After the Archive

2018 ◽  
pp. 606-626
Author(s):  
Peter McMurray
Keyword(s):  
Oral Tradition ◽  
Family Members ◽  
Former Yugoslavia ◽  
Oral Poetry ◽  
The Past ◽  
Audio Recordings ◽  
New Research ◽  
Do So ◽  
The Way

The afterlife of an archive determines what that archive was in the first place. In other words, the way an archive preserves, processes, analyzes, and circulates its holdings—or fails to do so—plays a central role in constituting not just the what of the archive (its ontology) but also its when (the temporalities it contains and allows). In the 1930s, Milman Parry, a scholar of Homeric epic, traveled to the former Yugoslavia to collect oral poetry from the area, hoping to use this contemporary tradition to think about the feasibility of epic song—and specifically the Iliad and Odyssey—as an oral tradition more broadly. Parry’s student, Albert Lord, published their findings on the topic, creating a massive rethinking of poetry and literature more generally. But the archive they created through their audio recordings in Yugoslavia, recorded on aluminum discs, wire spools, and reel-to-reel tape, served for decades as a kind of necessary proof of their findings, but not an archive that allowed for significant new research. In the past decade, however, a number of family members of the singers who had recorded for Parry have begun to contact the archive seeking information about recordings in the archive. This contact has led not only to meaningful encounters between these families and the archive but also to small but significant expansions in the archive’s holdings through a kind of genealogical ethnography of the archive itself and its multiple, simultaneous (and often divergent) histories.

Problems in Contemporary Asian Archeology

1970 ◽  
Vol 29 (2) ◽  
pp. 363-371
Author(s):  
Judith M. Treistman
Keyword(s):  
Human Evolution ◽  
Plant Domestication ◽  
The Past ◽  
New Research ◽  
Mesolithic Period ◽  
The Way

Archeology in Asia during the past twenty years has taken great strides. The three main areas of new research have been in paleoanthropology, investigation of post-pleistocene neolithic sites, and ethnology. The population of Asia is now known to have been distributed over the entire mainland and Indonesia during the Paleolithic period which embraced the first million years of human evolution. There is growing evidence for the existence of many centers of plant domestication in Asia, each of which appears to have developed out of an indigenous “mesolithic” period of collecting and gathering. Recent research in linguistics and ethnology point the way to unravelling the separate histories of Asia's many cultures.

The Chinese Cinematic Remake as Transnational Appeal: Zhang Yimou’s A Woman, a Gun and a Noodle Shop

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Kenneth Chan
Keyword(s):  
Original Film ◽  
Global Market ◽  
Chinese Version ◽  
Chinese Cinema ◽  
The Past ◽  
American Films ◽  
Close Analysis ◽  
Transnational Film ◽  
Do So ◽  
The Way

The past two decades have witnessed the resurgence of Chinese cinemas on the global stage. As Chinese directors confront the notion of remaking American films, they do so with the assurance that there is a potential global market for their product, which in turn might foster a more creative reimagining of a Chinese version that can stand on its own artistic merits as transnational Chinese cinema. This chapter undertakes a close analysis of A Woman, a Gun and a Noodle Shop (Zhang Yimou 2009) as a transnational film remake to demonstrate how the film confidently reinvents the Coen Brothers’ original film, Blood Simple (1984) as an original in its own right. The analysis demonstrates the way in which the remake is infused with Zhang Yimou’s brand of cinematic pragmatism and the way in which the cooption of a transgressive politics of gender and postcoloniality becomes a route toward transnational appeal.

scholarly journals Reconciliation: The South African Truth and Reconciliation Commission’s contribution to dealing with the past, reconciling and building the nation

2006 ◽  
Vol 40 (4) ◽  
Author(s):  
S. Barry
Keyword(s):  
Human Rights ◽  
South African ◽  
Human Rights Violations ◽  
National Unity ◽  
The Rule Of Law ◽  
Truth And Reconciliation ◽  
The Past ◽  
Political Expediency ◽  
Do So ◽  
The Way

International experience has shown that addressing past human rights violations is a necessary step in the process of reconciliation and nation building. How was post-apartheid, democratic South Africa to deal with its past human rights violations? Would it go the way of retribution in order to settle the scores of the past? Would it go the way of blanket amnesty in the name of political expediency and ignore the fate of its victims?   The Promotion of National Unity and Reconciliation, Act 34 of 1995, which established the TRC envisaged that national unity and reconciliation could be promoted by determining the extent, and the fate and whereabouts of the victims, of such human rights violations; giving opportunity for story-telling; recommending reparations and measures to prevent future violations; and by providing a full report. In order to do so the Commission had the power to grant amnesty to those making such disclosures.  This article, while not uncritical of the Commission, is generally positive about its contribution both in attempting to deal with the past, and in building a democratic, human rights and restorative justice culture based on the rule of law. It examines the definitions of reconciliation that emerged during the Commission in the light of a Christian definition where reconciliation is seen to be between God, others and self, and involves integration with the human community. This integration involves taking responsibility for the past, confession and repentance, forgiving and being forgiven, making restitution where possible, ongoing transformation in the present and hope for the future.

‘Retailed to all posterity’: Post-truth, oral tradition, and the popular voice in Richard III

2020 ◽  
Vol 103 (1) ◽  
pp. 6-20
Author(s):  
Richard Ashby
Keyword(s):  
Popular Culture ◽  
Oral Tradition ◽  
Walter Benjamin ◽  
Richard Iii ◽  
The Past ◽  
Historical Moment ◽  
The Way

This article proposes a presentist reading of Richard III, a play that can be used to reflect on – and critique – our perversely post-truth historical moment. While the powerful distort the past for political purposes, the play dramatises the way abiding truths about history are nevertheless passed down through time by a popular culture of oral tradition. Drawing on Walter Benjamin, I also relate a timeless, oral tradition to proverbial wisdoms and to the concept of redemptive, Messianic time.

Queering the archive of Greek laments

2018 ◽  
Vol 4 (2) ◽  
pp. 223-238 ◽  
Author(s):  
Marios Chatziprokopiou
Keyword(s):  
Twentieth Century ◽  
National Identity ◽  
Oral Tradition ◽  
Cultural Continuity ◽  
Literary Genre ◽  
Oral Poetry ◽  
National Belonging ◽  
The Past ◽  
Early Twentieth Century ◽  
Ideological Context

Lament in Greece has been historically linked to notions of cultural continuity and national belonging. As a literary genre or mode of performance, but also as a rhetorical trope, it has had a constitutive role in shaping national identity. Within this ideological context, Greek laments were strategically used by nineteenth- and early twentieth-century folklorists as survivals of an uninterrupted oral tradition, and hence as original proofs of continuity between modern Greeks and their supposed ancestors. Yet, the archives of oral poetry in general were extensively edited – but also partially constructed – by early folklorists in order to serve ideological purposes related to the construction of national identity, and to the promotion of the nation’s image according to Western European notions of Hellenism. Furthermore, it was not unusual for these scholars to create themselves quasi-demotic songs, in the manner and style of oral tradition. This was the case, for instance, of Georgios Tertsetis, whose quasi-demotic song ‘The Fair Retribution’ (H Δικαία Eκδίκησις) raises issues regarding desire between men, but also upon the impossibility of the subjects of such a desire to be mourned and lamented. Departing from an analysis of ‘The Fair Retribution’, and after offering a selective overview of the discourses of early folklorists regarding the use of Greek laments in the nationalist project, this article proceeds with a self-reflexive account of my lecture-performance Poustia kai Ololygmos: Selections from the Occult Songs of the Greek People. Enacting a pseudo-scientific persona, in this performance I announced the fictive discovery of an archive of Greek laments, which addresses issues of queer mourning and desire, while also bringing to the fore the absence of lament when it comes to queer subjectivities, in the past, but also in the present.

scholarly journals Identity of Ao-Naga and Sümi-Naga Women as Gleaned from Folklores

2018 ◽  
Vol 10 (3) ◽  
pp. 94
Author(s):  
Resenmenla Longchar ◽  
H. Salome Kinny
Keyword(s):  
Oral Tradition ◽  
Cultural Practices ◽  
Striking Feature ◽  
Traditional Beliefs ◽  
The Third ◽  
The Past ◽  
Construction Of Identity ◽  
The Village ◽  
The Way

The word identity has drawn a lot of attention to itself more so in the present age where everyone seems to be in a quest to establish their own identity. This quest for identity is not an alien concept to Naga society which comprises of sixteen officially recognized communities. These communities rely upon their own set of folklores to glean their past. Folklores are a strong medium through which most of the traditional beliefs and cultural practices are embodied. It is a reflection of the past through which the identity of the community can be gleaned. Folklores are not mere spinning of tales to glorify one’s own community, but are narratives of the communities who follow oral-tradition. This paper attempts to glean the identity of Ao-Naga and Sümi-Naga women through their respective folklores. Ao-Naga and Sümi-Naga are two strong communities residing in Nagaland. Both the communities have rich folklores falling into different genres. A striking feature of most folktales is the way details are presented- the name of the village, location and presence of evidence in the present times suggesting the validity of the events in the folktales. After the construction of identity is done, this paper will compare the identity of women of these two communities. Women of both these communities have come a long way from what they were in the past. As the third and final component of this paper, it will analyse whether women are still under grip of their past identity or whether they have moved away from it to build a new identity for themselves in the 21<sup>st</sup> Century. This paper will further examine the identity of women in the 21<sup>st</sup> Century in the light of their past as constructed from the folklores.

scholarly journals Variation in Thematic-Rhematic Articulation of a Sentence (On the Example of Recordings of the Short Story A Malefactor by Anton Chekhov)

2020 ◽  
Vol 19 (2) ◽  
pp. 71-78
Author(s):  
Ilya M. Plotnikov ◽  
Elena S. Kuznetsova
Keyword(s):  
Comparative Study ◽  
Short Story ◽  
Syntactic Structure ◽  
Anton Chekhov ◽  
Audio Recordings ◽  
Do So ◽  
The Way

The aim of this article is to study the variation of topical structure depending on the intentions of the speaker. The article proposes a method of comparative study of voiced texts via their topical structure, which allows observing paradigmatic potential of a sentence within a preset context. In order to do so, the thematic-rhematic articulation of the text is compared to the articulations of its audio recordings. The deviations observed serve as a representation of the communicative intentions of the speaker. In the short story under consideration, more than a half of the utterances exhibit at least some degree of variation. The examples show that the thematic-rhematic articulation of an utterance influences its meaning, the way it interacts with the context and in some cases even its syntactic structure. Thus, thematic-rhematic articulation is a key concept for describing realization of a sentence in speech.

scholarly journals Invertebrate taxonomy and evolutionary developmental biology*

Zootaxa ◽  
2007 ◽  
Vol 1668 (1) ◽  
pp. 55-60 ◽  
Author(s):  
ALESSANDRO MINELLI
Keyword(s):  
Developmental Biology ◽  
Evolutionary Biology ◽  
Evolutionary Developmental Biology ◽  
Research Area ◽  
The Past ◽  
New Research ◽  
Evo Devo ◽  
The Way

Evolutionary developmental biology (evo-devo) is a new research area where the traditions of evolutionary biology and developmental biology merge together. As in the past there has been a fruitful two-way exchange between evolutionary biology and taxonomy, and also between developmental biology and taxonomy, now the way is open for two-way exchanges between taxonomy and evolutionary developmental biology.

scholarly journals A Hauntological Reading of Daphne du Maurier’s “Rebecca”

2021 ◽  
Vol 7 (1) ◽  
pp. 21-36
Author(s):  
Nil Korkut-Nayki
Keyword(s):  
Theoretical Approach ◽  
Jacques Derrida ◽  
Literary Analysis ◽  
The Novel ◽  
The Past ◽  
Traditional Approaches ◽  
Transgenerational Haunting ◽  
Do So ◽  
The Way

This essay focuses on the way the main characters in Daphne du Maurier’s novel Rebecca (1938) cope with the haunting influence of the past and attempts to read their struggle through the theoretical approach developed by Jacques Derrida in his Specters of Marx (1993). This approach, termed “hauntology” by Derrida himself, revolves around the notion of the “specter” haunting the present and emphasizes the need to find new ways of responding to it, especially because of the existing ontological failure to do so. The essay complements this reading with the earlier comparable theory of the “phantom” and “transgenerational haunting” developed by psychoanalysts Nicolas Abraham and Maria Torok. A “hauntological” reading of Rebecca through these tools yields results that are significantly different from traditional approaches. Suggesting that the main characters in Rebecca are complete failures in dealing with the specter in a Derridean sense, the essay argues that the novel expects from the discerning reader a more insightful approach and a better potential to understand the specter. It is suggested further that a proper acknowledgement of the specter in Rebecca reaches beyond this particular novel, having subtle but significant implications concerning not only literary analysis but also social and cultural prejudices.

Myth, Memento, and Memory: Avebury (Wiltshire, England)

2015 ◽  
Author(s):  
David Wheatley
Keyword(s):  
Cultural Memory ◽  
Oral Tradition ◽  
World View ◽  
Anterograde Amnesia ◽  
Oral Traditions ◽  
Future Generations ◽  
The Past ◽  
The World ◽  
The Way

In Christopher Nolan’s film Memento (Nolan 2000), Leonard Shelby— played by Guy Pearce—suffers from anterograde amnesia, which prevents him from generating any new memories. To deal with this, he creates material traces such as Polaroid photographs and notes and he tattoos the most significant facts onto his body. Each time he awakes, he encounters these mementos (notes, images, and tattoos) and must interpret them in order to decide what to do next. He sometimes leaves messages for himself, intended to constrain his future behaviour, but while these messages effect his actions, some of the notes or photos may be lost or destroyed, or he may fail to realize that they have been manipulated or altered. Further, he may not interpret them correctly, so that his actions are not what he intended. Despite his amnesia, however, the past is always implicated in Leonard’s story and it is always changing his future. In some sense, the way that Leonard leaves mementos for himself is a more interesting model for the way that successive human communities encounter the remains of the past than the idea of biographies. Just as on Leonard’s tattooed body, traces of the past such as earthworks and monuments are inscribed onto the landscape, yet oral tradition cannot transmit the detailed meanings of those traces or the intentions of their creators through long sequences of time so that human communities encountering them later are, metaphorically, amnesiacs. Sometimes earthworks and monuments are built with the intention of projecting a particular world-view, constraining future generations to act in particular (‘correct’) ways. Over long periods, however, oral traditions distort, people move away and areas are occupied by new inhabitants with no cultural memory of those intentions or meanings. Just as with Leonard’s tattoos, monuments become mementos that have to be interpreted and situated within a contemporary understanding of the world before meaningful action is possible. If we think of both Leonard’s tattoos and the physical traces of the past as mementos, then it’s worth thinking how these differ from memories.

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