scholarly journals Beyond the Battlefields of Memory: Historical Traumas and Hungarian Literature

Porównania ◽  
2020 ◽  
Vol 27 (2) ◽  
pp. 47-58
Author(s):  
Tamás Kisantal
Keyword(s):  
Twentieth Century ◽  
Collective Memory ◽  
Literary Fiction ◽  
Historical Events ◽  
Literary Works ◽  
Literary Representation ◽  
Hungarian Literature ◽  
The Past ◽  
Cultural Field ◽  
Literary Canons

One can describe the contemporary Hungarian collective memory as an interpretational field of some traumatic historical events of the twentieth century. The essay aims to sketch some important tendencies of the literary representation of these events after the millennium. At first, it outlines the wider social and political contexts of these literary works. Secondly, it models the current Hungarian cultural field as an opposition between two strategies of memory labeling them in Michael Rothberg’s terminology as competitive and multidirectional ones. These approaches to the past are also associated with different ideological implications and literary canons. Finally, with a brief overview of some recent novels, the essay demonstrates some pathways of representing multidirectional attitudes to the past in the Hungarian literary fiction of the 2000s.

scholarly journals THE IMPORTANCE OF HISTORICAL MEMORY IN HUMAN FATE (ON THE MATERIAL OF THE NOVELS "OLD MAN" BY YURI TRIFONOV AND "PLANET OF MR. SEMMLER" SOLA BELLOU)

2020 ◽  
Vol 10 (86) ◽  
Author(s):  
Ivan Bratus ◽  
◽  
Zoriana Sverdlyk ◽  
Anna Gunka ◽  
◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Twentieth Century ◽  
Detrimental Effect ◽  
Historical Memory ◽  
Traumatic Experience ◽  
Moral Choice ◽  
Historical Events ◽  
Literary Works ◽  
The Past ◽  
Personal Experiences ◽  
The Right

The article analyzes the significance of historical memory in the context of personal experiences of the heroes of the literary works of Solo Bellow and Yuri Trifonov. The question of comprehension of the lived years with elements of the analysis and first of all self-analysis is considered. Particular attention is paid to times of hardship – wars, revolutions, personal tragedies. The authors dwell on the importance of "the right moral choice", on the detrimental effect of "wrong choice". It is proved that the novels "Mr. Semmler's Planet" and "The Old Man" are in approximately the same plane of cultural and historical understanding of reality, the main characters have similar qualities and their general irritation with modernity is relative regardless of different countries (USA and USSR). In modern Ukraine, the problem of overcoming the totalitarian past is quite relevant. Ukrainians have gained a traumatic experience of counteraction and adaptation, comprehension and forgetting, condemnation and justification of certain historical events of the twentieth century. Turning to the literary works of the second half of the twentieth century allows us to better understand the nature of contemporary phenomena, to learn from the useful experience of intellectual writers in trying to "reconcile with reality", to overcome the inertia of oblivion and to find basic values of human existence. human layer. Sol Bellow and Yuri Trifonov were able to describe their main characters quite accurately – they are old, "locked in their memories". Only the past remains their "true" reality, but at the same time they have to live in a "present" alien to them. Continuation of their biological life does not satisfy the main characters of the analyzed works - they try to convey their memories or thoughts to the younger generation. But here they encounter a conditional wall of misunderstanding, a wall of alienation. The considerations and feelings important to them have mostly lost their relevance and turned into rudiments. Only a small part of the information about the past can be perceived only within the framework of interest in the fate of prominent personalities with whom the main characters had to intersect.

Collective Memory: Between Values and Historical Knowledge

2020 ◽  
pp. 124-142
Author(s):  
VICTOR BURLACHUK
Keyword(s):  
Twentieth Century ◽  
Soviet Union ◽  
Collective Memory ◽  
Rapid Change ◽  
Modern Society ◽  
The State ◽  
Main Element ◽  
Rapid Decline ◽  
The Past ◽  
The Future

At the end of the twentieth century, questions of a secondary nature suddenly became topical: what do we remember and who owns the memory? Memory as one of the mental characteristics of an individual’s activity is complemented by the concept of collective memory, which requires a different method of analysis than the activity of a separate individual. In the 1970s, a situation arose that gave rise to the so-called "historical politics" or "memory politics." If philosophical studies of memory problems of the 30’s and 40’s of the twentieth century were focused mainly on the peculiarities of perception of the past in the individual and collective consciousness and did not go beyond scientific discussions, then half a century later the situation has changed dramatically. The problem of memory has found its political sound: historians and sociologists, politicians and representatives of the media have entered the discourse on memory. Modern society, including all social, ethnic and family groups, has undergone a profound change in the traditional attitude towards the past, which has been associated with changes in the structure of government. In connection with the discrediting of the Soviet Union, the rapid decline of the Communist Party and its ideology, there was a collapse of Marxism, which provided for a certain model of time and history. The end of the revolutionary idea, a powerful vector that indicated the direction of historical time into the future, inevitably led to a rapid change in perception of the past. Three models of the future, which, according to Pierre Nora, defined the face of the past (the future as a restoration of the past, the future as progress and the future as a revolution) that existed until recently, have now lost their relevance. Today, absolute uncertainty hangs over the future. The inability to predict the future poses certain challenges to the present. The end of any teleology of history imposes on the present a debt of memory. Features of the life of memory, the specifics of its state and functioning directly affect the state of identity, both personal and collective. Distortion of memory, its incorrect work, and its ideological manipulation can give rise to an identity crisis. The memorial phenomenon is a certain political resource in a situation of severe socio-political breaks and changes. In the conditions of the economic crisis and in the absence of a real and clear program for future development, the state often seeks to turn memory into the main element of national consolidation.

When a historical analogy fails: Current political events and collective memory contestation in the news

2017 ◽  
Vol 12 (2) ◽  
pp. 130-145 ◽  
Author(s):  
Francis LF Lee ◽  
Joseph Man Chan ◽  
Dennis KK Leung
Keyword(s):  
Collective Memory ◽  
Memory Studies ◽  
State Violence ◽  
Historical Events ◽  
The Past ◽  
Political Events ◽  
Historical Analogy ◽  
The Relationship

Collective memory studies have emphasized how people can utilize important historical events as analogies to make sense of current happenings. This article argues that the invocation of historical analogies may, under certain circumstances, become an occasion for people to negotiate and contest the significance of the historical events. Focusing on Hong Kong’s Umbrella Movement in 2014, this article analyzes how references to the 1989 Tiananmen Incident emerged in the news as a dominant historical analogy when the movement began, foregrounding the possibility of state violence. But when state violence did not materialize, the authorities, young protesters, and radical activists started to contest the relevance of Tiananmen. The analogy was largely abandoned by the movement’s end. The analysis illustrates the recursive character of the relationship between past and present events: after the past is invoked to aid interpretations of the present, present developments may urge people to reevaluate the past.

New Frankensteins; or, the Body Politic

2017 ◽  
pp. 195-207
Author(s):  
Timothy C. Baker
Keyword(s):  
Twentieth Century ◽  
Body Politic ◽  
The Body ◽  
Historical Events ◽  
Cultural Contexts ◽  
Literary Traditions ◽  
Gothic Fiction ◽  
The Past ◽  
Gothic Novels

In the introduction to his 2001 anthology of ‘New Scottish Gothic Fiction’, Alan Bissett argues that Gothic ‘has always acted as a way of re-examining the past, and the past is the place where Scotland, a country obsessed with re-examining itself, can view itself whole, vibrant, mythic’ (2001: 6). While virtually every contemporary Scottish author has made use of Gothic elements or tropes in some part of their work, many of the most important recent texts to be labelled ‘Scottish Gothic’ are centrally concerned with such a re-examination of the past. For many authors, however, the past is not to be found in historical events or cultural contexts, but specifically in the interrelation between established Scottish and Gothic literary traditions. Beginning with Emma Tennant’s The Bad Sister (1978), one of numerous twentieth-century reworkings of James Hogg’s The Private Memoirs and Confessions of a Justified Sinner (1824), many contemporary Gothic novels have explicitly relied on earlier texts; adapting the work of Hogg, Stevenson or even Shelley becomes a way of challenging preconceived notions of stable national and individual identities.

Young journalists and old news: remembering mass protests in Hong Kong

Journalism ◽  
2021 ◽  
pp. 146488492199953
Author(s):  
Donna Chu
Keyword(s):  
Hong Kong ◽  
Production Process ◽  
Collective Memory ◽  
Cultural Environment ◽  
Historical Events ◽  
Collective Memories ◽  
The Past ◽  
Professional Norms

In this study, 20 journalists who had worked on news about the anniversaries of mass protests in Hong Kong were interviewed. Given that most had been born after the historical events being commemorated, this paper aims to understand how young journalists comprehend and cover such old news. It also uncovers the journalistic processes behind the related anniversary journalism and discusses the role of journalism in constructing collective memory. The study traced how journalists normally do their research and what they consider in the production process. We found that journalists, as with other assignments, generally lack the time to conduct thorough research. Instead of venturing into hard facts or heated debates, most opted to focus on the personal and the emotional. For the personal, they relied on stories told by living witnesses and participants. For the emotional, they tapped into the cultural environment as well as their peers to determine appropriate feelings and moral tones. Professional norms compelled them to find new angles for old news and package the stories in ways that would engage and attract their audience. All of these factors shape how journalists tell the stories about the past; these stories in turn become new resources in the ‘inventory’ of collective memories.

scholarly journals Repetition: Thinking Between G.W. F. Hegel’s Philosophy of History (1837) and Karl Marx’s The Eighteenth Brumaire of Louis Bonaparte (1852)

2019 ◽  
Vol 27 (54) ◽  
pp. 81-97
Author(s):  
Antonis Balasopoulos ◽  
Keyword(s):  
Twentieth Century ◽  
Philosophy Of History ◽  
Historical Events ◽  
The Past ◽  
Major Complications ◽  
Gravitational Pull ◽  
Exit Strategies ◽  
Revolution Counter

Taking its cue from the untimely paradoxes manifesting themselves in some of the most visible instances of Hegel’s and Marx’s reception in the twentieth century, this essay proceeds to explore the ground between the two thinkers with particular reference to their philosophico-historical grasp of repetition. After a number of preliminary observations on the ideological subtext involved in Marx’s reference to Hegel in the Eighteenth Brumaire of Louis Bonaparte and the temporality their intertextual conjuncture stages, I focus on four major complications that attend the comparison of Hegelian and Marxian notions of repetition, as well as on their correlation to the historical events of Revolution, Counter-Revolution and Restoration. I conclude with some reflections on the “exit strategies” Marx and Hegel adopt vis-à-vis the specter of iteration as a sign of submission to the gravitational pull of the past upon the present and future.

scholarly journals Tábor v Letech jako „neexistující pseudokoncentrák“: analýza proměny letských narativů

2021 ◽  
pp. 76-103
Author(s):  
Tereza Vaňáčová ◽  
Vladimír Naxera
Keyword(s):  
Collective Memory ◽  
Political Conflict ◽  
Concentration Camp ◽  
Communist Regime ◽  
Political Agenda ◽  
The Political ◽  
Specific Time ◽  
Historical Events ◽  
Mass Graves ◽  
The Past

Interpreting and staging the past is an integral part of politics in its different forms. Selected historical events that are attached greater importance have often been contested politically. In the last two decades or so, clashes over the past have escalated in most consolidated democracies and have become more closely linked with other dimensions of political conflict. In the already consolidated Czech democracy, disputes have reopened over both the Communist regime and a much older past, with history fully entering the political agenda. These conflicts have been centred on both the historical subjects and fundamental points of collective memory, and on locations related to that memory and history. In a specific time and space, those places represent a certain tale, a certain interpretation of historical events, and at the same time allow for the development of other tales, often updated and in some cases politically contested. The forms and nature of the physical places of collective memory may vary. Firstly, these may be places “where bodies lie or have lain” – mass graves, destroyed communities or other places of collective suffering. This paper tackles this issue and analyses the narratives constructed by leading Czech politicians of the WWII Roma concentration camp in Lety. It presents the main arguments of the competing narratives and their changes throughout the post-Communist period.

scholarly journals Why Write Stories about the Past?

2021 ◽  
Vol 10 (2) ◽  
pp. 201-215
Author(s):  
Anastasia Oikonomidou
Keyword(s):  
Children's Literature ◽  
Collective Memory ◽  
Children’S Literature ◽  
Public Debate ◽  
Literary Works ◽  
The Public ◽  
Greek Society ◽  
The Past ◽  
Historical Literature ◽  
Historical Past

The article focuses on three representative literary works for children between 9 and 12 by Christos Boulotis, a renowned contemporary Greek writer of children’s literature. His works which are exemplary of a broader tendency of contemporary Greek historical literature for children revolve around the concepts of the personal and public past and of personal and collective memory. We show that the specific works by Boulotis tend not only to make the concepts of the personal and public/historical past an issue but also to stress the importance of these concepts for the lives of contemporary people. At the same time, we show that because literature for children is inevitably ideological, the concepts of the personal and public historical past are used by Boulotis as a resource for the promotion of specific contemporary ideologies which are at the forefront of the public debate in contemporary Greek society, such as the universality of the experience of being a refugee, anti-racism, and pacifism.

scholarly journals The case for graphic counter-memorials in the comics of Joe Sacco, Art Spiegelman, and Brian Wood and Riccardo Burchielli

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Brooke Winterstein
Keyword(s):  
Collective Memory ◽  
Historical Narratives ◽  
The Political ◽  
Historical Events ◽  
Art Spiegelman ◽  
The Past ◽  
Non Fiction ◽  
Trauma Memory ◽  
Memory And Trauma ◽  
Political Intervention

My dissertation considers a group of contemporary comics about war by Joe Sacco, Art Spiegelman, and Brian Wood and Riccardo Burchielli, as examples of a larger genre I call the graphic counter-memorial. Graphic counter-memorial comics address history, memory, and trauma as they depict the political, violent, and collective aspects of war and social conflict. I argue that the particular comics I study in this dissertation, which mingle fiction and non-fiction and autobiography as well as journalism, follow the tradition of the counter-monuments described by James E. Young. Studying commemorative practices and counter-monuments in the 1980s, Young notes a generation of German artists who resist traditional forms of memorialization by upending the traditional monument structure in monument form. Young looks at the methods, aims, and aesthetics these artists use to investigate and problematize practices that establish singular historical narratives. Like these works of public art, the graphic counter-memorial asks the reader to question ‘official history,’ authenticity, and the objectivity typically associated with non-fiction and reporting. I argue that what these comics offer is an opportunity to re-examine comics that incorporate real and familiar social and historical events and wars. Comics allow creators to visually and textually overlap perspectives and time. Graphic counter-memorials harness the comic medium’s potential to refuse fixed narratives of history by emphasizing a sense of incompleteness in their representation of trauma, memory, and war. This makes possible a more complex and rich way to engage with Western society’s relationship to the past, and in particular, a more complex way of engaging with collective memory and war. Their modes of mediating history produce political intervention through both form and content.

scholarly journals The case for graphic counter-memorials in the comics of Joe Sacco, Art Spiegelman, and Brian Wood and Riccardo Burchielli

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Brooke Winterstein
Keyword(s):  
Collective Memory ◽  
Historical Narratives ◽  
The Political ◽  
Historical Events ◽  
Art Spiegelman ◽  
The Past ◽  
Non Fiction ◽  
Trauma Memory ◽  
Memory And Trauma ◽  
Political Intervention

My dissertation considers a group of contemporary comics about war by Joe Sacco, Art Spiegelman, and Brian Wood and Riccardo Burchielli, as examples of a larger genre I call the graphic counter-memorial. Graphic counter-memorial comics address history, memory, and trauma as they depict the political, violent, and collective aspects of war and social conflict. I argue that the particular comics I study in this dissertation, which mingle fiction and non-fiction and autobiography as well as journalism, follow the tradition of the counter-monuments described by James E. Young. Studying commemorative practices and counter-monuments in the 1980s, Young notes a generation of German artists who resist traditional forms of memorialization by upending the traditional monument structure in monument form. Young looks at the methods, aims, and aesthetics these artists use to investigate and problematize practices that establish singular historical narratives. Like these works of public art, the graphic counter-memorial asks the reader to question ‘official history,’ authenticity, and the objectivity typically associated with non-fiction and reporting. I argue that what these comics offer is an opportunity to re-examine comics that incorporate real and familiar social and historical events and wars. Comics allow creators to visually and textually overlap perspectives and time. Graphic counter-memorials harness the comic medium’s potential to refuse fixed narratives of history by emphasizing a sense of incompleteness in their representation of trauma, memory, and war. This makes possible a more complex and rich way to engage with Western society’s relationship to the past, and in particular, a more complex way of engaging with collective memory and war. Their modes of mediating history produce political intervention through both form and content.

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