Testimoniality: A lexicon of witnesses of Holocaust non-sites of memory in Poland

The authors analyse grassroots modalities of the figure of witness in the communities living in the vicinity of uncommemorated sites of past violence. Testimoniality, understood as the disposition to bear witness, i.e. both the willingness to testify and the ability to provide important information, is discussed in relation to complex, heterogenic and dynamic assemblages that form around the sites in question, comprising both human (neighbours, wardens) and non-human actors (the landscape and biotope, material objects), diverse practices, performative gestures, and relations. The analysis is placed in the context of the debate on the complicated status of the “witness” as a category in the Polish post-war culture of memory, as well as of new relevant categories emerging in both Polish and international scholarship on the Holocaust. The authors conceptually systematise testimonial situations and propose a lexicon of testimonial positions, practices and objects that are grounded in the material gathered in fieldwork during the research project on unmemorialised sites of genocide in Poland. They distinguish: the crown witness, the trustee, the volunteer, the official and the contingent witness, and discuss categories of testimonial gesture, testimonial performance, testimonial object, and testimonial words.

Introduction: Taiwan as Epistemic Challenger

Four articles are included in this topical section on ‘Taiwan as Epistemic Challenger’. Two of the four contributions were originally presented at the 3rd World Congress of Taiwan Studies held on 6–8 September 2018 at Academia Sinica in Taipei. The main theme of this Congress was ‘Taiwan in the Globalized World: The Relevance of Taiwan Studies to the Social Sciences and Humanities’. The other two contributions were accepted through a call for papers. The topical section aims to demonstrate that Taiwanese scholars and foreign researchers of Taiwanese society can transcend the competitive disadvantage of studying a single country and make Taiwan visible in international scholarship. The findings of relevant Taiwan studies research can instead modify the epistemic assumptions and methodology in different disciplines of the social sciences and humanities.

Review of Joachim Weber (ed.), Handbook on Geopolitics and Security in the Arctic: The High North Between Cooperation and Confrontation

Handbook on Geopolitics and Security in the Arctic: The High North Between Cooperation and Confrontation, edited by Joachim Weber, is part of the Springer series Frontiers in International Relations. Published in 2020, the anthology comes at a turbulent time in Arctic geopolitics, when the traditional supremacy of the Arctic littoral states has started to be challenged by lurking interests of non-Arctic stakeholders, and global anthropogenic challenges, such as climate change, keep raising questions as to the future of security and geopolitical balance in the region. The handbook comprises a compelling read with diverse areas of discussion that give an insightful exploration of the most pressing issues relevant to Arctic geopolitics. The multidisciplinarity of approaches employed in this volume and the variety of relevant topics covered have the potential to mark a turning point in international scholarship on geopolitical studies.

“Ovid’s Old Age”

“Ovid’s Old Age” is a sung poem written by the Polish poet and musician Jacek Kaczmarski (1957–2004) which engages with the myth of Ovid’s exile. Kaczmarski’s works were heavily influenced both by classical culture and his experience of political emigration during the communist era. He was famed as an unofficial bard of the opposition movement, but is as yet little known to classical reception scholars. This paper presents Kaczmarski’s creative engagement with Ovid as both a deeply personal reflection on the nature of exile and at the same time a universal commentary on poetry under authoritarian regimes. Our interpretation is based on a thematic analysis of the poem, including landscape, imperialism, displacement, “national” poets in exile, nostalgia, and the force of poetry. We set the reception in its social, political, and biographical context, with reference to several mediating receptions of the Ovidian exile. In Kaczmarski’s poem, the Ovidian voice helps the poet to express the trials of emigration and reveals their effect on his art. It shows how engagements with classical culture may flourish, even while the formal discipline of Classics has been undernourished. We provide a bilingual translation of “Ovid’s Old Age” to foster the understanding of migratory experiences in contemporary poetry and enrich international scholarship on the reception of Ovid with a response from communist Poland.

Out of Africa: Ecocriticism beyond Environmental Justice

This essay is an attempt to present a broader view of ecocriticism in Africa. Ecocriticism, in theory and practice, appears to have limited itself to the notion of environmental justice, with the aim of raising consciousness against institutional powers behind ecological crises. The reason for this is not far-fetched. International scholarship on African ecocriticism tends to focus on the activism of the Kenyan Wangari Mathai and the Nigerian Ken Saro-Wiwa; and on the fiction of a few writers concerned with environmentalism and conservation. This kind of ecocriticism, under the rubric of postcolonialism, is, in my view, narrow, too human-centred, and should, in fact, be decentred for an all-inclusive mapping of African ecocriticism. I attempt to shift this paradigm by foregrounding a narrative that stages the role and agency of nonhuman and spiritual materiality in practices that demonstrate nature-human relations since the pre-colonial period. I argue that for a proper delineation of the theory and practice of ecocriticism in Africa, attention should be paid to literary and cultural artefacts that depict Africa’s natural world in which humans sometimes find themselves helpless under the agency of other-than-human beings, with whom they negotiate the right path for the society. I conclude by making the point that a recognition of this natural world, and humans’ right place in it, is crucial to any ecocritical project that imagines an alternative to the present human-centred system. Keywords: African ecocriticism, natural worlds, spiritual materiality, nonhuman agency