scholarly journals Materializing the past. Mannequins, history and memory in museums. Insight from the Northern European and East - Asian contexts

1970 ◽  
pp. 5-20
Author(s):  
Marzia Varutti

What are the rationale, significance and implications of the use of reproductions of the human body in contemporary historical museums? This article probes this question through a critical analysis of diverse uses of body simulacra– specifically mannequins and life-size figures – in historical museums in Taiwan and China. The discussion of the East-Asian case study is set against examples from historical representations of the body in Northern Europe as a way to offer a comparative perspective that casts light on the uniqueness and similarities among these geo-cultural areas. This material enables me to reflect on the changing and diverse roles of mannequins in historical displays – in Western (North European) and non-Western contexts – ranging from materializations of the national past, its heroes and martyrs, aiming to canonize History as distant and authoritative, to display devices that strive to generate personal understandings of the past through memories and emotions.

2014 ◽  
Vol 23 (3) ◽  
pp. 256-272 ◽  
Author(s):  
Marcus Keutel ◽  
Bjoern Michalik ◽  
Janek Richter

2021 ◽  
pp. 003022282110421
Author(s):  
Helena Nordh ◽  
Danielle House ◽  
Mariske Westendorp ◽  
Avril Maddrell ◽  
Carola Wingren ◽  
...  

We identify and analyse practices and management regimes around burial and handling of ashes across eight case study towns within six Northern European countries. We analyse management of cemeteries and crematoria gardens, majority practices and provision for minority communities, including various burial types, cremated remains, the re-use of graves, and costs for interments. Comparative data is drawn from analysis of national and local regulations, interviews with stakeholders, and observations at cemeteries and crematoria gardens. The findings show significant variation in national and local regulations and practices for burial and cremation particularly around the re-use of graves, handling of ashes and costs for grave space and cremation. We identify the opportunities and constraints of these variations in terms of accessibility, diversity and equality; and argue for national directions to avoid unequal treatment within nations. Furthermore, we stress the importance of a liberal and inclusive management of European cemeteries and crematoria gardens.


2019 ◽  
Vol 58 (3) ◽  
pp. 469-492 ◽  
Author(s):  
Dimitris Plantzos

Since 2009, Greece has been hit by a severe economic recession followed by harsh austerity policies, gradual impoverishment, and ultimately social collapse. This article investigates the cultural landscape of the so-called ‘Greek crisis’, focusing on Athens, the nation’s capital, and the ways the crisis discourse employs biopolitical technologies of dispossession and displacement in order to generate an intensified breed of body-politics. The article’s main case study is documenta 14, a blockbuster exhibition of contemporary art organized in Athens in 2017, seemingly elaborating on the ideas of debt – classical and modern – though in fact promoting neoliberal approaches to public economy and life. The idea of ‘classical debt’, the article concludes, continuously reiterated by both Greece’s defenders as well as its most unforgiving critics, rather than acting as an emancipatory force, ends up producing a public consisting of silent bodies, trapped in highly romanticized discourses of the past and ultimately unable to defend themselves. This tension, however, also provokes narratives and gestures made of contradictions and ambiguity, difficult to map and monitor according to established research protocols.


Author(s):  
Mickey Keenan ◽  
Karola Dillenburger

Since autism was first recognised, prevalence has increased rapidly. The growing economic as well as social cost to society can only be mitigated by effective interventions and supports. It is therefore not surprising that most governments have developed public policy documents to address the management of autism. Over the past 40-50 years, meaningful evidence has accrued showing that interventions based on the scientific discipline of Applied Behaviour Analysis (ABA) can help people with autism reach their potential. In view of this, nearly all of North America has laws to mandate that ABA-based interventions are available through the health care systems. In contrast, across Europe there are no such laws. In fact, the National Institute for Health and Care Excellence (NICE), the body guiding health and social policy in the UK, concluded that it could not find any evidence to support ABA, and therefore could not recommend it. This paper addresses the reasons for these diametrically opposed perspectives. In particular, it examines what happens when health and social care policy is misinformed about effective autism intervention.


2012 ◽  
Vol 71 (1) ◽  
pp. 33-55 ◽  
Author(s):  
William A. Callahan

This article examines how recent books by academics and public intellectuals are reshaping the discourse of the rise of China. While earlier trends argued that China was being socialized into the norms of international society, many texts now proclaim that due to its unique civilization, China will follow its own path to modernity. Such books thus look to the past—China's imperial history—for clues to not only China's future, but also the world's future. This discourse, which could be called “Sino-speak,” presents an essentialized Chinese civilization that is culturally determined to rule Asia, if not the world. The article notes that nuanced readings of China's historical relations with its East Asian neighbors provide a critical entry into a more sophisticated analysis of popular declarations of “Chinese exceptionalism.” But it concludes that this critical analysis is largely overwhelmed by the wave of Sino-speak.


2022 ◽  

Over the last twenty years, reenactment has been appropriated by both contemporary artistic production and art-theoretical discourse, becoming a distinctive strategy to engage with history and memory. As a critical act of repetition, which is never neutral in reactualizing the past, it has established unconventional modes of historicization and narration. Collecting work by artists, scholars, curators, and museum administrators, the volume investigates reenactment's potential for a (re)activation of layered temporal experiences, and its value as an ongoing interpretative and political gesture performed in the present with an eye to the future. Its contributions discuss the mobilization of archives in the struggle for inclusiveness and cultural revisionism; the role of the body in the presentification and rehabilitation of past events and (impermanent) objects; the question of authenticity and originality in artistic practice, art history, as well as in museum collections and conservation practices.


Author(s):  
Guy Beiner

An understanding of the historical dynamics of social forgetting can be learned from the detailed case study of the vernacular historiography of the 1798 Rebellion in Ulster. It has far-reaching implications for a more meaningful appreciation of the relationship between history and memory. The political impasse in post-conflict Northern Ireland, which has stumbled over disagreements on ‘dealing with the past’ in the context of finding acceptable arrangements for transitional justice, could benefit from showing more sensitivity, not only to the role of oral history storytelling, but also to ingrained traditions of ‘vernacular silence’ that perpetuate social forgetting. A brief inspection of some prominent twentieth-century examples demonstrates the wider relevance of studying social forgetting. In today’s digital age, explorations of social forgetting suggest new possibilities for reconciling conflicts between an inner duty to remember and the right to be outwardly forgotten.


Author(s):  
Ivan Biliarsky ◽  
◽  
Mariyana Tsibranska-Kostova ◽  

In our article we propose a case study on the character of the veneration of neomartyrs of Sofia in the 16th century and a review of the related literature. We try to argue that the aims of their veneration were religious and political, and that these aims were attained through the exaltation of the Christian faith and the creation and maintaining of a historical memory. The direction of the intended results, however, is not anti-Ottoman, but anti-Islamic; the veneration urged to consolidate the Orthodox Christian congregation. It is to the people of the Orthodox confession, not to the national (in this period mostly “ethnical”) community, that the veneration of the neomartyrs was addressed. The strengthening of the congregation could be achieved excellently through the martyr’s bearing witness (having in mind that “martyros” means “witness” in Greek); the martyr adds holiness to the place and sacralizes the space of the city, and finally of the whole political milieu. The witness is not only the creator of sacredness, he is also a keeper of the memory of the past. The martyr is a champion because he / she vanquishes the foes of God through his / her martyrdom. As a champion, he is a reminder of the glorious past; as a victor, he is a Defensor fidei in the present. This is a clear confirmation of God’s power under different historical circumstances. These ideas directed at the restoration, but only spiritual, of the Christian Empire through the Body of the Church. This explains the absence of any overt opposition against Ottoman power. Therefore, we find here, in Sofia, a conception of Byzance après Byzance of the same type as we find in Constantinople after the fall of the Empire, when the Ecumenical Church adopted part of the Empire’s heritage.


Author(s):  
Pramukti Dian Setianingrum ◽  
Farah Irmania Tsani

Backgroud: The World Health Organization (WHO) explained that the number of Hyperemesis Gravidarum cases reached 12.5% of the total number of pregnancies in the world and the results of the Demographic Survey conducted in 2007, stated that 26% of women with live births experienced complications. The results of the observations conducted at the Midwife Supriyati Clinic found that pregnant women with hyperemesis gravidarum, with a comparison of 10 pregnant women who examined their contents there were about 4 pregnant women who complained of excessive nausea and vomiting. Objective: to determine the hyperemesis Gravidarum of pregnant mother in clinic. Methods: This study used Qualitative research methods by using a case study approach (Case Study.) Result: The description of excessive nausea of vomiting in women with Hipermemsis Gravidarum is continuous nausea and vomiting more than 10 times in one day, no appetite or vomiting when fed, the body feels weak, blood pressure decreases until the body weight decreases and interferes with daily activities days The factors that influence the occurrence of Hyperemesis Gravidarum are Hormonal, Diet, Unwanted Pregnancy, and psychology, primigravida does not affect the occurrence of Hyperemesis Gravidarum. Conclusion: Mothers who experience Hyperemesis Gravidarum feel nausea vomiting continuously more than 10 times in one day, no appetite or vomiting when fed, the body feels weak, blood pressure decreases until the weight decreases and interferes with daily activities, it is because there are several factors, namely, hormonal actors, diet, unwanted pregnancy, and psychology.


Derrida Today ◽  
2013 ◽  
Vol 6 (1) ◽  
pp. 97-114 ◽  
Author(s):  
Christopher Morris

Over the past thirty years, academic debate over pornography in the discourses of feminism and cultural studies has foundered on questions of the performative and of the word's definition. In the polylogue of Droit de regards, pornography is defined as la mise en vente that is taking place in the act of exegesis in progress. (Wills's idiomatic English translation includes an ‘it’ that is absent in the French original). The definition in Droit de regards alludes to the word's etymology (writing by or about prostitutes) but leaves the referent of the ‘sale’ suspended. Pornography as la mise en vente boldly restates the necessary iterability of the sign and anticipates two of Derrida's late arguments: that there is no ‘the’ body and that performatives may be powerless. Deriving a definition of pornography from a truncated etymology exemplifies the prosthesis of origin and challenges other critical discourses to explain how pornography can be understood as anything more than ‘putting (it) up for sale’.


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