scholarly journals Ladislaus Jagiello in Modern Polish Culture

2021 ◽  
Vol 66 (3) ◽  
pp. 828-844
Author(s):  
Mikolaj Banaszkiewicz ◽  
◽  

This article deals with Polish representations of Władysław II Jagiełło, Grand Duke of Lithuania, ruler of the Crown of the Polish Kingdom, founder of the Jagiellonian dynasty. Research on representations of the past has become one of the main fields of memory studies in recent years. They allow us to look at historical events and their emblematic protagonists through the prism of their successive emanations. The kaleidoscope of images of the past reflects changes in social awareness and collective memory of a given political community. Jagiełło and the Battle of Grunwald (1410), which is inseparably associated with his reign, offer a model case in point. Among the numerous representations of Jagiełło, those created in the nineteenth century have made a lasting impression. At first, they took the form of literary works and paintings, and only later did they appear in political journalism and historiography. With time, they transmogrified into grass-roots commemorative initiatives, the most spectacular manifestation of which was the jubilee of the 500th anniversary of the Battle of Grunwald, celebrated in Kraków in 1910. The works of Józef Ignacy Kraszewski, Henryk Sienkiewicz and Jan Matejko fulfilled their role and became part of the canon, on which the Polish imagination depended from then on, regardless of the changing political configurations. In this way, Jagiełło became one of the most important figures in the pantheon of rulers, while the distant historical experience of the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth was permanently grafted onto and modelled the Polish political imagination. This observation is also confirmed by his twentieth-century portrayals in Polish films and historical series.

2004 ◽  
Vol 2 (2) ◽  
pp. 198-221 ◽  
Author(s):  
Ala Al-Hamarneh

At least 50 per cent of the population of Jordan is of Palestinian origin. Some 20 per cent of the registered refugees live in ten internationally organized camps, and another 20 per cent in four locally organized camps and numerous informal camps. The camps organized by the United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees in the Near East (UNRWA) play a major role in keeping Palestinian identity alive. That identity reflects the refugees' rich cultural traditions, political activities, as well as their collective memory, and the distinct character of each camp. Over the past two decades integration of the refugees within Jordanian society has increased. This paper analyses the transformation of the identity of the camp dwellers, as well as their spatial integration in Jordan, and other historical and contemporary factors contributing to this transformation.


Author(s):  
VICTOR BURLACHUK

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.


Author(s):  
Andrew Valls

In regime transitions, a number of mechanisms are utilized to memorialize the past and to reject the ideas associated with human rights abused of the prior regime. This is often done through truth commissions, apologies, memorials, museums, changes in place names, national holidays, and other symbolic measures. In the United States, some efforts along these lines have been undertaken, but on the whole they have been very limited and inadequate. In addition, many symbols and memorials associated with the past, such as Confederate monuments and the Confederate Battle Flag, continue to be displayed. Hence while some progress has been made on these issues, much more needs to be done.


Author(s):  
Piero Ignazi

Chapter 1 introduces the long and difficult process of the theoretical legitimation of the political party as such. The analysis of the meaning and acceptance of ‘parties’ as tools of expressing contrasting visions moves forward from ancient Greece and Rome where (democratic) politics had first become a matter of speculation and practice, and ends up with the first cautious acceptance of parties by eighteenth-century British thinkers. The chapter explores how parties or factions have been constantly considered tools of division of the ‘common wealth’ and the ‘good society’. The holist and monist vision of a harmonious and compounded society, stigmatized parties and factions as an ultimate danger for the political community. Only when a new way of thinking, that is liberalism, emerged, was room for the acceptance of parties set.


2020 ◽  
Vol 12 (2) ◽  
pp. 312-340
Author(s):  
Avi Kapach
Keyword(s):  

AbstractThis essay examines the use of myth and history in the Athenian public funeral speeches (epitaphioi logoi), concentrating specifically on temporality implied by the impulse to “mythologize” recent memories through speech, logos (Dem. 60.9; cf. Pl. Menex. 239b7-c7). While Loraux and other scholars are correct that the epitaphioi endowed Athens with a certain eternity by construing the present through the timeless lens of myth, the prevailing tendency to suspend the Athens of the epitaphioi outside of time leads to difficulties. As I argue, the chronological organization of the epitaphioi grants these speeches an important temporal element and situates them in the same continuum as the present – a move further reinforced by the tendency of the orators to rationalize the Athenian myths much as historians might; accordingly, I propose an adjusted taxonomy with which to approach the temporal status of Athenian epitaphic encomium: the epitaphioi are “mythical” less because of their eternalizing perspective than because of the malleable and pluralistic way in which they conceived of the past and molded it to their ideological purpose. Borrowing from anthropological and cognitive psychological frameworks, I further suggest that by routinely reconsolidating the past in the collective memory of the polis the epitaphioi positioned themselves in opposition to historiography.


Human Arenas ◽  
2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Susanne Normann

AbstractHow to re-member a fragmented world while climate change escalates, and green growth models reproduce coloniality, particularly in Indigenous territories? What can be the concrete contributions from different scholarly disciplines to a broader decolonial project? These questions are debated by decolonial scholars who call to re-think our practices within academic institutions and in the fields that we study. This article contributes with a decolonial perspective to sociocultural psychology and studies on Indigenous knowledges about climate change. Through ethnographic methods and individual and group interviews, I engage with indigenous Guarani and Kaiowá participants’ knowledges and practices of resilience opposing green growth models in the Brazilian state Mato Grosso do Sul. Their collective memory of a different past, enacted through narratives, rituals, and social practices, was fundamental to imagine different possible futures, which put in motion transformation processes. Their example opens a reflection about the possibilities in connecting sociocultural psychology’s work on collective memory and political imagination to the broader decolonial project, in supporting people’s processes of re-membering in contexts of adverse conditions caused by coloniality and ecological disaster.


2013 ◽  
Vol 44 ◽  
pp. 255-291
Author(s):  
Márton Dornbach

It is difficult to imagine how collective memory might function without the watershed dates that structure our stories about the past. Almost by definition, however, such familiar milestones fail to capture the complex dynamics of the transition from one era to the next. A case in point is the dismantling of the Iron Curtain. As the anniversary commemorations of 2009 showed, this development came to be epitomized by the tearing down of the Berlin Wall on 9 November 1989. One does not need to doubt the importance of this event to see that its sheer symbolic weight tends to obscure the intricacies of the Eastern European transition process. More often than not, accounts that foreground this turning point marginalize some sixty million Hungarians, Poles, Czechs, and Slovaks who embarked on the transition process well ahead of the citizens of East Germany.


2008 ◽  
Vol 42 (4) ◽  
pp. 815-852 ◽  
Author(s):  
DAVID HENLEY ◽  
JAMIE S. DAVIDSON

AbstractThis article examines the revival ofadat(custom) in post-Suharto Indonesia, a movement which few Indonesia-watchers predicted. Four general reasons for the rise ofadatrevivalism are identified. The first is the support, both ideological and concrete, of international organizations and networks committed to the rights of indigenous peoples. The second is the uncertainty, together with the opportunities, attendant on the processes of democratization and decentralization which followed the end of Suharto's authoritarian rule. The third is the oppression of marginal population groups under the New Order. The fourth root is historical, having to do with the positive role whichadathas played in the country's political imagination since the beginning of Indonesian nationalism.Adatas a political cause involves a set of loosely related ideals which, rightly or wrongly, are associated with the past: authenticity, community, order, and justice. These ideals have been invoked in varying proportions to pursue a wide variety of political ends, including the control of resources and the exclusion of rivals as well as the protection, empowerment, and mobilization of underprivileged groups.


Philosophy ◽  
1983 ◽  
Vol 58 (224) ◽  
pp. 215-227 ◽  
Author(s):  
Stephen R. L. Clark

Philosophers of earlier ages have usually spent time in considering thenature of marital, and in general familial, duty. Paley devotes an entire book to those ‘relative duties which result from the constitution of the sexes’,1 a book notable on the one hand for its humanity and on the other for Paley‘s strange refusal to acknowledge that the evils for which he condemns any breach of pure monogamy are in large part the result of the fact that such breaches are generally condemned. In a society where an unmarried mother is ruined no decent male should put a woman in such danger: but why precisely should social feeling be so severe? Marriage, the monogamist would say, must be defended at all costs, for it is a centrally important institution of our society. Political community was, in the past, understood as emerging from or imposed upon families, or similar associations. The struggle to establish the state was a struggle against families, clans and clubs; the state, once established, rested upon the social institutions to which it gave legal backing.


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