Interwar Imaginings of Collective Cognition

2020 ◽  
Vol 15 (2) ◽  
pp. 155-178
Author(s):  
Rebecah Pulsifer
Keyword(s):  
Second World War ◽  
World War ◽  
Significant Cluster ◽  
Cultural Meanings ◽  
Rebecca West ◽  
Loss Of Self ◽  
Collective Cognition ◽  
Second World

Scholarship on interwar understandings of ‘collective cognition’ – experiences of intellectual union with others – tends to focus on its capacity to threaten individuality. I counter this trend by investigating prose works by H.D., Olive Moore, Rebecca West, and H.G. Wells that champion collective cognition for its capacity to compose communities. I argue that these texts point to an underexplored strand that existed in and alongside modernism in which authors turned to collective cognition to imagine radically egalitarian communities that transcend hierarchies based on history, nationality, and species. After the Second World War, the cultural meanings of collective cognition narrowed, and ‘thinking together’ came to be strongly associated with loss of freedom and loss of self. This article shows that collective cognition emitted a powerfully hopeful potential for a significant cluster of interwar authors, who used it to imagine the peaceful and abundant possibilities of collectivity.

scholarly journals Mothering in the frame: Cinematic microanalysis and the pathogenic mother, 1945–67

2020 ◽  
pp. 095269512092426
Author(s):  
Katie Joice
Keyword(s):  
History Of Psychiatry ◽  
Second World War ◽  
Intellectual Culture ◽  
World War ◽  
Cultural Meanings ◽  
Epistemological Foundation ◽  
History Of ◽  
Post War ◽  
Second World ◽  
Origin Point

This article examines the use of cinematic microanalysis to capture, decompose, and interpret mother–infant interaction in the decades following the Second World War. Focusing on the films and writings of Margaret Mead, Ray Birdwhistell, René Spitz, and Sylvia Brody, it examines the intellectual culture, and visual methodologies, that transformed ‘pathogenic’ mothering into an observable process. In turn, it argues that the significance assigned to the ‘small behaviours’ of mothers provided an epistemological foundation for the nascent discipline of infant psychiatry. This research draws attention to two new areas of enquiry within the history of emotions and the history of psychiatry in the post-war period: preoccupation with emotional absence and affectlessness, and their personal and cultural meanings; and the empirical search for the origin point, and early chronology, of mental illness.

Gender and the Second World War

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Corinna Peniston-Bird ◽  
Emma Vickers
Keyword(s):  
Second World War ◽  
World War ◽  
Second World

Kapitalistische Krisen mit und ohne systemischer Herausforderung.

2016 ◽  
Vol 46 (185) ◽  
pp. 543-560 ◽  
Author(s):  
Ingo Schmidt
Keyword(s):  
World Market ◽  
Second World War ◽  
Deep Penetration ◽  
World War ◽  
Major Overhaul ◽  
Domestic Markets ◽  
Global Restructuring ◽  
Social Divisions ◽  
Class Power ◽  
Second World

This article draws on Marxist theories of crises, imperialism, and class formation to identify commonalities and differences between the stagnation of the 1930s and today. Its key argument is that the anti-systemic movements that existed in the 1930s and gained ground after the Second World War pushed capitalists to turn from imperialist expansion and rivalry to the deep penetration of domestic markets. By doing so they unleashed strong economic growth that allowed for social compromise without hurting profits. Yet, once labour and other social movements threatened to shift the balance of class power into their favor, capitalist counter-reform began. In its course, global restructuring, and notably the integration of Russia and China into the world market, created space for accumulation. The cause for the current stagnation is that this space has been used up. In the absence of systemic challenges capitalists have little reason to seek a major overhaul of their accumulation strategies that could help to overcome stagnation. Instead they prop up profits at the expense of the subaltern classes even if this prolongs stagnation and leads to sharper social divisions.

Zabiegi likwidujące skutki obrzezania wykonywane w Warszawie w czasie drugiej wojny światowej. Wstępna próba opisu zjawiska

2017 ◽  
pp. 437-446
Author(s):  
Maria Ciesielska
Keyword(s):  
Second World War ◽  
Tissue Preparation ◽  
World War ◽  
Medical Practitioners ◽  
Reconstruction Surgery ◽  
Repair Operation ◽  
Manual Treatment ◽  
Operating Technique ◽  
Almost All ◽  
Second World

Men’s circumcision is in many countries considered as a hygienic-cosmetic or aesthetic treatment. However, it still remains in close connection with religious rites (Judaism, Islam) and is still practiced all over the world. During the Second World War the visible effects of circumcision became an indisputable evidence of being a Jew and were often used especially by the so-called szmalcownicy (blackmailers). Fear of the possibility of discovering as non-Aryan prompted many Jews hiding on the so-called Aryan side of Warsaw to seek medical practitioners who would restore the condition as it was before the circumcision. The reconstruction surgery was called in surgical jargon “knife baptizing”. Almost all of the procedures were performed by Aryan doctors although four cases of hiding Jewish doctors participating in such procedures are known. Surgical technique consisted of the surgical formation of a new foreskin after tissue preparation and stretching it by manual treatment. The success of the repair operation depended on the patient’s cooperation with the doctor, the worst result was in children. The physicians described in the article and the operating technique are probably only a fragment of a broader activity, described meticulously by only one of the doctors – Dr. Janusz Skórski. This work is an attempt to describe the phenomenon based on the very scanty source material, but it seems to be the first such attempt for several decades.

Finnish refugee children’s experiences of Swedish refugee camps during the Second World War

2015 ◽  
Vol 12 (1) ◽  
pp. 28-37
Author(s):  
Merja Paksuniemi
Keyword(s):  
Well Being ◽  
Second World War ◽  
Refugee Children ◽  
Refugee Camps ◽  
World War ◽  
Daily Routines ◽  
Decisive Importance ◽  
Significant Difference ◽  
Camp Life ◽  
Second World

This article seeks to demonstrate how Finnish refugee children experienced living in Swedish refugee camps during the Second World War (1939–1945). The study focuses on children’s opinions and experiences reflected through adulthood. The data were collected through retrospective interviews with six adults who experienced wartime as children in Finland and were evacuated to Sweden as refugees. Five of the interviewees were female and one of them was male. The study shows, it was of decisive importance to the refugee children’s well-being to have reliable adults around them during the evacuation and at the camps. The findings demonstrate that careful planning made a significant difference to the children´s adaptations to refugee camp life. The daily routines at the camp, such as regular meals, play time and camp school, reflected life at home and helped the children to continue their lives, even under challenging circumstances.

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