scholarly journals Historicizing Migration and Displacement: Learning from the Early Roman Empire in the Time of the Nation-State. Response to Lachenicht, Susanne. Learning from Past Displacements? The History of Migrations between Historical Specificity, Presentism and Fractured Continuities. Humanities 2018, 7, 36

Humanities ◽  
2020 ◽  
Vol 9 (2) ◽  
pp. 36
Author(s):  
George Baroud
Keyword(s):  
Roman Empire ◽  
Nation State ◽  
Border Control ◽  
The Past ◽  
Nation States ◽  
Starting Point ◽  
History Of ◽  
Historical Specificity ◽  
And Migration ◽  
The One

My response to Susanne Lachenicht’s thought-provoking article is a brief attempt to take up her call to write histories that lead not to absolute certainties but to more understanding of the complexities of the past. I focus on documentation, border control, and citizenship in the Early Roman Empire to illustrate some of the radically different ways these were conceptualized and practiced in a premodern multiethnic empire like Rome than in a contemporary nation-state today. Passports, for example, and border control as we know it, did not exist, and migration was not tied to citizenship status. But the account I offer is deliberately tentative and full of qualifications to emphasize the real methodological challenges the study of this subject poses on account of fragmentary literary and material records and the numerous difficulties of interpreting these. I conclude by pointing out both the benefits and the limitations of framing history as a discipline from which one can learn. On the one hand, understanding how seemingly universal categories such as ‘citizen’ and ‘migrant’ are dynamic and constructed rather than static and natural can nuance public debates in nation-states which receive high numbers of migrants (like Germany, Lachenicht’s starting point) by countering ahistorical narratives of a monolithic and sedentary identity. On the other hand, knowledge of the past does not necessarily lead to moral edification.

scholarly journals Archaeology and Ethnicity

2010 ◽  
Vol 5 (1) ◽  
pp. 137-149
Author(s):  
Staša Babić
Keyword(s):  
Material Culture ◽  
Nation State ◽  
Constructivist Approach ◽  
Cultural Group ◽  
Collective Identities ◽  
Archaeological Investigation ◽  
The Past ◽  
Ethnic Affiliation ◽  
Nation States ◽  
History Of

The paper examines the history of archaeological investigation into collective identities in the past. Culture-historical approachis fully based upon the concept of cultural group , deeply influenced by the modern understanding of nation-states – unity of territory, material culture, language and ethnic affiliation. The application of this concept led to devastating political abuses of archaeology, most notoriously in the case of Gustaf Kossinna in the Nazi Germany. The realisation that the very essence of thus conceived group identity in the past inevidably leads into the projection of the modern model of nation-state, resulted in thorough reconsideration. Over the last decades, archaeologists are investigating other possible paths of research into the group and individual identities in the past, informed by the constructivist approach.

Nacjonalistyczna Szwecja

2018 ◽  
Vol 62 (2 (461)) ◽  
pp. 61-68
Author(s):  
Karl-Olov Arnstberg
Keyword(s):  
Sri Lanka ◽  
Sense Of Community ◽  
National Consciousness ◽  
The Past ◽  
Starting Point ◽  
History Of ◽  
The Subject ◽  
The One ◽  
Selma Lagerlof ◽  
As If

Karl-Olov Arnstberg in the text Swedish Patriotism discusses the issue of identity and national consciousness in Sweden. The starting point for his reflections is the interview he had the opportunity to conduct with a doctor from Sri Lanka. He approached him as if he was a Swede, they both had a similar worldview, but his approach changed when the subject of conversation became the history of Sri Lanka. Arnstberg felt as if his interlocutor was so rooted in the past that the past, not the present created who he is now. The author of the text notices a parallel linking this situation with how the national consciousness of the Swedes was described at the beginning of the previous century by Selma Lagerlöf and Verner von Heidenstam. However, he notices certain regularity that “when the history of Sweden is written in a scientific and objective way, with a keen pursuit of truth, it is not only the history of Sweden that loses its social grounding, but it is also much harder to build a national identity on it”. What affects most the nation are fantastic heroes and fantastic events. Arnstberg emphasizes that he does not need his country’s history to build his identity. He refers to Peter Englund, a member of the Swedish Academy, who on the one hand wrote that ignorance of history may cause a lack of sense and identity, and on the other hand, he believed that historical events and heroes should not be used as justification for nationalism. His interpretation of Englund’s words includes two approaches to history. The first – modernist, which does not look at history in the identity context, and the second – nationalist, according to which knowledge of history is important for a sense of community with the rest of the nation. Further, the author of the text analyzes the concept of Swedishness, referring to the articles of other researchers. The examples he gives more blur the term than allow us to understand what it really means. He demonstrates, on the basis of nationalism, the paradoxes of Swedishness and even undermines its existence.

The museum and temporalization

2020 ◽  
pp. 0961463X2096264
Author(s):  
François Hartog
Keyword(s):  
20Th Century ◽  
14Th Century ◽  
The Past ◽  
15Th Century ◽  
Starting Point ◽  
The Future ◽  
History Of ◽  
The One ◽  
Challenging Situation

More than any other institution, the museum is preoccupied with time, perpetually creating, contesting, and regaining it. From the collections of ancient art amassed in mid-14th-century Italy to the contemporary galleries without their own collections, the museum has always been a leading force in shaping Western civilization’s perceptions of time. After a survey of the history of Europe’s museums, the article traces the configurations of temporality that have arisen in different periods. Beginning in the 15th century, museums exhibited recent art alongside classical masterpieces, highlighting the cleavage between new and old. Three and a half centuries later, however, the art of the present was proclaimed a contemporary of the art of the past and the future, a notion upheld in spite of the outpourings of revolutionary pathos. It was in the second half of the 20th century that this synchronizing tendency yielded to the domination of the one and only present, which remains in force today. This new and challenging situation could be a starting point for the reassessment of contemporary museums’ role in influencing and realizing social temporality.

The Invention of Papal History

2019 ◽  
Author(s):  
Stefan Bauer
Keyword(s):  
Catholic Reformation ◽  
History Writing ◽  
Historical Texts ◽  
The Past ◽  
History Of ◽  
Cultural Standards ◽  
Commissioned Works ◽  
The One ◽  
Late Renaissance ◽  
The Church

How was the history of post-classical Rome and of the Church written in the Catholic Reformation? Historical texts composed in Rome at this time have been considered secondary to the city’s significance for the history of art. The Invention of Papal History corrects this distorting emphasis and shows how history-writing became part of a comprehensive formation of the image and self-perception of the papacy. By presenting and fully contextualizing the path-breaking works of the Augustinian historian Onofrio Panvinio (1530–68), this book shows what type of historical research was possible in the late Renaissance and the Catholic Reformation. Historiography in this period by no means consisted entirely of commissioned works written for patrons; rather, a creative interplay existed between, on the one hand, the endeavours of authors to explore the past and, on the other hand, the constraints of patronage and ideology placed on them. This book sheds new light on the changing priorities, mentalities, and cultural standards that flourished in the transition from the Renaissance to the Catholic Reformation.

Camus's Absurd and the World of Melville's Confidence-Man

PMLA ◽  
1967 ◽  
Vol 82 (1) ◽  
pp. 14-27
Author(s):  
Leon F. Seltzer
Keyword(s):  
Careful Analysis ◽  
The Other ◽  
The Novel ◽  
The Past ◽  
The World ◽  
Critical Attention ◽  
Confidence Man ◽  
Ugly Duckling ◽  
History Of ◽  
The One

In recent years, The Confidence-Man: His Masquerade, a difficult work and for long an unjustly neglected one, has begun to command increasingly greater critical attention and esteem. As more than one contemporary writer has noted, the verdict of the late Richard Chase in 1949, that the novel represents Melville's “second best achievement,” has served to prompt many to undertake a second reading (or at least a first) of the book. Before this time, the novel had traditionally been the one Melville readers have shied away from—as overly discursive, too rambling altogether, on the one hand, or as an unfortunate outgrowth of the author's morbidity on the other. Elizabeth Foster, in the admirably comprehensive introduction to her valuable edition of The Confidence-Man (1954), systematically traces the history of the book's reputation and observes that even with the Melville renaissance of the twenties, the work stands as the last piece of the author's fiction to be redeemed. Only lately, she comments, has it ceased to be regarded as “the ugly duckling” of Melville's creations. But recognition does not imply agreement, and it should not be thought that in the past fifteen years critics have reached any sort of unanimity on the novel's content. Since Mr. Chase's study, which approached the puzzling work as a satire on the American spirit—or, more specifically, as an attack on the liberalism of the day—and which speculated upon the novel's controlling folk and mythic figures, other critics, by now ready to assume that the book repaid careful analysis, have read the work in a variety of ways. It has been treated, among other things, as a religious allegory, as a philosophic satire on optimism, and as a Shandian comedy. One critic has conveniently summarized the prevailing situation by remarking that “the literary, philosophical, and cultural materials in this book are fused in so enigmatic a fashion that its interpreters have differed as to what the book is really about.”

La citoyenneté et la construction de l'Europe : discussions théoriques

Res Publica ◽  
1994 ◽  
Vol 36 (3-4) ◽  
pp. 361-380
Author(s):  
Paul Magnette
Keyword(s):  
Second World War ◽  
Point Of View ◽  
Nation State ◽  
The European Union ◽  
World War ◽  
Dual Nature ◽  
European Citizenship ◽  
History Of ◽  
The One ◽  
Second World

This paper examines the evolving ideological content of the concept of citizenship and particularly the challenges it faces as a consequence of the building of the European Union. From an epistemological point of view it is first argued that citizenship may be described as a dual concept: it is both a legal institution composed of the rights of the citizen as they are fixed at a certain moment of its history, and a normative ideal which embodies their political aspirations. As a result of this dual nature, citizenship is an essentially dynamicnotion, which is permanently evolving between a state of balance and change.  The history of this concept in contemporary political thought shows that, from the end of the second World War it had raised a synthesis of democratic, liberal and socialist values on the one hand, and that it was historically and logically bound to the Nation-State on the other hand. This double synthesis now seems to be contested, as the themes of the "crisis of the Nation State" and"crisis of the Welfare state" do indicate. The last part of this paper grapples with recent theoretical proposals of new forms of european citizenship, and argues that the concept of citizenship could be renovated and take its challenges into consideration by insisting on the duties and the procedures it contains.

WHY STUDYING THE HISTORY OF PHILOSOPHY MATTERS

Think ◽  
2021 ◽  
Vol 21 (60) ◽  
pp. 5-20
Author(s):  
Anna Marmodoro
Keyword(s):  
Ancient Philosophy ◽  
History Of Philosophy ◽  
Special Focus ◽  
The Past ◽  
History Of ◽  
The One

The debate over whether and how philosophers of today may usefully engage with philosophers of the past is nearly as old as the history of philosophy itself. Does the study of the history of philosophy train or corrupt the budding philosopher's mind? Why study the history of philosophy? And, how to study the history of philosophy? I discuss some mainstream approaches to the study of the history of philosophy (with special focus on ancient philosophy), before explicating the one I adopt and commend.

Radical Tense-Indexical Historicality and the De Se

KronoScope ◽  
2021 ◽  
Vol 21 (1) ◽  
pp. 7-27
Author(s):  
Carl Humphries
Keyword(s):  
Alternative View ◽  
The Past ◽  
Starting Point ◽  
De Se ◽  
Temporal Expressions ◽  
The Subject ◽  
The One ◽  
Self Reference ◽  
A Current ◽  
Shed Light

Abstract “Being is said in many ways,” claimed Aristotle, initiating a discussion about existential commitment that continues today. Might there not be reasons to say something similar about “having been,” or “having happened,” where these expressions denote something’s being located in the past? Moreover, if history – construed not only as an object of inquiry (actual events, etc.) but also as a way of casting light on certain matters – is primarily concerned with “things past,” then the question just posed also seems relevant to the question of what historical understanding amounts to. While the idea that ‘being’ may mean different things in different contexts has indisputable importance, the implications of other, past-temporal expressions are elusive. In what might any differences of substantive meaning encountered there consist? One starting point for responding – the one that provides the subject matter explored here – is furnished by the question of whether or not a certain way of addressing matters relating to the past permits or precludes forms of intelligibility that could be said to be ‘radically historical.’ After arguing that the existing options for addressing this issue remain unsatisfactory, I set out an alternative view of what it could mean to endorse or reject such an idea. This involves drawing distinctions and analogies connected with notions of temporal situatedness, human practicality and historicality, which are then linked to a further contrast between two ways of understanding the referential significance of what is involved when we self-ascribe a relation to a current situation in a manner construable as implying that we take ourselves to occupy a unique, yet circumstantially defined, perspective on that situation. As regards the latter, on one reading, the specific kind of indexically referring language we use – commonly labelled “de se” – is something whose rationale is exhausted by its practical utility as a communicative tool. On the other, it is viewed as capturing something of substantive importance about how we can be thought of as standing in relation to reality. I claim that this second reading, together with the line of thinking about self-identification and self-reference it helps foreground, can shed light on what it would mean to affirm or deny the possibility of radically historical forms of intelligibility – and thus also on what it could mean to ascribe a plurality of meanings to talk concerning things being ‘in the past.’

“A composItIon wrItten wIthout creatIve lImItatIons” – Wanda Landowska and concerto for harpsichord and five instruments by ManueL de Falla (1923)

2021 ◽  
Vol 1 (15) ◽  
pp. 67-107
Author(s):  
Ines R. Artola
Keyword(s):  
Strict Sense ◽  
Sonata Form ◽  
Historical Sources ◽  
Avant Garde ◽  
20Th Century Music ◽  
The Third ◽  
Word Analysis ◽  
The Past ◽  
History Of ◽  
The One

The aim of the present article is the analysis of Concerto for harpsichord and five instruments by Manuel de Falla – a piece which was dedicated by the composer to Wanda Landowska, an outstanding Polish harpsichord player. The piece was meant to commemorate the friendship these two artists shared as well as their collaboration. Written in the period of 1923-1926, the Concerto was the first composition in the history of 20th century music where harpsichord was the soloist instrument. The first element of the article is the context in which the piece was written. We shall look into the musical influences that shaped its form. On the one hand, it was the music of the past: from Cancionero Felipe Pedrell through mainly Bach’s polyphony to works by Scarlatti which preceded the Classicism (this influence is particularly noticeable in the third movement of the Concerto). On the other hand, it was music from the time of de Falla: first of all – Neo-Classicism and works by Stravinsky. The author refers to historical sources – critics’ reviews, testimonies of de Falla’s contemporaries and, obviously, his own remarks as to the interpretation of the piece. Next, Inés R. Artola analyses the score in the strict sense of the word “analysis”. In this part of the article, she quotes specific fragments of the composition, which reflect both traditional musical means (counterpoint, canon, Scarlatti-style sonata form, influence of old popular music) and the avant-garde ones (polytonality, orchestration, elements of neo-classical harmony).

scholarly journals Straddling the Border: A Marginal History of Guerrilla Warfare and ‘Counter-Insurgency’ in the Indonesian Borderlands, 1960s–1970s

2011 ◽  
Vol 45 (6) ◽  
pp. 1423-1463 ◽  
Author(s):  
MICHAEL EILENBERG
Keyword(s):  
Southeast Asian ◽  
Guerrilla Warfare ◽  
Nation State ◽  
National Belonging ◽  
West Kalimantan ◽  
Political Ideologies ◽  
Nation States ◽  
History Of ◽  
New Nation ◽  
International Border

AbstractPost-independence ethnic minorities inhabiting the Southeast Asian borderlands were willingly or unwillingly pulled into the macro politics of territoriality and state formation. The rugged and hilly borderlands delimiting the new nation-states became battlefronts of state-making and spaces of confrontation between divergent political ideologies. In the majority of the Southeast Asian borderlands, this implied violent disruption in the lives of local borderlanders that came to affect their relationship to their nation-state. A case in point is the ethnic Iban population living along the international border between the Indonesian province of West Kalimantan and the Malaysian state of Sarawak on the island of Borneo. Based on local narratives, the aim of this paper is to unravel the little known history of how the Iban segment of the border population in West Kalimantan became entangled in the highly militarized international disputes with neighbouring Malaysia in the early 1960s, and in subsequent military co-operative ‘anti-communist’ ‘counter-insurgency’ efforts by the two states in the late 1960–1970s. This paper brings together facets of national belonging and citizenship within a borderland context with the aim of understanding the historical incentives behind the often ambivalent, shifting and unruly relationship between marginal citizens like the Iban borderlanders and their nation-state.

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