"An Evening at Kantemir’s" (1816)

Konstantin Batiushkov’s “An Evening at Kantemir’s” (Vecher u Kantemira, 1816) is unique as a work of literature, a document of Russian intellectual history, and a cultural and artistic manifesto. The “Evening” takes its cue from the popular Enlightenment genre of “dialogues with the dead,” although Batiushkov brings together people who were contemporaries rather than widely separated historical figures, as was usual. In it, the poet Antiokh Kantemir (1708-44) challenges Montesquieu’s argument from The Spirit of Laws that Russia’s harsh climate has resulted in its alleged lack of civilization. Batiushkov was rewriting history with hindsight, and one of the charming aspects of the work is its slightly humorous and lightly ironic play with anachronism, as Batiushkov presents Kantemir as marvelously prophetic of the later successes of Russian literature. Typical is his interlocutor’s statement that “It is easier to believe that the Russians will storm Paris” than that Russia could produce a Lomonosov. Batiushkov himself was with the troops that took Paris in 1814, and the recent Russian victory was surely on readers’ minds as they read this piece. “An Evening at Kantemir’s” attempted to integrate the “new” Russian literature with the eighteenth-century “classicist” literary and Enlightenment tradition. It also illustrates Batiushkov’s faith in poetry as a fundamental way to advance the cause of national progress.

Conversation with the past in contemporary choreography

My article examines the problem of the archival turn in scientific works and discourse that affects artistic practice, including the choreographic one. In recent years, we can find several attempts to reconstruct the performances of famous choreographers who worked in the 1920s and 1930s. Modern choreographers have recalled forgotten performances of the former era, but recalling these choreographic works, they want to give them a modern meaning. This attempt is similar to rewriting history. In this context of rewriting history, I want to emphasize the importance of bodily memory and bring the perspective of viewing the body as an archive. In my article, I pose questions about how to find traces of former works? How modern choreographers work with memory and with the body. The concept of the body as an archive and the experience of past generations associated with choreographic practice is at the center of my work. The body can hide the secret of trauma, the unconscious determination of behavior in bodily, physical play. The second problem raised in the article is about the relationship between the present and the past. Why do we need a turn in the past now? I consider Yanka Rudskaya’s biography and her approach to dance as an example. This article shows the role of feminine artistic practices in the space of choreography. Recent reflections concern the problem of transferring modern dance to modernity and its discovery.

The Career and Communities of Zaynab Fawwaz

An intellectual biography of early Arabic feminist Zaynab Fawwaz and a study of her life in Ottoman Syria and Egypt, in the context of debates on gender, modernity and the good society, 1890s-1910. Chapters take up her writing and debates in which she participated, concerning social justice, girls’ education, marriage, divorce and polygyny, the question of ‘Nature’ and Darwinist notions of male/female, and intersections of nationalism, anti-imperialism, and feminism. Fawwaz also wrote two novels and play, which are analysed in the context of fiction rewriting history, and on theatre as a reformist tool of public education in turn-of-the-century Egypt. The book also comprises a study of some important periodical venues for public debate in Egypt in this period, particularly the nationalist press and one early women’s journal, and it highlights the writings of lesser-studied journalists and other intellectuals, within the context of the Arab/ic Nahda or intellectual revival. It argues that Fawwaz’s feminism, based on an Islamic ethical worldview, was distinct from prevailing ‘modernist’ views in posing a non-essentialist, open-ended notion of gender that did not, for instance, highlight maternalist discourses. Fawwaz’s own background was Shi’i, an element that was quietly present in her work.

About benefits and harms of rewriting history. One of the topics of contemporary historical discourses: philosophical analysis

When we talk about historical revisionism, negative connotations as a rule are prevailing. Prohibition of revision of certain historical interpretation and assessment is one of the tasks of historical policy which is carried out by adopting so-called «memorial laws». Taking care of the formation of the desired representations of the past (narratives) is directly related to the interests of institutionalized power in its own stabilization and strengthening. Power is a function of the community, whose identity is formed historically. Consolidation of collective identity through the support and reproduction of common representations of the past is one of the tools to strengthen power. At the same time, the very nature of human experience acquisition which is permanent mediation of the horizon of the past and the present, presuppose a reinterpretation of this past. Major shifts in the experience of generations, which occur as a result of certain social changes, lead to a new look at the past of the community. In this sense, rethinking and rewriting history becomes necessary to clarify, update, rationalize the collective identity, which is problematized by new experience. Historical policy can both respond to this need for identity transformation through re- thinking representations of one’s own past and come into conflict with it. In the latter case, the narratives transferring by institutional power begin to conflict with the communicative memory of the generation experiencing a shift. One of the tools of self-preservation of power in this situation is blocking of living historical experience, which can take various forms. The culmination of such a blockade is «hermetization» of historical time that take place in totalitarian state. The living historicity of experience, which requires a constant rethinking of one’s own historically inherited identity, is replaced by an artificial, time-frozen identity, which, precisely because of this nature, becomes fragile and doomed to destruction. On the other hand, the rewriting of history initiated by the authorities within the framework of historical policy may face resistance to the representations of the past rooted in the communicative and cultural memory. The resistance of historical narratives indicates that the collective memory and the identity founded in it are not only a power construct, but also a spontaneous layering of sediments of historical experience. In today’s world of global communications and unified everyday practices, historical narratives are beginning to play an increasing role, as they remain the only seat of identity. At the same time, this process reinforces the conflict potential of communities, which can be observed in many examples of the revival of historically motivated political ambitions. In this situation, a critical clarification of various interpretations of the past becomes a means of rationalizing the historically inherited identity of communities as a necessary condition for intercultural dialogue.

“All art is political”: John Keene’s Black historical resistance in Counternarratives

ABSTRACT: This article deals with the engaged writing of prose writer, poet, translator, and Professor John Keene. The Black North-American author clashes of political struggles, for he seeks to rewrite history as a literary witness, bringing assessments, evaluations, and social issues of the bygone ages – and their following outcome in the present. Keene’s historical approach and critical attitude uphold the line in his awarded short stories, Counternarratives, published by New Directions in 2015. Concerns about canon, rewriting history, Afro-descendent voice, and resistance will be approached, backed by writers and researchers such as Fanon (1963), Spriggs (1965), Baraka (1969), T’Shaka (2012), among others. KEY WORDS: John Keene; Counternarratives; resistance; rewriting history.

THE SHIFT IN HISTORICAL PERCEPTION FROM TRADITION TO MODERN IN VIETNAM IN THE EARLY TWENTIETH CENTURY

In the late nineteenth and early twentieth century, the intelligentsia of the colonial countries and ones being threatened by Western colonial dominance in Asia began to re-perceive the problems of sovereignty, nation-state, and re-ask questions like "What is history for?" as well as review what previous historians wrote about their national history. From re-realizing history and rewriting history according to new perspectives, historiography in these countries has shifted from "traditional" to "modern" with taking Western science as the main direction. Vietnamese historiography is also not out of that general change. Examining the product of historical books at the beginning of the twentieth century, Phan Boi Chau is considered as the pioneer historian for that historiographical turn. The article focuses on analyzing the new historical viewpoints of Phan Boi Chau from the global perspective of the flow of thought in Asian countries at that time.