The Time Machine

1987 ◽  
Vol 9 (6) ◽  
pp. 171-172
Author(s):  
Robert H. Guinter
Keyword(s):  
Civil War ◽  
Time Machine ◽  
Way Of Life ◽  
The Past ◽  
The Future

Just before Christmas, my 12-year-old son was reading The Time Machine by H. G. Wells. According to the story, the driver of this machine could travel to any date in the past or future, and he could return to the present time whenever he wished. We enjoyed talking about the story and about how much fun it would be to own a time machine. Where would we go and what would we see? He decided, among other things, that we should see his grandparents as children, to see whether their way of life really was as different from his as they say it was. Then we should visit some famous persons from the past and witness some great event, such as a Civil War battle. Then we should look to the future. What will we be like in 10 or 20 years? What will our city or country be like in 100 or 1,000 years? What will our planet be like in 1 million years? We thoroughly enjoyed ourselves as we talked about owning and using such a machine.

History as trauma and the possibility of the future: Theo Angelopoulos’ Voyage to Cythera

2019 ◽  
Vol 5 (1) ◽  
pp. 3-19 ◽  
Author(s):  
Sean Homer
Keyword(s):  
Civil War ◽  
Traumatic Event ◽  
Psychoanalytic Theory ◽  
Narrative Structure ◽  
The Other ◽  
Political Prisoners ◽  
Cultural Trauma ◽  
Fundamental Characteristic ◽  
The Past ◽  
The Future

Theo Angelopoulos has described Taxidi sta Kythira (Voyage to Cythera) (1984) as an attempt to ‘exorcise the past’ and offer the Greek audience a possibility to face the future without the traumas of the past. This article explores the question of the extent to which we can exorcise the past and asks if a future is possible without acknowledging the traumas of the past. Drawing upon cultural trauma theory, the article analyses the Greek Civil War (1946‐49) as a cultural trauma for the Greek Left, especially concerning the recognition of political prisoners and exiles. Psychoanalytic theory, on the other hand, suggests that a fundamental characteristic of trauma is the un-representability of the event itself, as a traumatic event is only known through its persistent reiterations. Through its multi-layered narrative structure and aesthetic strategies of deferral and displacement Voyage to Cythera stages the trauma of the Greek Civil War for both the returning exiles and the generation that followed. As a representation of presence through absence, the article considers Voyage to Cythera in terms of Thomas Elsaesser’s concept of the parapractic text and Max Silverman’s notion of palimpsestic memory whereby the film does not exorcise the past as such but reveals a past haunting the present. The article concludes with the reflection that a traumatic past has a tendency to return however much we may wish to lay it rest.

Memory of Futures

KronoScope ◽  
2004 ◽  
Vol 4 (2) ◽  
pp. 297-315 ◽  
Author(s):  
Barbara Adam
Keyword(s):  
Genetic Modification ◽  
Nuclear Power ◽  
The Other ◽  
Way Of Life ◽  
Memory Aids ◽  
The Past ◽  
The Future ◽  
The One ◽  
Far Future

AbstractWe think of memories as being focused on the past. However, our ability to move freely in the temporal realm of past, present and future is far more complex and sophisticated than commonsense would suggest. In this paper I am concerned with our capacity to produce and extend ourselves into the far future, for example through nuclear power or the genetic modification of food, on the one hand, and our inability to know the potential, diverse and multiple outcomes of this technologically constituted futurity, on the other. I focus on this discrepancy in order to explore what conceptual tools are available to us to take account of long-term futures produced by the industrial way of life. And I identify some historical approaches to the future on the assumption that the past may well hold vital clues for today's dilemma, hence my proposal to engage in 'memory of futures'. I conclude by considering the potential of 'memory aids for the future' as a means to better encompass in contemporary concerns the long-term futures of our making.

scholarly journals American memory war of the protest movement «Black live matter»

2020 ◽  
pp. 9-17
Author(s):  
Andriy Martynov
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Civil War ◽  
Comparative Method ◽  
The United States ◽  
Election Campaign ◽  
White Americans ◽  
Us History ◽  
Political Processes ◽  
The Past ◽  
The Future

Americans as a nation are more focused on the present and the future than on the past. Until recently, various «historical traumas» have not been the subject of current American political discourse. The American dream focuses on the needs of everyday life, not on the permanent experience of the past. The aim of the article is to highlight the peculiarities of symbolic conflicts over the sites of the Civil War in the United States in the context of the 2020 election campaign. Research methods are based on a combination of the principles of historicism and special historical methods, in particular, descriptive, comparative, method of actualization of historical memory. The scientific novelty of the obtained results is determined by the historical and political analysis of the “wars of memory” during the presidential election campaign in the United States in 2020. Radical political confrontation exacerbates the conflicts of collective memory. This process is not prevented by the postmodern state of collective consciousness, the virtualization of political processes, attempts to form a «theater society». The coronavirus pandemic has raised the issue of choosing a strategy for the development of the globalization process as harshly as possible. Current events break the link between the past and the present, which makes the future unpredictable. Developed liberal democracy is considered the «end of history». Multiculturalism has created different interpretations of US history. Conclusions. Trump’s victory deepened the rift between different visions of the history of the Civil War. The Democratic majority unites African Americans, Latinos, women with higher education, and left liberals. Attacks on the memorials of the heroes of the former Confederacy became symbols of the war of memory. The dominant trend is an increase in the democratic and electoral numbers of non-white Americans. The «classic» United States, dominated in all walks of life by white Americans with Anglo-Saxon Protestant identities and relevant historical ideas, is becoming history. The situation is becoming a political reality when white Americans become a minority. It is unlikely that such a «new minority» will abandon its own interpretation of any stage of US history, including the most acute. This means that wars of memory will become an organic element of political processes.

Towards Darkness and Death: Racial Demonology in South Africa

1988 ◽  
Vol 26 (4) ◽  
pp. 567-590 ◽  
Author(s):  
Pierre Hugo
Keyword(s):  
South Africa ◽  
Class Conflict ◽  
Way Of Life ◽  
Human Relations ◽  
The Past ◽  
The Future ◽  
Good And Evil

Many students of human relations in South Africa would probably agree that an understanding of the policy of racial separation and the general determination of whites not to yield power to the black majority necessitates an awareness of their fears. The importance of this factor can hardly be overlooked, especially if it is defined broadly along the lines suggested by Philip Mason in his succinct study of racial tensions around the globe: There are fears of all kinds… There is the vague and simple fear of something strange and unknown, there is the very intelligible fear of unemployment, and the fear of being outvoted by people whose way of life is quite different. There are fears for the future and memories of fear in the past, fears given an extra edge by class conflict, by a sense of guilt, by sex and conscience… Fear may also act as a catalytic agent, changing the nature of factors previously not acutely malignant, such as the association in metaphor of the ideas of white and black with good and evil… Where the dominant are in the minority they are surely more frightened.1

The Decline of a Shakespearean Tradition in Charleston, South Carolina, 1869–1900

1990 ◽  
Vol 31 (1) ◽  
pp. 85-106
Author(s):  
Christina M. Pagès
Keyword(s):  
South Carolina ◽  
Civil War ◽  
Theatre History ◽  
Way Of Life ◽  
Cultural Changes ◽  
Cultural Attitudes ◽  
The Past ◽  
Difficult Time ◽  
Opera House ◽  
Southern City

The Academy of Music in Charleston, South Carolina, opened its doors in December 1869 to a public who, according to the local newspaper, “for the past four years … had been sighing for, writing for, combining for, and begging for–a first class Opera House and Theatre.” This first post-Civil War theatre in Charleston had inherited a theatre history dating back to as early as 1703, as well as an ardent and long-standing interest in Shakespearean playgoing which, despite the Civil War's devastating interruption, continued to be an essential part of the city's way of life for the next two decades. Because of its importance as both a literary and a drama centre before the Civil War, Charleston has already attracted the attention of several theatre historians, and numerous studies have been made of this city's brilliant antebellum stage. However, there were no records of Charleston's post-Civil War theatre until I undertook my study of the Academy of Music, the principal playhouse between 1869 and 1936—indeed, its only post-Civil War theatre except for approximately seven years between 1888 and 1893 when the Charleston Opera House offered sporadic entertainment. Particularly in the first three decades of the Academy of Music, the worlds of audience and stage seem to have coincided to a remarkable degree. Charleston's theatre years between 1869 and 1899 offer insights into the changing cultural attitudes and needs of an impoverished Southern city as its leaders struggled to meet the challenges of that difficult time. The best theatrical index to such cultural changes I have found is the degree of the Charlestonians' response to Shakespearean drama during these transitional years.

scholarly journals The Past for the Future: A History of the Russian Civil War in Narratives of the 1930s

2020 ◽  
Vol 19 (2) ◽  
pp. 490-502
Author(s):  
Iaroslav A. Golubinov ◽  
Olga S. Porshneva ◽  
Natalya V. Surzhikova
Keyword(s):  
Civil War ◽  
Russian Civil War ◽  
The Past ◽  
The Future ◽  
History Of

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Near Eastern archaeology and the Arab Spring: avoiding the ostrich effect

Antiquity ◽  
2014 ◽  
Vol 88 (340) ◽  
pp. 639-643 ◽  
Author(s):  
Michael D. Danti
Keyword(s):  
Civil War ◽  
Arab Spring ◽  
Turning Point ◽  
Near Eastern ◽  
Rural Village ◽  
The Past ◽  
Syrian Civil War ◽  
The Future ◽  
Major Turning Point ◽  
The Arab Spring

As an American archaeologist who has worked in Syria, living in a rural village in Raqqa Province off and on for decades, I am frequently asked: did you see it coming? Were there early signs of the Arab Spring and the Syrian civil war? The answer is both yes and no. In retrospect, the signs were there, but foreign archaeologists did not always identify them. More often we simply chose to ignore them. Regardless, we have come to many important realisations. Foremost, Near Eastern archaeology has reached a major turning point, which raises a more pressing question: what now? Our answers will profoundly shape the future of our field. As archetypal students of history, we must learn from the lessons of the past and act. Playing the part of the metaphorical ostrich and burying our heads in the sand would be far easier, perhaps even customary, but this cannot be our course. A strong and engaged field is needed now more than ever—my primary intent here is to dissect what this means.

Body archive/the body as the archive

Maska ◽  
2020 ◽  
Vol 35 (200) ◽  
pp. 74-83
Author(s):  
Ida Hiršenfelder
Keyword(s):  
The Body ◽  
Free Access ◽  
Digital Archives ◽  
Time Machine ◽  
The Past ◽  
The Future ◽  
The Web

The archive is a time machine that actively creates ways of accessing individual or collective experiences. Digital archives, in particular, such as the Web Museum anticipate an open and free access to memories even though they are not merely a representation of events but a field in which we can surpass the informativity of events in order to strengthen our experience of the (unlived) past and also the future. We are not building it to remember or understand the past but to think the future. The archive should be guided by the logic of distribution not the logic of accumulation.

scholarly journals An introduction to three papers on human migration by Coleman, Laczko and Myers

2002 ◽  
Vol 357 (1420) ◽  
pp. 581-581
Author(s):  
Crispin Tickell ◽  
Semir Zeki
Keyword(s):  
Climate Change ◽  
Civil War ◽  
Sea Level Rise ◽  
Sea Level ◽  
Environmental Degradation ◽  
Human Migration ◽  
Political Factors ◽  
The Past ◽  
The World ◽  
The Future

Human migration is an activity that is as old as humanity itself. Yet it remains a sensitive and politically charged subject, creating tensions in societies that experience it. It is closely linked to economic, environmental, demographic and political factors. It has become a conspicuous feature of the world political and demographic scene, with an estimated number of 22 million migrants in the past year. It shows every sign of accelerating in the future, not only because of poverty, civil war and politics, but also from environmental reasons that, in the future, may cause still larger–scale migration. Migration will be influenced by a host of such factors as climate change, sea–level rise, desertification, and environmental degradation generally.

scholarly journals Menelusuri Konsep Filsafat Islam tentang Sejarah

Aqlania ◽  
2017 ◽  
Vol 8 (1) ◽  
pp. 63
Author(s):  
Jaipuri Harahap
Keyword(s):  
First Generation ◽  
Point Of View ◽  
Way Of Life ◽  
Islamic Philosophy ◽  
The Past ◽  
The Future ◽  
The One ◽  
The Universe

Islamic philosophy is not only a study on theology, but also a study of way of life as a whole. Even though Greek Phylosophy regarded as a philosophical root, but it is not the one reference for Muslim Philosophers who try to absorp history as a consept. Greek and Islamic Philosophy have two different view -- if it is not contradictive -- on history.History in Islamic viewis to record on a part of God planning which is already appeared. It should be recognized that this world is existed because of God power, where everything is planned since azali time. Knowledge about history is a thing opened by God to the universe. From this point of view, history has influenced by religiousity. Thus, Islam adds morality in historical consept. Al-Quran, Muhammad, and all Muslims form the first generation had talked us about how important of a history. We all need to history. Therefore, study from the past and history should be placed as a guidance for the life in the future.

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