scholarly journals Indestructible Pasts and Paranoid Presents: John Franzen against Active Forgetting in Purity

2019 ◽  
pp. 21-34
Author(s):  
Cristina Garrigós
Keyword(s):  
Traumatic Event ◽  
The Novel ◽  
Contemporary Society ◽  
The Public ◽  
The Past ◽  
Personal Archives ◽  
Conscious Process ◽  
Unconscious Desire ◽  
Selection Of

Forgetting and remembering are as inevitably linked as lifeand death. Sometimes, forgetting is motivated by a biological disorder, brain damage, or it is the product of an unconscious desire derived from a traumatic event (psychological repression). But in some cases, we can motivate forgetting consciously (thought suppression). It is through the conscious repression of memories that we can find self-preservation and move forward, although this means that we create a fable of our lives, as Nietzsche says in his essay “On the Uses and Disadvantages of History for Life” (1997). In Jonathan Franzen’s novel, Purity (2015), forgetting is an active and conscious process by which the characters choose to forget certain episodes of their lives to be able to construct new identities. The erased memories include murder, economical privileges derived from illegal or unethical commercial processes, or dark sexual episodes. The obsession with forgetting the past links the lives of the main characters, and structures the narrative of the novel. The motivated erasure of memories becomes, thus, a way that the characters have to survive and face the present according to a (fake) narrative that they have constructed. But is motivated forgetting possible? Can one completely suppress facts in an active way? This paper analyses the role of forgetting in Franzen’s novel in relation to the need in our contemporary society to deny, hide, or erase uncomfortable data from our historical or personal archives; the need to make disappear stories which we do not want to accept, recognize, and much less make known to the public. This is related to how we manage information in the age of technology, the “selection” of what is to be the official story, and how we rewrite our own history

scholarly journals Guests of Honour at Feria del Libro de Madrid: The Cases of '¡AleManía!' and 'France como un libro abierto'

2019 ◽  
Vol 41 ◽  
pp. 157-184
Author(s):  
Luise Hertwig
Keyword(s):  
Expert Interviews ◽  
Literary Field ◽  
Dominant Position ◽  
The Public ◽  
The Past ◽  
Book Fair ◽  
Selection Of

The objective of this paper is to analyse the presence of Germany and France as Guests of Honour at Feria del Libro de Madrid with regard to the interdependences between the book fair and its visiting countries. By means of expert interviews with the organisers, I studied the processes of selection, the objectives and the realisation of ¡AleManía! in 2011 and France como un libro abierto in 2016, as well as their accordance with the idea of bibliodiversity. In the past, the Guest of Honour seems to have played the role of an additional financial sponsor providing also further legitimacy for the public sales fair through its cultural programme. The guest countries in fact offer a variety of cultural and literary events at the venue, even though the selection of invited authors consists of actors with a strong or even dominant position in the respective literary field and therefore does not represent its diversity in every respect.

E-Projects Challenges in India – Role of Human Resource Management and Technology

2018 ◽  
Vol 6 (8) ◽  
pp. 263
Author(s):  
Ramnik Kaur
Keyword(s):  
Developing Countries ◽  
Public Administration ◽  
Paradigm Shift ◽  
Successful Implementation ◽  
The Public ◽  
Government Services ◽  
The Past ◽  
The Government ◽  
Traditional Approaches

E-governance is a paradigm shift over the traditional approaches in Public Administration which means rendering of government services and information to the public by using electronic means. In the past decades, service quality and responsiveness of the government towards the citizens were least important but with the approach of E-Government the government activities are now well dealt. This paper withdraws experiences from various studies from different countries and projects facing similar challenges which need to be consigned for the successful implementation of e-governance projects. Developing countries like India face poverty and illiteracy as a major obstacle in any form of development which makes it difficult for its government to provide e-services to its people conveniently and fast. It also suggests few suggestions to cope up with the challenges faced while implementing e-projects in India.

scholarly journals Where Does the World Historian Write From? Objectivity, Moral Conscience and the Past and Present of Imperialism

2011 ◽  
Vol 46 (3) ◽  
pp. 671-685 ◽  
Author(s):  
Richard Drayton
Keyword(s):  
Iraq War ◽  
Imperial History ◽  
The Public ◽  
The Past ◽  
Academic Subject ◽  
The World ◽  
The Future ◽  
Ethical Responsibilities

The contemporary historian, as she or he speaks to the public about the origins and meanings of the present, has important ethical responsibilities. ‘Imperial’ historians, in particular, shape how politicians and the public imagine the future of the world. This article examines how British imperial history, as it emerged as an academic subject since about 1900, often lent ideological support to imperialism, while more generally it suppressed or avoided the role of violence and terror in the making and keeping of the Empire. It suggests that after 2001, and during the Iraq War, in particular, a new Whig historiography sought to retail a flattering narrative of the British Empire’s past, and concludes with a call for a post-patriotic imperial history which is sceptical of power and speaks for those on the underside of global processes.

scholarly journals ABSTRACT OF PRACTICAL ACTIVITY OF A WORKGROUP ON «DECOMMUNIZATION» OF PUBLIC AREA OF THE TOWN OF VINNYTSIA: HISTORIAN’S VIEW

2017 ◽  
pp. 196-206 ◽  
Author(s):  
Tatiana Karoyeva
Keyword(s):  
Group Activity ◽  
Point Of View ◽  
Totalitarian Regime ◽  
Practical Activity ◽  
The Public ◽  
The Past ◽  
Public Area ◽  
Totalitarian Regimes ◽  
The Town ◽  
Selection Of

The article deals with practical activity of the workgroup created in order toadminister the Law of Ukraine «On condemnation of totalitarian regimes inUkraine and prohibition of propaganda of their insignia» within the town ofVinnytsia. The workgroup had to reveal objects containing communist andSoviet insignia that exists in the public urban area, to work out advice andpropositions as to replacing town toponyms containing insignia of communistthe totalitarian regime with new names.The article content is arranged in the following blocks: a) creation of theworkgroup; b) decision-making algorithm (from historians’ point of view);c) scientific grounds of historian group activity; d) selection of objects forfurther discussion; e) procedure of discussion of proposed new toponyms.Six historians residing in Vinnytsia were introduced into the workgroup.They belong to various generations and represent both governmental andpublic organizations. The following principles have been defined for organizingof the historian group activity: - toleration (provides for respectful attitude towards various canons ofhistoric memory except for Soviet-communist one);- historicism (due regard to be paid not only to the past but to currenttendencies and challenges of the future as well);- education (the activity has to promote dialogs between various socialgroups and formation of unified collective memory);- local topicality with a view to the formation of unified image/brand of thetown.Several approaches to practical activity on replacing of toponyms havebeen developed in order to ensure smooth work process. They were intendedto be used simultaneously or in sequence depending on the actual situation butevery proposal was concerned from the proposed standpoints in line with allthe following approaches:- historicity (provides for restoration of historical names of places andimplementation of historical and urban practical methods of representationof the town history in toponymy);- commemoration (this approach traditionally provides for drawing attentionto the formation of ethnic and national identity and cultural matrixof the nation, but in the course of solving of nation-wide problems Vinnytsiahistorian group strived to be oriented to the identity of local urbancommunity);- locality (conformity of toponyms to peculiarities of nature, history,economics and culture of Vinnytsia, Bratslavshchyna, and Podillia regions);- concreteness (provides for conformity of a toponym to its actual local(in line with toponym’s scale) circumstances (geographical, biological,industrial, cultural, religious, personological etc.);- actualization (due regard to be paid to the necessity of drawing attentionto certain events and persons that, as a rule, are not of the nationwidescale).Out of total 836 town place names, 147 toponyms (85 names) have beenreplaced with new ones and reasoning for 5 names (12 toponyms) has beenchanged. Thus decommunization encompassed 19% of the town toponymicalsystem.

Lopatina, N. and Fridstein, Y., eds. (2019). ‘Whom thou desertest not, O Genius…’ Goethe in translations by Russian 19th-c. poets. Moscow: Infinitiv: Lingvistika. (In Russ.)

2021 ◽  
pp. 274-279
Author(s):  
G. V. Yakusheva
Keyword(s):  
Cultural Awareness ◽  
Russian Society ◽  
The Novel ◽  
European Literature ◽  
Original Language ◽  
The Past ◽  
Poetic Translation ◽  
Western European

A review of the anthology prepared by N. Lopatina, a renowned Russian bibliographer. The collection includes 187 translations of Goethe’s 78 poems, which are quoted in the original language, and of several poetic fragments from the tragedy Faust, the novel Wilhelm Meister, as well as the cycle West-Eastern Divan, made by 63 Russian 19th-c. poets, representatives of various traditions — from Classicism and Sentimentalism to Symbolism and Acmeism. The collection showcases the high achievements of the country’s school of poetic translation and acute cultural awareness of the Russian society in the 19th c., and focuses on the part of Goethe’s poetic oeuvre that was especially popular with the Russian reader. Another role of the anthology is to bridge a gap in our knowledge and uncover names, often unfairly forgotten, of Russian poets and philologists of the past in their interaction with the Western European literature.

Storytelling and Narrative Research in Crisis and Disaster Studies

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Alessandra Jerolleman
Keyword(s):  
Primary Source ◽  
Community Recovery ◽  
The Public ◽  
Advocacy Training ◽  
The Past ◽  
Planning Policy ◽  
Fundamental Part ◽  
Disaster Studies ◽  
The Public Sphere

Storytelling is a common and pervasive practice across human history, which some have argued is a fundamental part of human understanding. Storytelling and narratives are a very human way of understanding the world, as well as events, and can serve as key tools for crisis and disaster studies and practice. They play a tremendously important role in planning, policy, education, the public sphere, advocacy, training, and community recovery. In the context of crises and disasters, stories are a means by which information is transmitted across generations, a key strategy for survival from non-routine and infrequent events. In fact, the field of disaster studies has long relied on narratives as primary source material, as a means of understanding individual experiences of phenomena as well as critiquing policies and understanding the role of history in 21st-century levels of vulnerability. Over the past several decades, practitioners and educators in the field have sought to use stories and narratives more purposefully to build resilience and pass on tacit knowledge.

Veronicas and Artists

2017 ◽  
Keyword(s):  
Contemporary Art ◽  
Religious Images ◽  
The Public ◽  
The Past ◽  
History Of Art ◽  
The Status ◽  
History Of ◽  
The Way ◽  
Contemporary Artists

Chapter One deals with several central issues with regard to understanding the role of religious motifs in contemporary art. Besides being a repetition of imagery from the past, religious motifs embedded in contemporary artworks become a means to problematise not only the way different periods in the history of art are delimited, but larger and seemingly more rigid distinctions as those between art and non-art images. Early religious images differ significantly from art images. The two types are regulated according to different sets of rules related to the conditions of their production, display, appreciation and the way images are invested with the status of being true or authentic instances of art or sacred images. Chapter One provides a discussion of the important motif of the image not made by an artist’s hand, or acheiropoietos, and its survival and transformation, including its traces in contemporary image-making practices. All images are the result of human making; they are fictions. The way the conditions of these fictions are negotiated, or the way the role of the maker is brought to visibility, or concealed, is a defining feature of the specific regime of representation. While the cult image concealed its maker in order to maintain its public significance, and the later art image celebrated the artist as a re-inventor of the old image, contemporary artists cite religious images in order to reflect on the very procedures that produce the public significance and status of images.

Between the Alternate and the Apocryphal

2019 ◽  
pp. 124-138
Author(s):  
Derek J. Thiess
Keyword(s):  
Literary Representations ◽  
The Novel ◽  
National History ◽  
Alternate History ◽  
The Past ◽  
Material History

This chapter explores connections between two treatments of history in science fictional literature—the apocryphal history and the alternate history—as they deal with material place. Theorists (Jameson, Hughes-Warrington) have explored the role of materialist history in our need to create counterfactuals by examining the cityscapes and structures in literary representations of the past. This essay connects the disparate strands of materialism, place, and religious revisionism via Juan Miguel Aguilera’s La locura de Dios. It reads the novel as both an apocryphal adventure to a “lost world” civilization and an alternate narrative of Spanish national history. La locura comments surprisingly self-consciously on the crystalline fragility of the logic holding material history together, threatened as it is by a revisionist, escapist orthodoxy.

Fifty years ago: ‘The scope of occupational medicine in a university health service’

2020 ◽  
pp. 202-203
Author(s):  
Anthony Ryle
Keyword(s):  
Health Service ◽  
Physical Health ◽  
Occupational Medicine ◽  
Potential Role ◽  
Health And Safety ◽  
Academic Achievements ◽  
The Past ◽  
Selection Of

This series provides a selection of articles from the past. In Fifty years ago: The scope of occupational medicine in a university health service Anthony Ryle briefly explores the potential role of a University Health Service in relation to students’ academic achievements and failures, rather than their physical health and safety.

scholarly journals Half-Remembering and Half-Forgetting? On Turning the Past of Old Norse Studies into a Future of Old Norse Studies

Humanities ◽  
2020 ◽  
Vol 9 (3) ◽  
pp. 97
Author(s):  
Jan Alexander van Nahl
Keyword(s):  
Old Norse ◽  
Social Relevance ◽  
The Public ◽  
Special Obligation ◽  
The Past ◽  
Societal Challenges ◽  
Science Technology ◽  
The Face

Many Humanities scholars seem to have become increasingly pessimistic due to a lack of success in their efforts to be recognized as a serious player next to their science, technology, engineering, and maths (STEM) colleagues. This appears to be the result of a profound uncertainty in the self-perception of individual disciplines within the Humanities regarding their role both in academia and society. This ambiguity, not least, has its roots in their own history, which often appears as an interwoven texture of conflicting opinions. Taking a stance on the current and future role of the Humanities in general, and individual disciplines in particular thus asks for increased engagement with their own past, i.e., histories of scholarship, which are contingent on societal and political contexts. This article’s focus is on a case study from the field of Old Norse Studies. In the face of the rise of populism and nationalism in our days, Old Norse Studies, with their focus on a ‘Germanic’ past, have a special obligation to address societal challenges. The article argues for the public engagement with the histories of individual disciplines to strengthen scholarly credibility in the face of public opinion and to overcome trenches which hamper attempts at uniting Humanities experts and regaining distinct social relevance.

Sign in / Sign up

Export Citation Format

Share Document