The Future of the Past

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Antoine Borrut
Keyword(s):  
Middle East ◽  
Eighth Century ◽  
Historical Writing ◽  
The Past ◽  
The Future ◽  
History Of ◽  
Methodological Problems ◽  
The Creation ◽  
Early Islamic ◽  
Sacred History

Writing the history of the first centuries of Islam poses thorny methodological problems, because our knowledge rests upon narrative sources produced later in Abbasid Iraq. The creation of an “official” version of the early Islamic past (i.e., a vulgate), composed contemporarily with the consolidation of Abbasid authority in the Middle East, was not the first attempt by Muslims to write about their origins. This Abbasid-era version succeeded when previous efforts vanished, or were reshaped, in rewritings and enshrined as the “official” version of Islamic sacred history. Attempts to impose different historical orthodoxies affected the making of this version, as history was rewritten with available materials, partly determined by earlier generations of Islamic historians. This essay intends to discuss a robust culture of historical writing in eighth-century Syria and to suggest approaches to access these now-lost historiographical layers torn between memory and oblivion, through Muslim and non-Muslim sources.

Arab Nationalism and National Socialist Germany, 1933–1939: Ideologic and Strategic Incompatibility

1980 ◽  
Vol 12 (3) ◽  
pp. 351-372 ◽  
Author(s):  
Francis Nicosia
Keyword(s):  
Middle East ◽  
League Of Nations ◽  
Recent History ◽  
National Socialist ◽  
Arab Nationalism ◽  
The Past ◽  
Winston Churchill ◽  
The Future ◽  
History Of

When Winston Churchill visited Palestine in March, 1921, the debate over the future of Palestine and the recriminations over the broken promises of the past were at a fever pitch. It had become clear that British control over Palestine would be formalized by a League of Nations Mandate which would then irnplement the provisions of the Balfour Declaration. In Haifa, a delegation of Muslim and Christian Arabs met with Churchill to express their views on the intensifying conflict in Palestine. Churchill was given a prophetic warning, the accuracy of which has been of profound significance in the recent history of the Middle East:Today the Arabs belief in England is not what it was.… If England does not take up the cause of the Arabs, other powers will. From India, Mesopotamia, the Hedjaz andPalestine the cry goes up to England now. If she does not listen, then perhaps Russia will take up their call some day, or perhaps even Germany.

Emotions and Temporalities

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Margrit Pernau
Keyword(s):  
History Of Emotions ◽  
The Past ◽  
The Future ◽  
History Of ◽  
The Creation ◽  
New Perspective

This Element brings together the history of emotions and temporalities, offering a new perspective on both. Time was often imagined as a movement from the past to the future: the past is gone and the future not yet here. Only present-day subjects could establish relations to other times, recovering history as well as imagining and anticipating the future. In a movement paralleling the emphasis on the porous self, constituted by emotions situated not inside but between subjects, this Element argues for a porous present, which is open to the intervention of ghosts coming from the past and from the future. What needs investigating is the flow between times as much as the creation of boundaries between them, which first banishes the ghosts and then denies their existence. Emotions are the most important way through which subjects situate and understand themselves in time.

Walbank's Philip V of Macedon

1943 ◽  
Vol 63 ◽  
pp. 117-120
Author(s):  
P. Treves
Keyword(s):  
Historical Writing ◽  
New School ◽  
The Past ◽  
Present Book ◽  
The Future ◽  
History Of

Three or four years after the publication of Mr. Walbank's book it would be idle to join in the chorus of praise which the most eminent authorities on the history of the Hellenistic Age have unanimously and deservedly showered upon it. But the time has come to show how far the author has succeeded in combining pioneer-work in a new province with the results which a former generation of scholars had already been able to achieve. Nothing, indeed, can better testify to the vitality, timeliness, and many-sidedness of the present book than its author's efforts to put to the test, in his most recent writings, the conclusions which he had already reached, to enlarge and revise, if need be, some points he had not previously dwelt upon with all the desirable minuteness, and to sound again the principles on which this volume rests. Hence one might justifiably describe it as a Janus-like portrait of Philip V. On one side it connects with and reflects the labours of Mr. Walbank's predecessors, chiefly the late Maurice Holleaux. But its other face looks to a basically different treatment of the history of the late third and early second centuries B.C.— more in agreement with the intellectual requirements and the tenets of a new school of historical writing. In this way, if I may venture to use these words, Mr. Walbank's book partakes of the past and the future; and it is, I submit, a merit, and perhaps its strongest attraction, that it should stimulate the reader to recollect the experiences of its forerunners, and to work out new solutions for old problems.

Post-Soviet economy development: From the past to the future

2017 ◽  
pp. 5-21 ◽  
Author(s):  
E. Yasin
Keyword(s):  
Present Situation ◽  
Soviet Economy ◽  
Market Reforms ◽  
Democratic Development ◽  
The Past ◽  
Current Period ◽  
The Future ◽  
History Of ◽  
Working Out ◽  
A Current

The article is devoted to major events in the history of the post-Soviet economy, their influence on forming and development of modern Russia. The author considers stages of restructuring, market reforms, transformational crisis, and recovery growth (1999-2011), as well as a current period which started in2011 and is experiencing serious problems. The present situation is analyzed, four possible scenarios are put forward for Russia: “inertia”, “mobilization”, “decisive leap”, “gradual democratic development”. More than 30 experts were questioned in the process of working out the scenarios.

Acta Fluens – Generatives Handeln und Improvisation im Jazz

2014 ◽  
Vol 59 (1) ◽  
pp. 49-60
Author(s):  
Davide Sparti
Keyword(s):  
Walter Benjamin ◽  
History Of Philosophy ◽  
Human Existence ◽  
The Unconscious ◽  
The Past ◽  
The Future ◽  
History Of

Obwohl jede menschliche Handlung mit einem gewissen Grad an Improvisation erfolgt, gibt es kulturelle Praktiken, bei denen Improvisation eine überwiegende Rolle spielt. Um das Risiko zu vermeiden, einen zu breiten Begriff von Improvisation zu übernehmen, konzentriere ich mich im vorliegenden Beitrag auf den Jazz. Meine zentrale Frage lautet, wie Improvisation verstanden werden muss. Mein Vorgehen ist folgendes: Ich beginne mit einem Vergleich von Improvisation und Komposition, damit die Spezifizität der Improvisation erklärt werden kann. Danach wende ich mich dem Thema der Originalität als Merkmal der Improvisation zu. Zum Schluss führe ich den Begriff affordance ein, um die kollektive und zirkuläre Logik eines Solos zu analysieren. Paradigmatisch wird der Jazzmusiker mit dem Engel der Geschichte verglichen, der nur auf das Vergangene blickt, während er der Zukunft den Rücken zugekehrt hat, und lediglich ihr zugetrieben wird. Weder kann der Improvisierende das Material der Vergangenheit vernachlässigen noch seine genuine Tätigkeit, das Improvisieren in der Gegenwart und für die Zukunft, aufgeben: Er visiert die Zukunft trotz ihrer Unvorhersehbarkeit über die Vermittlung der Vergangenheit an.<br><br>While improvised behavior is so much a part of human existence as to be one of its fundamental realities, in order to avoid the risk of defining the act of improvising too broadly, my focus here will be upon one of the activities most explicitly centered around improvisation – that is, upon jazz. My contribution, as Wittgenstein would say, has a »grammatical« design to it: it proposes to clarify the significance of the term »improvisation.« The task of clarifying the cases in which one may legitimately speak of improvisation consists first of all in reflecting upon the conditions that make the practice possible. This does not consist of calling forth mysterious, esoteric processes that take place in the unconscious, or in the minds of musicians, but rather in paying attention to the criteria that are satisfied when one ascribes to an act the concept of improvisation. In the second part of my contribution, I reflect upon the logic that governs the construction of an improvised performance. As I argue, in playing upon that which has already emerged in the music, in discovering the future as they go on (as a consequence of what they do), jazz players call to mind the angel in the famous painting by Klee that Walter Benjamin analyzed in his Theses on the History of Philosophy: while pulled towards the future, its eyes are turned back towards the past.

The Scientific Value Of Research On Mirmukhsin Fikriy

2020 ◽  
Vol 2 (08) ◽  
pp. 583-589
Author(s):  
Umriniso Rahmatovna Turaeva
Keyword(s):  
Political Environment ◽  
Continuous Development ◽  
The Past ◽  
Works Of Art ◽  
Literary Heritage ◽  
History Of ◽  
The Creation ◽  
Scientific Value

The history of the Turkestan Jadid movement and the study of Jadid literature show that it has not been easy to study this subject. The socio-political environment of the time led to the blind reduction of the history of continuous development of Uzbek literature, artificial reduction of the literary heritage of the past on the basis of dogmatic thinking, neglect of the study of works of art and literary figures. As a result, the creation of literary figures of a certain period, no matter how important, remained unexplored.

Epilogue: On the Current and Future State of Historical Writing

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Allan Megill
Keyword(s):  
Historical Writing ◽  
Conceptual Difficulty ◽  
Universal History ◽  
The Past ◽  
Initial Decision ◽  
Future State ◽  
The Face ◽  
History Of

This epilogue argues that historians ought to be able to produce a universal history, one that would ‘cover’ the past of humankind ‘as a whole’. However, aside from the always increasing difficulty of mastering the factual material that such an undertaking requires, there exists another difficulty: the coherence of universal history always presupposes an initial decision not to write about the human past in all its multiplicity, but to focus on one aspect of that past. Nevertheless, the lure of universal history will persist, even in the face of its practical and conceptual difficulty. Certainly, it is possible to imagine a future ideological convergence among humans that would enable them to accept, as authoritative, one history of humankind.

Islam: The Arabic and Persian Traditions, Eleventh–Fifteenth Centuries

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Konrad Hirschler
Keyword(s):  
Cultural Practice ◽  
Historical Writing ◽  
The Past ◽  
Islamic Tradition ◽  
Abbasid Caliphate ◽  
Middle Period ◽  
Early Islamic

This chapter deals with how the Islamic historical writing of the Middle Period developed directly from the early Islamic tradition, and its legacy remained deeply inscribed into the ways history was written and represented between the eleventh and fifteenth centuries. However, as historians started to develop new styles and new genres, they turned to previously neglected aspects of the past, their social profile changed, and the writing of history became a more self-conscious, and to some degree self-confident, cultural practice. Most importantly, those issues that had motivated earlier historians, such as the legitimacy of the Abbasid Caliphate, declined in significance and historians of the Middle Period turned to new and more diverse subjects.

The Oxford History of Historical Writing

2018 ◽  
Keyword(s):  
Early Modern ◽  
Korean Peninsula ◽  
Comparative Approach ◽  
Modern World ◽  
Historical Writing ◽  
North West ◽  
The Past ◽  
History Of

How was history written in Europe and Asia between 400–1400? How was the past understood in religious, social, and political terms? And in what ways does the diversity of historical writing in this period mask underlying commonalities in narrating the past? The volume tackles these and other questions. Part I provides comprehensive overviews of the development of historical writing in societies that range from the Korean Peninsula to north-west Europe, which together highlight regional and cultural distinctiveness. Part II complements the first part by taking a thematic and comparative approach; it includes chapters on genre, warfare, and religion (amongst others) which address common concerns of historians working in this liminal period before the globalizing forces of the early modern world.

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