scholarly journals SARTRE, MULTIDIRECTIONAL MEMORY, AND THE HOLOCAUST IN THE AGE OF DECOLONIZATION

2011 ◽  
Vol 8 (2) ◽  
pp. 485-496
Author(s):  
JONATHAN JUDAKEN

Jacques Derrida's memorial reflections on the impact of Sartre's journal Les temps modernes in shaping his generation's projects highlighted the legend of the courier from Marathon who died while running to deliver his message of victory to the Athenians. Sartre alluded to the fable in his manifesto for engaged writing. “It's a beautiful myth,” Sartre wrote in his précis for the politics of commitment, for it shows that for a little while longer the dead act as if they were living. A little while—one year, ten years, maybe even fifty . . . and then they're buried a second time. This is the standard we offer for the writer: as long as his books provoke anger, embarrassment, shame, hatred, love . . . he shall live! This moment in Sartre's text captured Derrida's attention for he sought to point out that political involvement often has effects that are deferred. It is these detours of memory—signals and signatures from a once-buried moment that ramify politically anew in different contexts—that are wound into the complex circuitry of what Michael Rothberg has called “multidirectional memory.” And it is the signature of Sartre, whose anticolonial provocations remain prescient and provocative, that enable us to link these two books that are united by the word “decolonization” in their subtitles. Each tome is a touchstone for new openings at the intersection of postwar French intellectual history, postcolonial theory, and critical race and Holocaust studies. Both books ask us to reconsider racism and empire; memory, alterity, and history; temporality and trauma; identity both individual and collective; and the singularity versus the generalizability of instances of oppression and calls for liberation. Each beckons us to do so in light of the unfinished project of coming to terms with Europe's colonial legacy in a globalized world.

Author(s):  
Bruno Chaouat

In Chapter 3, I probe the theory of multidirectional memory propounded by literary scholars in Europe and the U.S. The multidirectional-memory hypothesis was born from what those scholars call “the colonial turn” in literary and Holocaust studies. Scholars in postcolonial studies are increasingly turning to the Holocaust to approach the history and memory of colonialism, slavery, and more specifically, the events of the Algerian war. Their stated goal is to use the history and memory of the Holocaust to shed light on colonialism, especially in its French incarnation, or rather, to trigger a dialogue among collective memories. I argue that despite a praiseworthy attempt at rejecting the paradigm of competition among victims, that paradigm returns to haunt multidirectional memory. In order to legitimate its effort at finding consensus by uniting collective memories of suffering and persecution, multidirectional memory tones down the specificity of the Holocaust, and ends up neutralizing complex aspects of the Algerian war (notably, conflicting narratives of victimized groups) and more recent manifestations of Islamic terrorism and Islamic antisemitism. Not only do those blind spots prevent vigorous confrontation with resurgent antisemitism, they utterly obliterate that resurgence.


2014 ◽  
pp. 889-915
Author(s):  
Anna Abakunkova

The article examines the state of the Holocaust historiography in Ukraine for the period of 2010 – beginning of 2014. The review analyzes activities of major research and educational organizations in Ukraine which have significant part of projects devoted to the Holocaust; main publications and discussions on the Holocaust in Ukraine, including publications of Ukrainian authors in academic European and American journals. The article illustrates contemporary tendencies and conditions of the Holocaust Studies in Ukraine, defines major problems and shows perspectives of the future development of the Holocaust historiography in Ukraine.


Author(s):  
Richard Devetak

Whether inspired by the Frankfurt School or Antonio Gramsci, the impact of critical theory on the study of international relations has grown considerably since its advent in the early 1980s. This book offers the first intellectual history of critical international theory. Richard Devetak approaches this history by locating its emergence in the rising prestige of theory and the theoretical persona. As theory’s prestige rose in the discipline of international relations it opened the way for normative and metatheoretical reconsiderations of the discipline and the world. The book traces the lines of intellectual inheritance through the Frankfurt School to the Enlightenment, German idealism, and historical materialism, to reveal the construction of a particular kind of intellectual persona: the critical international theorist who has mastered reflexive, dialectical forms of social philosophy. In addition to the extensive treatment of critical theory’s reception and development in international relations, the book recovers a rival form of theory that originates outside the usual inheritance of critical international theory in Renaissance humanism and the civil Enlightenment. This historical mode of theorising was intended to combat metaphysical encroachments on politics and international relations and to prioritise the mundane demands of civil government over the self-reflective demands of dialectical social philosophies. By proposing contextualist intellectual history as a form of critical theory, Critical International Theory: An Intellectual History defends a mode of historical critique that refuses the normative temptations to project present conceptions onto an alien past, and to abstract from the offices of civil government.


2020 ◽  
Vol 4 (Supplement_1) ◽  
pp. 774-774
Author(s):  
David Rein ◽  
Madeleine Hackney ◽  
Michele Dougherty ◽  
Camille Vaughan ◽  
Laurie Imhof ◽  
...  

Abstract The STEADI Options trial uses a randomized, controlled-trial design to assess the effectiveness and cost-effectiveness of the STEADI Initiative . Beginning March, 2020, we will randomize 3,000 adults ≥ 65 years of age at risk for falls seen in an Emory Clinic primary care practice to: (1) full STEADI; (2) a STEADI-derived gait, balance, and strength assessment with physical therapy referrals; (3) a STEADI-derived medication review and management; or (4) usual care. This presentation will discuss decisions made by the study team to facilitate implementation of STEADI including electronically conducting screening prior to the date of encounter, the use of dedicated nursing staff to conduct assessments, implementation of strength, balance, orthostatic hypotension, and vision testing, methods to facilitate medication review, and communication of assessment information to providers. The results from this study will be used to estimate the impact of STEADI on falls, service utilization, and costs over one year.


2020 ◽  
Vol 41 (Supplement_2) ◽  
Author(s):  
T Benito Gonzalez ◽  
X Freixa ◽  
C Godino ◽  
M Taramasso ◽  
R Estevez-Loureiro ◽  
...  

Abstract Background Limited information has been reported regarding the impact of percutaneous mitral valve repair (PMVR) on ventricular arrhythmic (VA) burden. The aim of this study was to address the incidence of VA and appropriate antitachycardia implantable cardiac defibrillator (ICD) therapies before and after PMVR. Methods We retrospectively analyzed all consecutive patients with heart failure with reduce left ventricular ejection fraction, functional mitral regurgitation grade 3+ or 4+ and an active ICD or cardiac resynchronizer who underwent PMVR in any of the eleven recruiting centers. Only patients with complete available device VA monitoring from one-year before to one year after PMVR were included. Baseline clinical and echocardiographic characteristics were collected before PMVR and at 12-months follow-up. Results 93 patients (68.2±10.9 years old, male 88.2%) were enrolled. PMVR was successfully performed in all patients and device success at discharge was 91.4%. At 12-months follow-up, we observed a significant reduction in mitral regurgitation severity, NT-proBNP and prevalence of severe pulmonary hypertension and severe kidney disease. Patients also referred a significant improvement in NYHA functional class and showed a non-significant trend to reserve left ventricular remodeling. After PMVR a significant decrease in the incidence of non-sustained ventricular tachycardia (VT) (5.0–17.8 vs 2.7–13.5, p=0.002), sustained VT or ventricular fibrillation (0.9–2.5 vs 0.5–2.9, p=0.012) and ICD antitachycardia therapies (2.5–12.0 vs 0.9–5.0, p=0.033) were observed. Conclusion PMVR was related to a reduction in arrhythmic burden and ICD therapies in our cohort. Proportion of patients who presented ven Funding Acknowledgement Type of funding source: None


Author(s):  
Carolyn R. Ahlers-Schmidt ◽  
Christy Schunn ◽  
Ashley M. Hervey ◽  
Maria Torres ◽  
Cherie Sage ◽  
...  

Sleep-related infant deaths, including Sudden Infant Death Syndrome (SIDS), are the number one cause of death in infants between 28 days and one year of life. Nearly half of families experiencing a sleep-related infant death in Kansas were involved with the Department of Children and Families Child Protective Services (CPS), making CPS staff a priority for safe sleep training. This study assessed the impact of the two-day Kansas Infant Death and SIDS (KIDS) Network Safe Sleep Instructor (SSI) train-the-trainer program on CPS staffs’ knowledge of the American Academy of Pediatrics safe sleep recommendations. Training was attended by 43 participants, 27 (63%) of whom were employed by CPS. CPS staff had significantly lower baseline knowledge on the 10-item pretest (t = 3.33, p = 0.002), but both CPS and other attendees showed significant improvement by posttest (t = 8.53, p < 0.001 and t = 4.44, p < 0.001, respectively). Following SSI certification, CPS SSIs provided more safe sleep training to professionals than other SSIs (1051 vs. 165, respectively), and both groups of SSIs were able to significantly increase the knowledge of their trainees. Overall, the KIDS Network SSI training was successful. The innovative partnership with CPS allowed for provision of training to a group not historically targeted for safe sleep education.


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