scholarly journals Historia y memoria. Revisitando a Juan Benet

Author(s):  
Adriana Minardi
Keyword(s):  
The Past ◽  

El presente artículo pretende revisitar aquellos lugares comunes que tuvieron lugar en el debate acerca del problema de la memoria histórica que, tras la muerte de Franco, no se pudo realizar, empañado por la ficción superadora de la transición. Como explica Francisco Caudet (2008), no basta con desenterrar muertos, asignarles un nombre y pasarlos a la memoria del pasado. Los muertos tienen familia y proyectos políticos opuestos al régimen franquista del nacionalismo católico. En este sentido, la valoración de los ensayos de Juan Benet supone ver el costado no solo crítico y teórico respecto de la ficción sino también político, aquella faceta que, por lo general, queda disociada de la producción autorial benetiana.   This article seeks to revisit those common points that took place in the debate about the problem of the historical memory that, after the death of Franco, could not be realized, clouded by the fiction overcoming the transition. As Francisco Caudet (2008) explains, it is not enough to dig up dead people, assign them a name and pass them on to the memory of the past. The dead have families and political projects opposed to the Francoist regime of Catholic nationalism. In this sense, the evaluation of Juan Benet’s essays presupposes seeing the side not only critical and theoretical with respect to fiction but also political, that facet that, in general, is dissociated from the Benetian authorial production.

2017 ◽  
Vol 8 (1) ◽  
Author(s):  
Emily Kaliel

The articles published in our Fall 2016 edition are connected loosely under the themes of public memory and the uses of identity in the past. We are thrilled to present to you three excellent articles in our Fall 2016 edition: The article "Dentro de la Revolución: Mobilizing the Artist in Alfredo Sosa Bravo's Libertad, Cultura, Igualdad (1961)" analyzes Cuban artwork as multi-layered work of propaganda whose conditions of creation, content, and exhibition reinforce a relationship of collaboration between artists and the state-run cultural institutions of post-revolutionary Cuba; moving through fifty years of history “’I Shall Never Forget’: The Civil War in American Historical Memory, 1863-1915" provides a captivating look at the role of reconciliationist and emancipationist intellectuals, politicians, and organizations as they contested and shaped the enduring memory of the Civil War; and finally, the article “Politics as Metis Ethnogenesis in Red River: Instrumental Ethnogenesis in the 1830s and 1840s in Red River” takes the reader through a historical analysis of the development of the Metis identity as a means to further their economic rights. We wholly hope you enjoy our Fall 2016 edition as much as our staff has enjoyed curating it. Editors  Jean Middleton and Emily Kaliel Assistant Editors Magie Aiken and Hannah Rudderham Senior Reviewers Emily Tran Connor Thompson Callum McDonald James Matiko Bronte Wells


2020 ◽  
pp. 187-192
Author(s):  
S.A. Popov

The article deals with the problem of collecting, preserving and researching the disappeared names of localities in the subjects of the Russian Federation, which for centuries have become an integral part of the historical and cultural heritage of the peoples of our country. The author believes that only a comprehensive analysis of the past oikonyms in nominational, lexical-semantic, historical-cultural, historical-ethnographic, local history aspects will restore the linguistic and cultural systems of different time periods in different microareals of the Russian Federation. The author comes to the conclusion that in order to preserve the historical memory of the disappeared names of geographical objects, local researchers need the support of regional state authorities and local self-government.


Author(s):  
К.А. Панченко

Abstract The article examines the conquest of the County of Tripoli by the Mamelukes in 1289, and the reaction of various Middle Eastern ethnoreligious groups to this event. Along with the Monophysite perspective (the Syriac chronicle of Bar Hebraeus’ Continuator and the work of the Coptic historian Mufaddal ibn Abi-l-Fadail), and the propagandist texts of Muslim Arabic panegyric poets, we will pay special attention to the historical memory of the Orthodox (Melkite) and Maronite communities of northern Lebanon. The contemporary of these events — the Orthodox author Suleiman al-Ashluhi, a native of one of the villages of the Akkar Plateau — laments the fall of Tripoli in his rhymed eulogy. It is noteworthy that this author belongs to the rural Melkite subculture, which — in spite of its conservative character — was capable of producing original literature. Suleiman al-Ashluhi’s work was forsaken by the following generations of Melkites; his poem was only preserved in Maronite manuscripts. Maronite historical memory is just as fragmented. The father of the Modern Era Maronite historiography — Gabriel ibn al-Qilaʿî († 1516) only had fragmentary information on the history of his people in the 13th century: local chronicles and the heroic epos that glorified the Maronite struggle against the Muslim lords that tried to conquer Mount Lebanon. Gabriel’s depiction of the past is not only biased and subject to aims of religious polemics, but also factually inaccurate. Nevertheless, the texts of Suleiman al-Ashluhi and Gabriel ibn al-Qilaʿî give us the opportunity to draw conclusions on the worldview, educational level, political orientation and peculiar traits of the historical memory of various Christian communities of Mount Lebanon.


Author(s):  
Ieva Rodiņa

The aim of the research “Historical Memory in the Works of the New Generation of Latvian Theater Artists: The Example of “The Flea Market of the Souls” is to focus on the current but at the same time little discussed topic in Latvian theater – the change of generations and the social processes connected to it, that are expressed on the level of world views, experiences, intergenerational relationships. Most directly, these changes are reflected in the phenomenon of historical memory. The concept of “postmemory” was defined by German professor Marianne Hirsch in 1992, suggesting that future generations are closely related to the personal and collective cultural traumas of previous generations, which are passing on the past experience through historical memory, thus affecting the present. Grotesque, self-irony, and focusing on socio-political, provocative questions and themes are the connecting point of the generation of young Latvian playwrights born in the late 1980s and early 1990s, including such personalities as Jānis Balodis, Rasa Bugavičute-Pēce, Matīss Gricmanis, Justīne Kļava, etc. However, unlike Matīss Gricmanis or Janis Balodis who represent the aesthetics of political theater, in Justīne Kļava’s works, sociopolitical processes become the background of a generally humanistic study of the relationships between generations. This theme is represented not only in “The Flea Market of the Souls”, but also in other plays, like “Jubilee ‘98” and “Club “Paradise””. The tendency to investigate the traces left by the Soviet heritage allows to define these works as autobiographical researches of the identity of the post-Soviet generation, analyzing life in today's Latvia in terms of historical memory. Using the semiotic, hermeneutic, phenomenological approach, the play “The Flea Market of the Souls” and its production in Dirty Deal Teatro (2017) are analyzed as one of the most vivid works reflecting the phenomenon of historical memory in recent Latvian original drama.


2021 ◽  
pp. 088832542095080
Author(s):  
Nikolay Koposov

This article belongs to the special cluster “Here to Stay: The Politics of History in Eastern Europe”, guest-edited by Félix Krawatzek & George Soroka. The rise of historical memory, which began in the 1970s and 1980s, has made the past an increasingly important soft-power resource. At its initial stage, the rise of memory contributed to the decay of self-congratulatory national narratives and to the formation of a “cosmopolitan” memory centered on the Holocaust and other crimes against humanity and informed by the notion of state repentance for the wrongdoings of the past. Laws criminalizing the denial of these crimes, which were adopted in “old” continental democracies in the 1980s and 1990s, were a characteristic expression of this democratic culture of memory. However, with the rise of national populism and the formation of the authoritarian or semi-authoritarian regimes in Russia, Turkey, Hungary, and Poland in the 2000s and 2010s, the politics of memory has taken a significantly different turn. National populists are remarkably persistent in whitewashing their countries’ history and using it to promote nationalist mobilization. This process has manifested itself in the formation of new types of memory laws, which shift the blame for historical injustices to other countries (the 1998 Polish, the 2000 Czech, the 2010 Lithuanian, the June 2010 Hungarian, and the 2014 Latvian statutes) and, in some cases, openly protect the memory of the perpetrators of crimes against humanity (the 2005 Turkish, the 2014 Russian, the 2015 Ukrainian, the 2006 and the 2018 Polish enactments). The article examines Russian, Polish, and Ukrainian legislation regarding the past that demonstrates the current linkage between populism and memory.


2021 ◽  
Vol 49 (3) ◽  
pp. 337-362
Author(s):  
Myungji Yang

Through the case of the New Right movement in South Korea in the early 2000s, this article explores how history has become a battleground on which the Right tried to regain its political legitimacy in the postauthoritarian context. Analyzing disputes over historiography in recent decades, this article argues that conservative intellectuals—academics, journalists, and writers—play a pivotal role in constructing conservative historical narratives and building an identity for right-wing movements. By contesting what they viewed as “distorted” leftist views and promoting national pride, New Right intellectuals positioned themselves as the guardians of “liberal democracy” in the Republic of Korea. Existing studies of the Far Right pay little attention to intellectual circles and their engagement in civil society. By examining how right-wing intellectuals appropriated the past and shaped triumphalist national imagery, this study aims to better understand the dynamics of ideational contestation and knowledge production in Far Right activism.


2009 ◽  
Vol 43 (1) ◽  
pp. 269-288 ◽  
Author(s):  
SUMIT GUHA

AbstractThe past two decades have seen a dramatic renewal of interest in the subject of historical memory, its reproduction and transmission. But most studies have focused on the selection and construction of extant memories. This essay looks at missing memory as well. It seeks to broaden our understanding of memory by investigating the way in which historical memory significant to one historical tradition was slighted by another, even though the two overlapped both spatially and chronologically. It does this by an examination of how the memory of the Marathi-speaking peoples first neglected and then adopted the story of the Vijayanagara empire that once dominated southern India.


2016 ◽  
Vol 22 (2) ◽  
Author(s):  
George Kouvaros

In his final unfinished book on the writing of history, Siegfried Kracauer wonders about his increasing susceptibility to ‘the speechless plea of the dead’. ‘[T]he older one grows, the more he is bound to realize that his future is the future of the past—history.’ For the children of migrants, the question of how to speak well of the dead is distinguished by complex feelings of attachment and rejection, identification and denial that are expressed in a range of everyday interactions. ‘The Old Greeks’ examines the part played by photographic media in this process of memorialisation. It elaborates a series of propositions about the value of photographic media that are tested through a consideration of the events that surrounded the author’s first years in Australia.


1975 ◽  
Vol 12 ◽  
pp. 303-356 ◽  
Author(s):  
Basil Hall

Think nowHistory has many cunning passages, contrived corridorsAnd issues, deceives with whispering ambitions,Guides us by vanities. Think nowShe gives when our attention is distractedAnd what she gives, gives with such supple confusionsThat the giving famishes the craving. Gives too lateWhat’s not believed in, or if still believed,In memory only, reconsidered passion.Historians no doubt have problems enough without setting before themselves that ‘memento mori’ from Eliot, who, though he was describing an old man seeking to understand his own past, leaves nevertheless an echo in the mind disturbing to those who practise the historian’s craft. We assume a confidence which in our heart of hearts we do not always, or should not always, possess. Eliot’s words not only demonstrate the difficulty of one man understanding his own past, but also the historian’s difficulty in understanding those whom they select for questioning from among the vast multitudes of the silent dead, whose deeds, artifacts, ideas, passions, hopes and memories have died with them. We dig into the past, obtain data from archives, brush off the objects found, collect statistics, annotate, arrange, describe, establish a chronology – but do we effectively understand the dead, especially since we are affected by our own beliefs, customs and ideologies? We are, of course, all aware of this: we silently scorn the lecturer who raises these diffident hesitations. For we know our duty: we examine all that we can, we describe our findings, we annotate them, we draw conclusions, or leave our demonstrations to speak for themselves. There are reasons, as I shall hope to show, that these considerations – Eliot’s ominous words and our determination not to be disquieted by them – bear upon the subject of this paper, the almost forgotten Alessandro Gavazzi.


2011 ◽  
Vol 38 (2) ◽  
pp. 105-129
Author(s):  
Alexis Peri

AbstractThis article examines the everyday practices of historical reflection, recollection, and reconstruction as revealed in diaries of the Leningrad Blockade. In particular, it focuses on how Leningraders who chose to keep diaries of their experiences worked to make sense of the siege by situating it historically and comparing it to two other historical moments, the blockade of Petrograd during the Civil War and the siege of Sevastopol' during the Crimean War. Their evaluations of these historical analogies were based on a combination of personal and collective memories as well as on their understandings of state-sanctioned accounts of these events. Ultimately, these historical refl ections alerted the diarists to what they came to see as the unique and incomparable aspects of Blockade.


Sign in / Sign up

Export Citation Format

Share Document