scholarly journals Time and narrative: Temporality, memory, and instant history of Balkan wars

2016 ◽  
Vol 27 (2) ◽  
pp. 239-272 ◽  
Author(s):  
Enika Abazi ◽  
Albert Doja
Keyword(s):  
Twentieth Century ◽  
Collective Memory ◽  
Media Industry ◽  
Southeast Europe ◽  
Balkan Wars ◽  
History Of ◽  
Narrative Temporality

In this article, we explore the ways in which from the beginning to the end of twentieth century different temporalities and historicizations stemming from different narrative perspectives on the Balkan wars have constructed different commonplace, timeworn and enduring representations. In practical terms, we take issue with several patterns of narratives, such as the sensationalism of media industry, the essentialization of collective memory, the securitization of imaginary threats and the pacifist activism of normative transformations. It is our contention to argue that they historicize certain moments of rupture, which are subsequently used and misused to construct an anachronistic representation of Southeast Europe that may conceal hidden interests. Contrastingly, an alternative narrative that emphasizes a “history from below” as an apperception of the temporality of being can offer a revisionist approach that may show the futility of ahistorical accounts. 1

scholarly journals Abazi, Enika, and Albert Doja (2017) "The past in the present: time and narrative of Balkan wars in media industry and international politics." Third World Quarterly, 38 (4), pp. 1012-1042

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Enika Abazi ◽  
Albert Doja
Keyword(s):  
Collective Memory ◽  
Policy Making ◽  
Third World ◽  
Media Industry ◽  
Southeast Europe ◽  
Historical Knowledge ◽  
The Past ◽  
Balkan Wars ◽  
Truth Claims ◽  
Narrative Patterns

In this article, we explore various forms of travel writing, media reporting, diplomatic record, policy-making, truth claims and expert accounts in which different narrative perspectives on the Balkan wars, both old (1912–1913) and new (1991–1999), have been most evident. We argue that the ways in which these perspectives are rooted in different temporalities and historicisations have resulted in the construction of commonplace and time-worn representations. In practical terms, we take issue with several patterns of narratives that have led to the sensationalism of media industry and the essentialisation of collective memory. Taken together as a common feature of contemporary policy and analysis in the dominant international opinion, politics and scholarship, these narrative patterns show that historical knowledge is conveyed in ways that make present and represent the accounts of another past, and the ways in which beliefs collectively held by actors in international society are constructed as media events and public hegemonic representations. The aim is to show how certain moments of rupture are historicised, and subsequently used and misused to construct an anachronistic representation of Southeast Europe.

Defeat as Moral Victory

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Beatrice Heuser
Keyword(s):  
Twentieth Century ◽  
Collective Memory ◽  
Violent Death ◽  
Philosophical Approach ◽  
Balkan Wars ◽  
The Subject ◽  
The Dead ◽  
As If

This contribution adds to the legal-philosophical approach to the subject of victory by focusing on defeat as a moral victory in collective memory, mentality, and culture. Such a defeat can take the form of the violent death of an individual or a group in battle. At times the dead are commemorated as fallen heroes, just as if they had won their battle, but in addition they will be seen as martyrs to a cause that is construed as giving meaning to their sacrifice. Their death is celebrated as a moral victory if the cause outlasted this event and ultimately triumphed, or is still pursued. Instances can be found where such events, long past, have even recently still fuelled wars, as with the Irish Troubles or the Balkan Wars at the beginning and end of the twentieth century.

Waltz of the Oil Field

2020 ◽  
Vol 6 (2) ◽  
pp. 148-175
Author(s):  
Daryl Meador
Keyword(s):  
Twentieth Century ◽  
Collective Memory ◽  
Oral History ◽  
Oil Industry ◽  
Oil Field ◽  
History Of ◽  
The Voice ◽  
Insight Into

This paper critically listens to the Oral History of the Texas Oil Industry archives, a concatenation of slightly drawling white oilmen recorded in the mid twentieth century. The uniformity of the authorial voices in this archive helps to construct a monolithic white historiography that sanitizes collective memory in Texas. The archive offers insight into the sonic qualities of power in Texas as it is mediated through an idealized Texan identity via accent. In an effort to unsettle the authority of this totalizing Texan identity and its voice, this paper also listens to the history of Creole music as it migrated into Texas and transformed in contact with the state's oil industry. Placing these two different vocal histories together, one self-assured and one characterized by stretching its own limits, interrogates how we listen to the voice in history, attuned to sonic and vocal notations of power as it has alternately been enjoyed or endured.

Epilogue

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Brenda Assael
Keyword(s):  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
Twentieth Century ◽  
Collective Memory ◽  
Urban Experience ◽  
Modern Britain ◽  
History Of ◽  
Eating Out ◽  
The Way ◽  
Metropolitan History

The epilogue begins with consideration of the way the nineteenth-century London restaurant features in individual and collective memory. It insists that such memories were not exclusively characterized by notions of dispossession, melancholy, or regret, and the distance between eating out in the middle of the nineteenth century and the dawn of the twentieth century was often expressed through the sentiments of progress and improvement. It then moves on to a reflection on how returning the restaurant to a central role in our understanding of metropolitan history in the Victorian and Edwardian period has important connotations for how the history of Modern Britain, more broadly, might be researched and written. In particular, the restaurant requires more attention to be given to the more materially grounded aspects of the urban experience as much as it does to the more abstracted motifs of representation, performance, and subjectivity.

scholarly journals W poszukiwaniu „narodowości w fotografice”

2018 ◽  
pp. 65-86
Author(s):  
Maciej Szymanowicz
Keyword(s):  
Twentieth Century ◽  
Collective Memory ◽  
20Th Century ◽  
Theoretical Basis ◽  
The State ◽  
Early 20Th Century ◽  
Historical Experience ◽  
History Of ◽  
First Time ◽  
National Style

In Search for the “National Features in Photography” Summary The main point of the paper is the interest of Polish photographers in nationalist ideas, which has long been one of the forgotten and overlooked episodes in the history of twentieth-century Polish photography. The issue appeared for the first time in 1931-1933, when Polish photographic magazines published a debate about revealing national traits in a photo. It was an aftermath of the idea of the national style in Polish art, promoted since the early 1920s in relation to the needs of the state that just became independent. The greatest authorities of the time took part in the debate, including Jan Bułhak, Józef Świtkowski, Jan Sunderland, and Antoni Wieczorek, who were the main theorists of the Polish photography in the early 20th century. Analyzing the problem, they reverted to various arguments, from purely formal ones, assuming a characteristic tendency of Polish artists to choose particular forms and types of composition (a view based on the theory of pictorialism), through thematic (referring to collective memory and the historical experience of Poles), sociological, and even legal (based on the ideas of Leon Petrażycki). The same arguments were often used later throughout the century. The paper presents the development and theoretical basis of the debate in the early 1930s, as well as later evolution of the concepts which, coined at that time, contributed to the theory of Polish photography in the 20th century.

A Cultural History of Memory in the Long Twentieth Century

2020 ◽  
Keyword(s):  
Twentieth Century ◽  
Collective Memory ◽  
Cultural History ◽  
Memory Studies ◽  
Central Place ◽  
Modern World ◽  
Nation State ◽  
Methodological Nationalism ◽  
The Holocaust ◽  
History Of

A Cultural History of Memory in the Twentieth Century cannot be written without taking into account the massive impact of the nation state on collective memory formation. This volume explores the power of the nation as a framework for the operation of collective memory but, in line with recent memory theory, the contributions also warn against the pitfalls of ‘methodological nationalism’ which risks subsuming society under the rubric of the nation-state. Likewise, it would be hard to imagine a cultural history of twentieth century memory which did not accord the Holocaust a central place in that history. As such, several chapters in this volume address this genocide. One key concern which emerges in this book is the question of periodization: how should we conceive of patterns in memory over the course of the twentieth century? Many developments in memory across the globe are connected by the fact that political, social and cultural forces in the twentieth century have been and remain global in reach. As such, this volume underlines the importance of progressing the agenda of ‘transnational memory’ studies. In doing so, A Cultural History of Memory in the Twentieth Century emphasizes the need to move beyond a focus on memory of war and genocide and seeks to offer a rich and diverse study of memory in the modern world.

Military Jubilees on the Borderline between the 20th and 21st Centuries: Conteporary Tendencies in the Theory and Practice of the Memorial Culture

Epohi ◽  
2020 ◽  
Vol 28 (2) ◽  
Author(s):  
Vladimir Zemtsov ◽  
Keyword(s):  
Twentieth Century ◽  
World War Ii ◽  
Historical Memory ◽  
50Th Anniversary ◽  
Theory And Practice ◽  
Southeast Europe ◽  
World War ◽  
Politics Of Memory ◽  
80Th Anniversary ◽  
History Of

The article based on materials from military anniversaries of the late XX – early XXI centuries reveals the main trends in the politics of memory in relation to the history of wars of the XIX–XX centuries against the backdrop of digitalization of the information space. The 50th anniversary of the end of World War II (1995) and the events related to the 80th anniversary of the beginning of this war (2019), as well as the 250th anniversary of the birth of Napoleon (2019) are taken as milestone events. As a result of the study, the author identified two trends. Firstly, a trend of a transnational and transcultural nature, focused mainly on general humanistic values. Secondly, the tendency towards a nationally-oriented and politically biased policy, which became prevailing from 2004-2005. The second trend has become characteristic, first of all, for most countries of the post-Soviet space, including the countries of Central and Southeast Europe and Russia. Judging by the fact that a number of Asian countries (primarily China and Japan) have come to the forefront of anniversary events related to World War II, the tendency to decisively revise the transnational and transcultural vectors in the politics of memory in these countries has also become dominant. Western countries also, regardless of attempts to maintain a commitment to tolerance and transnationalism, were caught up in “memory wars” and, as a rule, in connection with the events of military history. The activation of the “memory wars” is largely associated with fundamental changes in the information environment, primarily in connection with the processes of its digitalization. The author believes that the prevalence of the second trend was predetermined by the end of the modernist revolution, which by the end of the twentieth century ended as the dominant world process that determined main parameters of the historical process in the second half of the twentieth century. The consequence of this from the turn of the century has been an increase in the fragmentation of the world and an explosion of thirst for identity. In this regard, historical memory and its twin-antipode, historical politics, have become the main tools (and often creators) of this identity - national, state, religious, ethnic, group and any other form of identity.

Hard Objects in George Oppen's Discrete Series

2018 ◽  
Vol 13 (4) ◽  
pp. 496-517
Author(s):  
Ned Hercock
Keyword(s):  
Twentieth Century ◽  
Ludwig Wittgenstein ◽  
Discrete Series ◽  
Human Experience ◽  
John Ruskin ◽  
Gerard Manley Hopkins ◽  
Marcel Duchamp ◽  
The World ◽  
Production History ◽  
History Of

This essay examines the objects in George Oppen's Discrete Series (1934). It considers their primary property to be their hardness – many of them have distinctively uniform and impenetrable surfaces. This hardness and uniformity is contrasted with 19th century organicism (Gerard Manley Hopkins and John Ruskin). Taking my cue from Kirsten Blythe Painter I show how in their work with hard objects these poems participate within a wider cultural and philosophical turn towards hardness in the early twentieth century (Marcel Duchamp, Adolf Loos, Ludwig Wittgenstein and others). I describe the thinking these poems do with regard to industrialization and to human experience of a resolutely object world – I argue that the presentation of these objects bears witness to the production history of the type of objects which in this era are becoming preponderant in parts of the world. Finally, I suggest that the objects’ impenetrability offers a kind of anti-aesthetic relief: perception without conception. If ‘philosophy recognizes the Concept in everything’ it is still possible, these poems show, to experience resistance to this imperious process of conceptualization. Within thinking objects (poems) these are objects which do not think.

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