cover, was the start of a remarkably productive and prosperous period. The building still stands there, proudly but sadly, to this day: the relatively happy period lasted less than 14 years. On Wednesday evening, 17th March 1943, the Leiden Police, under German instructions, closed down the Orphanage and delivered 50 children and 9 staff to the Leiden railway station, from where they were brought to Transit Camp Westerbork in the Northeast of the country. Two boys were released from Westerbork thanks to tireless efforts of a neighbour in Leiden; one young woman survived Auschwitz, and one young girl escaped to Palestine via Bergen-Belsen. The 55 others were deported to Sobibor, not one of them survived. Some 168 children lived in the new building at one time or another between August 1929 and March 1943. This book reconstructs life in the orphanage based on the many stories and photographs which they left us. It is dedicated to the memory of those who perished in the holocaust, but also to those who survived. Without them this book could not have been written.


Author(s):  
Jerome Boyd Maunsell

An account of Wyndham Lewis’s career as a portrait painter opens this chapter, with a focus on the many self-portraits he painted during his life. The theme of the difference between visual and literary self-portraiture is explored, and the role of satire in portraiture. The chapter examines Lewis’s first autobiography Blasting and Bombardiering (1937), and his depiction of the period leading up to and through the First World War. It also analyzes Lewis’s self-imposed exile during the Second World War during his emigration to America and Canada with his wife Anne, portrayed in Self Condemned (1954), and the subsequent writing of Rude Assignment (1950) after Lewis’s return to England. Lewis’s word portraits of Ford and Stein in his autobiographies are discussed, as are the omissions in these autobiographies.


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