Echoes and Whispers: Becoming Modern with Elizabeth Polack

2021 ◽  
pp. 174837272110368
Author(s):  
Sharon Aronofsky Weltman
Keyword(s):  
Cultural Memory ◽  
Jewish Woman ◽  
Full Length ◽  
The Past ◽  
Stage Play

Elizabeth Polack (fl. 1834–1843) is the earliest known Jewish woman playwright in Britain. In this essay, I detail the historiographical difficulties in researching Polack's lost play The Echo of Westminster Bridge (1835), which lived vibrantly in cultural memory for a century even though the play itself disappeared and its author receded into obscurity. One problem with becoming modern is confronting the increasing inaccessibility of the past. I demonstrate that, notwithstanding some confusion about authorship, Echo is by Polack and that her melodrama made a long-standing impact. I delineate the special problems associated with using a twenty-page Skelt's toy theatre condensation of the full-length stage play to reconstruct some of its main features. Then I speculate that – like Polack's best-known play, Esther, The Royal Jewess (1835) – Polack's The Echo of Westminster Bridge also potentially nudges forward the cause of Jewish emancipation. But how can one study a play that was popular and influential but has ceased to exist? That metacritical problem – the ephemerality of theatre and its compounding challenges for research – is part of the condition of the modern.

Re-centering the Cinema Experience in a Multi-Platform, Digital Age

2015 ◽  
Vol 8 (5) ◽  
Author(s):  
E. W. Nikdel
Keyword(s):  
Physical Environment ◽  
Cultural Memory ◽  
Emotional Response ◽  
Physical Space ◽  
Film History ◽  
Cultural Activity ◽  
Film Culture ◽  
The Past ◽  
Imminent Death ◽  
Multiple Media

With the advent of online distribution and the rise of multiple media devices, claims of the cinema’s imminent death have surfaced with greater intensity than ever before. Of course, with an ever-widening array of platforms these accounts have placed a newfound emphasis on the cinema as a distinctive physical space, one that plays host to a very particular and much cherished cultural activity. This article considers the substance of these claims by tracing a very particular historical route. Firstly, be revisiting Baudry’s notion of the dispositif, this article detects the importance of the physical environment in the process of film consumption. Secondly, I relate this emphasis on the physical to the traditional notion of the cinephile, a practice that ritualises the cinema experience. Many accounts across the spectrum of film history will attest to the profound ways in which the physical experience of the cinema summons a rich emotional response. Lastly, I consider how the cinema and the collective nature of film consumption provides an authentic trace to the past and a very certain time and place in history. In turn, despite competition from cheaper and more convenient platforms, this article will endeavour to show how the cinema retains its place at the centre of contemporary film culture. KEYWORDS Cinema, dispositif, cinephilia, cultural memory.

City’s Cultural Memory: Modern Practices of Symbolizing the Past

2021 ◽  
Vol 18 (4) ◽  
pp. 352-364
Author(s):  
Natalia G. Fedotova
Keyword(s):  
Cultural Memory ◽  
Point Of View ◽  
Fundamental Aspect ◽  
Modern World ◽  
Cultural Meanings ◽  
Urban Identity ◽  
Symbolic Forms ◽  
The Past ◽  
Symbolic Resource ◽  
The City

The article is devoted to the discourse of the city’s cultural memory. The relevance of studying this topic is determined not only by the fundamental aspect associated with the episodicity of existing studies of this phenomenon. From an applied point of view, the city’s cultural memory is a symbolic resource that can be used to create an appealing image, form a sustainable urban identity, and strengthen the citizen’s sense of belonging to the city. The accumulation and objectification of cultural memory take place in symbolic forms, which makes it important to study the practices of symbolizing the urban past, the essence of which is to generate the significance of the relevant or latent layers of cultural memory for the citizens.The article presents the results of the final stage of research related to the study of the process of constructing the cultural memory of the city. The purpose of the article is to analyze modern practices of symbolizing fragments of the urban past, which mean their significance for contemporaries. Basing on the culturological cross-section of the issue, the author integrates different research contexts. The methodological basis of the article is the communicative approach that focuses on the processes of meaning formation, and the constructivist method that considers memory as a multi-layered and dynamic construct. Analyzing the practices of symbolizing the urban past by the example of Russian cities, the author of the article demonstrates how the episodes of the city’s memory are updated in the modern world, how cultural meanings become memorable for citizens. The author uses the results of previous studies and identifies the following elements of the symbolization of the urban past: a) ways of encoding fragments of the past; b) communicative trajectories of memory symbolization; c) factors of producing meanings about the collective past of the city. The obtained results open up new frontiers in understanding the processes of formation of the collective ideas about the city, and prospects for empirical research, forecasting and constructing the cultural memory of Russian cities, giving them the opportunity to change their present and future.

scholarly journals Television as a Hybrid Repertoire of Memory

2013 ◽  
Vol 2 (3) ◽  
pp. 52 ◽  
Author(s):  
Berber Hagedoorn
Keyword(s):  
Cultural Memory ◽  
New Model ◽  
The Past ◽  
Media Platform ◽  
The Media ◽  
Dynamic Production

In this article, television is reconsidered as a hybrid ‘repertoire’ ofmemory. It is demonstrated how new dynamic production and scheduling practicesin connection with highly accessible and participatory forms of user engagementoffer opportunities for television users to engage with the past, and how suchpractices affect television as a practice of memory. The media platform HollandDoc is discussed as a principal casestudy. By adopting and expanding Aleida Assmann’s model of the dynamics ofcultural memory between remembering and forgetting, a new model to studytelevision as cultural memory is proposed which represents the medium’shybridity in the multi-platform era.

scholarly journals Reception of Natalie's Ramonda, Armistice Day Symbol in Serbia

2020 ◽  
Vol 14 (4) ◽  
Author(s):  
Senka Kovač
Keyword(s):  
Cultural Memory ◽  
Representative Sample ◽  
Public Discourse ◽  
First Year ◽  
World War ◽  
World War One ◽  
First Year Students ◽  
The Public ◽  
Ongoing Process ◽  
The Past

Nataliе’s Ramonda, a symbol of Armistice Day – November 11 in Serbia, is a new memorial symbol constructed and promoted by politicians in 2012. The Armistice Day was celebrated then as a national holiday in Serbia. The reception of this symbol has been explored over a five-year period, both in a public discourse and on a representative sample of first year students at the Faculty of Philosophy in Belgrade. In public discourse, as well as among students of the Faculty of Philosophy, Natalie’s Ramonda is perceived as an emblem, a badge, and most often as a symbol. It was seen as an emblem on the lapel of public and media figures, inaccessible to broad commercial promotion and sales. In public discourse and among students at the Faculty of Philosophy, Natalie’s Ramonda was perceived in several answers as a medal, and is also recognized as a flower that symbolizes the suffering of the Serbian people in World War One; symbol of the nation’s rebirth – the flower phoenix, as a mark of peace and freedom. As a newly constructed symbol of the Armistice Day in Serbia, for the past seven years, Natalie’s Ramonda has been a mediator in the public culture of remembrance and in the ongoing process, by becoming a part of cultural memory.

scholarly journals On Memory of Plates and Dishes

Fluminensia ◽  
2020 ◽  
Vol 32 (2) ◽  
pp. 117-136
Author(s):  
Krystyna Pieniążek-Marković
Keyword(s):  
Cultural Memory ◽  
Regional Identity ◽  
Literary Fiction ◽  
Western World ◽  
Individual Identity ◽  
The Past ◽  
Literary Sources ◽  
The Social ◽  
History Of ◽  
The Common

The aim of the article is to discuss how elements of food narratives meals and kitchen tools used for cooking are used in order to consolidate and shape the Croatian cultural memory, especially in the context of its Mediterranean heritage.For this reason, the texts by Veljko Barbieri, collected in the four volumes under the common and significant title Kuharski kanconijer. Gurmanska sjećanja Mediterana, are analysed. His circum-culinary narratives are a combination of encyclopaedic knowledge, references to historical and literary sources, personal memories and literary fiction. They can be easily inscribed in the Croatian (collective and individual) identity discourse since they are able to strengthen the collective (either national and supranational, or geo-regional) identity, and to construct the cultural memory. They also show Croatia's affiliation to the Western world along with its cultural-civilization rooting in antiquity, the Mediterranean region and Christianity, thus forming a part of the founding memory that develops a narrative about the very beginnings of Croatian presence on this land. The gastronomic narratives serve to create the cultural memory and this version of history which is to stabilize the social identity described by Pierre Nora and Andreas Huyssen. Through his stories, Barbieri shapes memory based on the representation of the past. In the analysed narratives, the memory carriers are dishes and plates which find reference to the oldest history of Croatia rendered by myths and other narratives. Associated with dishes, the pots enable the narrator to recall the past and the identity coded in individual dishes. They also participate in the processes of repeating, storage and remembering which generate a symbiotic relationship between man and thing. The memory carriers that is, food and plates depicted in Barbieri's culinary narratives do not convey their content in a neutral way, but construct their marked images.

scholarly journals Rola języka w uwalnianiu się z dziedzicznych traum

Politeja ◽  
2020 ◽  
Vol 17 (2(65)) ◽  
pp. 189-204
Author(s):  
Katarzyna Marcol
Keyword(s):  
Collective Memory ◽  
Cultural Memory ◽  
Social Position ◽  
Traumatic Experiences ◽  
The Past ◽  
The Social ◽  
The World ◽  
The 19Th Century ◽  
The Village

The Role of Language in Releasing from Inherited Traumas. Negotiations of the Social Position of the Silesian Minority in Serbian Banat The aim of the paper is to show the dependence between language, collective memory (also post-memory) and sense of identity. This issue is analysed using the example of an ethnic minority living in the village of Ostojićevo (Banat, Serbia) called ‘Toutowie.’ Their ancestors came in the 19th century from Wisła (Silesian Cieszyn, Poland); they left their homes because of great hunger and were looking for jobs in Banat. Narratives about the past contain traumatic experiences of the past generations transmitted in the Silesian dialect and constituting communicative memory. At the same time, a new Polish national identity is being constructed, supported by institutions and authorities; it carries a new image of the world and creates a new cultural memory. This new identity – shaped on the basis of national categories – leads to changes of its self-identification and gives the opportunity to raise its social position in the multi-ethnic Banat community.

scholarly journals The fiction of History: recalling the past and imagining the future with Caesar at Troy.

2010 ◽  
Vol 23 (1/2) ◽  
pp. 143-160
Author(s):  
Richard Alston
Keyword(s):  
Cultural Memory ◽  
Political Power ◽  
Human Mind ◽  
Historical Narrative ◽  
Cultural Trauma ◽  
Historical Account ◽  
Historical Discourse ◽  
The Past ◽  
The Future ◽  
A Site

This essay considers the nature of historical discourse through a consideration of the historical narrative of Lucan’s Pharsalia. The focus is on the manner in which Lucan depicts history as capable of being fictionalised, especially through the operation of political power. The discourses of history make a historical account, but those discourses are not, in Lucan's view, true, but are fictionalised. The key study comes from Caesar at Troy, when Lucan explores the idea of a site (and history) which cannot be understood, but which nevertheless can be employed in a representation of the past. yet, Lucan also alludes to a ‘true history’, which is unrepresentable in his account of Pharsalus, and beyond the scope of the human mind. Lucan’s true history can be read against Benjamin and Tacitus. Lucan offers a framework of history that has the potential to be post-Roman (in that it envisages a world in which there is no Rome), and one in which escapes the frames of cultural memory, both in its fictionalisation and in the dependence of Roman imperial memory on cultural trauma.

scholarly journals ‘Text as condenser of cultural memory’: intertextual space of Valerii Shevchuk’s prose

2020 ◽  
pp. 33-54
Author(s):  
Iryna Prylipko
Keyword(s):  
Cultural Memory ◽  
Continuous Process ◽  
Time And Space ◽  
The Past ◽  
The Bible ◽  
Intertextual Dialogue

The paper considers the demonstrative aspects of intertext in the prose by Valerii Shevchuk and focuses on the peculiarities of the works’ interaction with the Bible, mythology, and literature, which takes place at the level of different forms and types of intertext. Particular attention is paid to revealing the specifc ‘dialogue’ of V. Shevchuk’s works with their pretexts — hagiography, autobiographical and diary’s literature of Baroque. ɒ e examples discussed testify to the depth and ramifications of the intertextual dialogue in the writer’s prose, reveal the intellectual, philosophical, and elitist nature of his texts. A dialogue with the Bible, mythology, world and Ukrainian literature in the works by V. Shevchuk unfolds in the form of open and hidden quotations, allusions, reminiscences. These details aim at deepening the representation of ideas and themes, forming the subtexts, interpreting images. The writer creates a new artistic form — metatext — mainly through the reinterpretation of the pretexts, among which the works of the Baroque period (poetic, autobiographical, diary genres) and hagiography dominate. Transforming the pretexts at the level of contents, plot, genre, time and space, narrative, V. Shevchuk expands them with monologues, dialogues, descriptions, and details. In the process of interpreting prototexts, the writer resorts to modeling original images, in the context of which he actualizes some worldview points, reveals important moral, ethical, and philosophical problems. Allowing the perception of his work as a ‘textual game’, the writer, at the same time, does not reduce the role of intertext to the level of intellectual play. Intertext becomes a peculiar way of continuing the literary discourses of the past in a dialogue with them. They become re-read, ‘supplemented’ and thus brought once again into the continuous process of forming culture.

scholarly journals Cultural Memory and Urban Space in Shaping Cultural Identity

2019 ◽  
pp. 160-183
Author(s):  
Valentyna Bohatyrets ◽  
Liubov Melnychuk
Keyword(s):  
Urban Space ◽  
Cultural Memory ◽  
Urban Landscape ◽  
Late 20Th Century ◽  
The Past ◽  
Historical Archives ◽  
City Space ◽  
New Type ◽  
The City ◽  
Historic Cities

Nowadays, in the age of massive spatial transformations in the built environment, cities witness a new type of development, different in size, scale and momentum that has been thriving since late 20th century. Diverse transformation of historic cities under modernisation has led to concerns in terms of the space and time continuity disintegration and the preservation of historic cities. In a similar approach, we can state that city and city space do not only consist of present, they also consist of the past; they include the transformations, relations, values, struggles and tensions of the past. As it could be defined, space is the history itself. Currently, we would like to display how Chernivtsi cultural and architectural heritage is perceived and maintained in the course of its evolution. Noteworthy, Chernivtsi city is speculated a condensed human existence and vibes, with public urban space and its ascriptions are its historical archives and sacred memory. Throughout the history, CHERNIVTSI’s urban landscape has changed, while preserving its unique and distinctive spirit of diversity, multifacetedness and tolerance. The city squares of the Austrian, Romanian and Soviet epochs were crammed with statuary of royal elites and air of aristocracy, soviet leaders and a shade of patriotic obsession, symbolic animals and sacred piety – that eventually shaped its unique “Bukovynian supranational identity”. Keywords: Chernivtsi, cultural memory, memory studies, monuments, squares, identity.

Modern Museum and Paramuseum: Existential Alienation and Actualization

2021 ◽  
Vol 13 (3-2) ◽  
pp. 410-425
Author(s):  
Denis Ignatyev ◽  
◽  
Anastasia Nikiforova ◽  
Keyword(s):  
Cultural Memory ◽  
Cultural Objects ◽  
The Past ◽  
Synergistic Approach ◽  
Historical Objects ◽  
First Time ◽  
Scientific Life ◽  
Northwestern Russia

The article is devoted to the study of the problem of alienation of culture in a modern museum and the processes of actualization of objects and phenomena of history in the space of the paramuseum. In the center of the author’s attention is the theme of creating the illusion of existential comfort. It explores the contradiction between the need for museification of culture in order for a modern person to be able to appeal to it when building one’s own identity, and the constant desire to place the culture of the past on a safe reservation. The issue of aestheticization of cultural objects in the museum space and the role of a museum in interpreting, preserving and distorting their meaning is raised. The museum, created as a repository of antiquities, a collection of masterpieces, today has become the most sensitive system that responds to changes in the life of culture and society. An axiological analysis of modern museums shows their growing popularity as an element of the entertainment industry, while their aesthetic, analytical, and intellectual role is becoming obscure. Respect for the museum as a keeper of cultural memory, for the focus of scientific life is disappearing. Instead, a simplified “attraction museum” and paramuseum is coming to the fore, creating endless games with historical objects, reconstructions, visitors and interpretations of the events of history and culture. The authors of the article are among the first to turn to the concept of “paramuseum” and give it a comprehensive assessment. For the first time, a scientific classification of paramuseums (on the example of paramuseums of northwestern Russia) is proposed. Their main features and characteristics are identified. A synergistic approach to the processes of actualization and alienation of cultural objects in the museum environment made it possible to include the viewer, the recipient, as the third, necessary component of this system. This made it possible to conclude that museum values are alienated or updated not by themselves, but only in relation to the “person watching.” Thus, modern museums and paramuseums are a form of value-based self-consciousness of society, demonstrating the total stratification of post-culture society, its fragmentation into value clusters that can represent culture as a whole only in the process of analytical consciousness, but not in the collection of subject series.

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