Rubbing the Past into the Present

Author(s):  
Maurizio Peleggi

Chapter 8 looks at public memorials and artworks from the decades of the 1990s and 2000s in a variety of media (painting, photography, installation and video) that challenge social amnesia of Thailand’s recent history of political violence. Though special attention is paid to public monuments and artworks that commemorate the traumatic events of October 1973 and October 1976, the chapter also discusses works addressing the more recent violence of 2010.

1993 ◽  
Vol 87 (6) ◽  
pp. 171-174 ◽  
Author(s):  
P.H. Hatlen

The evolution of schools for the blind over the past 30 years has been dramatic. Sometimes changes have been self-initiated, and sometimes these schools have been forced into different roles and expectations. This article traces both the recent history of schools for the blind and how one observer learned and matured from his experiences.


1980 ◽  
Vol 12 (3) ◽  
pp. 351-372 ◽  
Author(s):  
Francis Nicosia

When Winston Churchill visited Palestine in March, 1921, the debate over the future of Palestine and the recriminations over the broken promises of the past were at a fever pitch. It had become clear that British control over Palestine would be formalized by a League of Nations Mandate which would then irnplement the provisions of the Balfour Declaration. In Haifa, a delegation of Muslim and Christian Arabs met with Churchill to express their views on the intensifying conflict in Palestine. Churchill was given a prophetic warning, the accuracy of which has been of profound significance in the recent history of the Middle East:Today the Arabs belief in England is not what it was.… If England does not take up the cause of the Arabs, other powers will. From India, Mesopotamia, the Hedjaz andPalestine the cry goes up to England now. If she does not listen, then perhaps Russia will take up their call some day, or perhaps even Germany.


1999 ◽  
Vol 32 (3) ◽  
pp. 225-232 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jerzy Jedlicki

Memory of collective wrongs and atrocities suffered in the past from another nation or ethnic group often burdens a present conflict with strong resentment and makes it appear as a historical repetition or redress. There are many examples in recent history of Eastern Europe, the Balkans included, when vivid and deliberately inflamed historical reminiscences make it virtually impossible to negotiate a compromise solution of a crisis. Only when national memory has been “cooled” and sacrosanct historical places and symbols has lost some of their mobilizing force, may human relations between the enemy communities be restored.


Author(s):  
Andrew R. Davis

This book examines temple renovation as a distinct topos within royal literature of the ancient Near East. Unlike newly founded temples, which were celebrated for their novelty, temple renovations were oriented toward the past. Kings took the opportunity to rehearse the history of the temple, selectively evoking certain past traditions and omitting others. In this way, temple renovations are a kind of historiography. The particularities of each case notwithstanding, this book demonstrates a pattern in the rhetoric of temple renovation texts; namely, kings used temple renovation to correct, or at least distance themselves from, some turmoil of recent history and to associate their reigns with an earlier and more illustrious past. The main evidence for this royal rhetoric comes from royal literature of the seventh and sixth centuries BCE. This evidence in turn becomes the basis for reading the story of Jeroboam I’s placement of calves at Dan and Bethel (1 Kgs 12:25–33) as an eighth-century BCE account of temple renovation with a similar rhetoric. Concluding with further examples in the Hellenistic and Roman periods, this book shows that the rhetoric of temple renovation was not just a distinct topos, but also a long-standing one in the ancient Near East.


Inner Asia ◽  
2021 ◽  
Vol 23 (2) ◽  
pp. 233-256
Author(s):  
Elza-Bair Guchinova

Abstract This article examines how historical representation of the deportation of Kalmyks to Siberia has changed in compliance with the politics of history in Russia. It traces the shift from silence on this topic under communism to the dramatisation of it in the 1990s when the communists lost their power, and finally to the softening of this event in the last decades when state ideology under Putin’s administration is striving to unite the peoples of Russia around the victory in the World War II, leaving the history of the ‘purged peoples’ on the sidelines of this triumph. This evolution from a tragic to a more positive narrative is reflected in the messages of public spectacles about the deportation. The softened approach to this traumatic event was also linked to generational change: its eldest witnesses today are the people who were born between 1943 and 1956 and who were too young to remember its hardships. The author analyses classic theatre performances (‘Arash’, 1995, and ‘Kalmychka’, 2018) and mass agitational campaigns, such as the Trains of Remembrance which took present-day Kalmyks to Siberia to express gratitude symbolically to Siberians who helped them in the difficult period. These spectacles are not mere historical illustrations of the past, but new revisions of it.


2017 ◽  
Vol 31 (1) ◽  
pp. 73-79 ◽  
Author(s):  
Cristina Croitoru ◽  
Dana Turliuc ◽  
Florentina Danciu ◽  
A. Cucu ◽  
Claudia Costea

Abstract Having a recent history, the neurological condition called myasthenia gravis has raised dilemmas and questions among doctors since it was first discovered in the 16th century and it has not ceased to be a challenge. Nowadays, neuroscience researchers from around the world have been striving to perfect a modern treatment of this condition. Our paper is an incursion into the past, more precisely into the history of the treatment of this disease, from its origin to date, when immunological therapy has progressed.


2019 ◽  
Vol 19 ◽  
Author(s):  
Małgorzata Kasner

Vilnius archipelago: Performative walks around this performative cityThe present study deals with the performative memory of a city, namely modern Vilnius, the capital of the Republic of Lithuania. The difficult past of Vilnius that is shared by other eastern and central European cities and is marked by the bitter legacy of the “city of changed blood” (Pl. “miasto o wymienionej krwi”, a notion introduced by M. Lewicka) has been subjected to a number of changes effected by modernity and dynamic Europeanization at the turn of the twentieth and twenty-first centuries. The confrontation between the past and modernity has resulted in serious social and national problems (e.g. Polish–Lithuanian relations) dating to the early as well as the most recent history of Lithuania and its capital. Having experienced various totalitarian regimes, Vilnius is an interesting example of the redefining of the memory of the space of a city at a time of a changing political system; it is also an example of the establishing of a hierarchy of new values and symbols. Vilnius is also a cultural hybrid resulting from long-lasting transgressions. However, a comprehensive account of its history still remains utopian. Drawing on the #skaitomevilniu (‘We read Vilnius’) project that was carried out in Vilnius in 2016–2017 and which adopted a performative perspective, the author of the present study attempts to describe a city that is constantly becoming. Archipelag Wilno. O performatywnym chodzeniu po performatywnym mieścieNiniejszy artykuł został poświęcony problematyce performatywnej pamięci miasta na przykładzie współczesnego Wilna, stolicy Republiki Litewskiej. Skomplikowana, choć tak charakterystyczna dla miast Europy Środkowo-Wschodniej, przeszłość Wilna, naznaczona bolesnym dziedzictwem „miasta o wymienionej krwi” (pojęcie M. Lewickiej), zderzyła się na przełomie XX i XXI wieku z pełną zmian nowoczesnością i pośpieszną europeizacją. Ta konfrontacja stała się źródłem poważnych problemów społecznych i narodowych (w tym relacji polsko-litewskich), których korzenie sięgają zarówno najodleglejszych, jak i nowszych dziejów Litwy i jej stolicy. Wilno jako miasto silnie nacechowane doświadczeniem totalitaryzmów jest ciekawym przykładem ilustrującym proces redefiniowania pamięci przestrzeni miasta w okresie transformacji ustrojowej oraz ustanawiania nowej hierarchii wartości i symboli. Jest także kulturową hybrydą będącą efektem wielowiekowych transgresji, której całościowy opis pozostaje ciągle badawczą utopią. Autorka artykułu podejmuje próbę opisu miasta, które „ciągle się staje”, na przykładzie realizowanego w Wilnie w latach 2016–2017 projektu #skaitomevilniu (pol. Czytamy Wilno) z zastosowaniem perspektywy performatywnej.


2018 ◽  
Vol 13 (1) ◽  
pp. 61-80
Author(s):  
Carole Cusack

Prehistoric monuments in Britain are sites that have "drawn" people throughout history, due to their impressive size, dramatic location in the landscape, and the sense of permanence and timelessness they convey. The religious attraction of such stones for modern Pagans has been studied in some detail, particularly in terms of renowned circles like Stonehenge and Avebury, but the appeal that Neolithic monuments have for "spiritual tourists" has not been assessed to date. This article focuses on the Rollright Stones near Chipping Norton in Oxfordshire, a relatively accessible group of monuments that has an established body of folklore attached to the site, a profile in popular culture, and a recent history of use by modern Pagans as a ritual site. The author's fieldwork at the Rollright Stones in 2014 produced three interrelated hypotheses: first, the primary appeal of prehistoric monuments for "spiritual tourists" is aesthetic; second, that responding aesthetically to such monuments is an experience that feels "special" and often involves an experience of the "numinous"; and third, this "specialness" is linked to ideas about what it means to be human, the relationship of the past to the present and future, and to the process of identity-construction and the search for wellbeing that spiritual tourists typically engage with in their travels.


2016 ◽  
Vol Ano 6 ◽  
pp. 23-25
Author(s):  
Flavio Kapczinski ◽  
Antonio E. Nardi

Revista Brasileira de Psiquiatria (RBP) is currently one of the most important scientific journals in Brazil, and it now holds the highest impact factor among all Brazilian scientific journals. Over the past few years, RBP has consolidated its position in the international scenario of psychiatric publications, attracting a growing number of submissions from different countries. In this article, we review the recent history of RBP, highlighting its most significant actions, contributions, and achievements.


2015 ◽  
Vol 6 (1) ◽  
pp. 45-55 ◽  
Author(s):  
H. Kragh

Abstract. Although speculative ideas of an expanding Earth can be found before World War II, it was only in the 1950s and 1960s that the theory attracted serious attention among a minority of earth scientists. While some of the proponents of the expanding Earth adopted an empiricist attitude by disregarding the physical cause of the assumed expansion, others argued that the cause, either fully or in part, was of cosmological origin. They referred to the possibility that the gravitational constant was slowly decreasing in time, as first suggested by P. Dirac in 1937. As a result of a stronger gravitation in the past, the ancient Earth would have been smaller than today. The gravitational argument for an expanding Earth was proposed by P. Jordan and L. Egyed in the 1950s and during the next 2 decades it was discussed by several physicists, astronomers and earth scientists. Among those who for a period felt attracted by "gravitational expansionism" were A. Holmes, J. Tuzo Wilson and F. Hoyle. The paper examines the idea of a varying gravitational constant and its impact on geophysics in the period from about 1955 to the mid-1970s.


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