Burden Of History Research Articles

‘The Iron Curtain did not dissolve very well’: Reflections on EU Citizenship from CEE peripheralised perspectives

Abstract Peripheralisation is determined in socio ‑demographic, economic, political and identitarian factors. It is, many say, by definition, characterised by a willingness to migrate, in particular among the younger generations. European citizenship comes with the right to migrate – to relocate, to work and to be treated as equals in many respects to the local citizenry. In this research paper, I explicate the results of twenty interviews in six CEE countries with 7 th ‑graders who were asked what they thought of European citizenship. Those who knew what this is give widely divergent answers, but there are two dominant themes running through their perspectives: they do not feel great affection for the EU, and whilst willing to migrate, they do not appreciate the need to do so. Thus, they feel the EU does not live up to its promises to deliver equality for all Europeans. One explanation they give for this is that ‘the Iron Curtain did not dissolve very well’: the burden of history is acutely experienced.

Burdens of History, Ethics of Engagement: German Film and the Afghan War

Based on the analysis of two contemporary German films on the war in Afghanistan – Auslandseinsatz (Till Endemann, 2012) and Zwischen Welten (Feo Aladag, 2014) – through the philosophical lens of the ‘just war theory’, this article discusses how the classic genre of the ‘boots on the ground’ war film is used to reflect on the ethical justifiability of military force in the context of Germany’s strategic culture at the beginning of the twenty-first century. The article argues that these two films are paradigmatic examples of a new and specifically German subgenre of the war film I suggest calling the ‘humanitarian military film’ that has its roots in the particular historical constellation that led to the development of the country’s current military culture.

The Burden of History: Kirkjubæjarklaustur and the Biography of Landscape

The importance of landscape has long been recognized within monastic studies, both as an economic and spiritual resource. This paper focuses on the surrounding landscape of a single monastic site, that is Kirkjubæjarklaustur on Síða (south Iceland), one of the two female monasteries established in Medieval Iceland. Through written sources, legends, and placenames, the aim of this paper is to reconstruct the biography of the landscape from before the founding of the monastery to after the Reformation. In particular, the paper considers how the perceived sacredness of the site of Kirkjubæjarklaustur may have been shaped by stories of Christian settlers prior to the monastic foundation and how the monastic memory informed the way in which the landscape was experienced after the Reformation and beyond.

HAYDEN WHITE'S ENTHUSIASM FOR HEGEL

ABSTRACTThis article traces the formation of Hayden White's chapter on Hegel in Metahistory by comparing it with his earlier essay titled “Hegel: Historicism as Tragic Realism.” It also analyzes White's review of George Armstrong Kelly's Idealism, Politics and History and White's well‐known essay titled “The Burden of History.” This article argues that White's main concerns in his review essay and in Metahistory were (1) to respond to the existentialist challenge, posed especially by Camus, that history does not matter and (2) to use Hegel to articulate an answer regarding how historical consciousness and action can be combined. White created his version of Hegel early in “Hegel: Historicism as Tragic Realism” by absorbing (probably) Josiah Royce's interpretation of the Absolute and (more certainly) Erich Auerbach's idea of tragic realism. However, White's idea of tragedy, which focuses on the consequences of action, is not the same as Auerbach's idea, which concerns treating the psychological depth of characters seriously. In his review of Idealism, Politics and History and in Metahistory, White further injected the Kantian philosophy of history—as interpreted by Lucien Goldmann and Lewis White Beck—into Hegel's idea of tragedy and comedy. In doing so, White affirmed the philosophical activist's ability not only to recognize the tragic circumstance of the past and the present but also to hold on to the hope for a better, comic future.

Reflections: on writing and being written about

ABSTRACT How did I come to write about the problems that I do? Certain accidents of fate determinatively impacted both my enduring intellectual interests as well as my opportunities to pursue them. Philosophy proved to provide an academic home that accommodated my peculiar interests. In this regard, a quote from White’s ‘Burden of History’ captured a challenge that I long sought to address: ‘We choose our past in the same way we choose our future’. Fashioning a philosophical rationale for this view guided much of my writing. Philosophers are not arbiters of matters of fact. But a defining feature of philosophy involves worries about how to avoid making weaker arguments appear the stronger. Rationality as I understand the notion requires making inferential structure explicit. My efforts to ‘revive’ analytical philosophy of history as with much of what I have written or hope to write reflect ongoing attempts to reconcile a sense of the contingency of what passes for rationality and a belief that some arguments are better than others. In this regard, reimagining logic to include a narrative form permits a rethinking of whether or not the ‘Burden of History’ proves unique to historiography. I argue not.

The historian is present: live interactive documentary as collaborative history

ABSTRACT Historical narratives seek to give us a shared reality, argued through recourse to evidence. Both impulses are under threat in the Age of the Anthropocene. This article introduces Live Interactive Documentary, a ‘performance dissemination’ model for history that deploys digital tools to merge cinema and lecture into a new form. It is designed to respond to Hayden White’s challenge in ‘The Burden of History’ and Bruno Latour’s call to gather as a bulwark to misinformation and the manipulative, political cooption of postmodern scepticism. Live Interactive Documentary creates a spectacle of archive and expertise, injected with post-postmodern values of polyphony and audience exchange, grounded in the local. This essay describes the form that I piloted with a team that includes historian Robert Nelson and composer, musician and media artist Brent Lee. Live Interactive Documentary is a model of ‘moving (image) history’ that seeks to cross boundaries between practice and theory, as well as history, film, multimedia performance art and participation. This hybrid cinema model draws upon theories of historiography, film and new media. It digitises earlier models of theatre and film exhibition and responds to the challenges of the Anthropocene by prioritising negotiation, complexity and gathering face-to-face in the real space of our analogue world.

THE INTERNAL CONFLICT OF MUSLIMS AND THE URGENCY OF THE MAINSTREAM OF MULTICULTURAL ISLAMIC EDUCATION IN FORMING ISLAMIC UNITY (Case Study of the Shia-Sunni Conflict in Sampang Madura)

After the death of the Prophet Muhammad, the burden of history was borne by Muslims for disputes that started from political issues. The successor to the leadership of the Prophet became the first problem and even became a prolonged problem. Starting from this political dispute, later it will spread to other issues, such as issues of theology and ideology, including the Shia-Sunni intersection which is also a continuation of political problems in the early phase of Islam. Meanwhile, multicultural Islamic education initiated by several Muslim scientists often only discusses the relationship between Islam and other religions. In fact, the problem of internal disputes among Muslims is equally important to be resolved. This study uses qualitative research methods with the type of case study research. The results of the study show the urgency of multicultural education in an effort to re-tighten (taqri@b) Muslims by adhering to the values of multicultural Islamic education. The values of Islamic education include ta'aruf (knowing each other), ta'awun (helping each other), tasamuh (tolerant), tawasuth (moderate), tawazun (harmony), al-'adl (justice) and zuhud.Keywords:Â Multicultural Islamic Education, ukhuwah Islamiyah, Shia, Sunni.

Cathy Freeman, reconciliation and the burden of history

ABSTRACT On 25 September 2020, the ABC released a documentary film to mark the twentieth anniversary of Cathy Freeman’s gold medal victory in the women’s 400 metres at the 2000 Sydney Olympics. Media interest in Freeman’s victory still erupts periodically, most recently, to commemorate the twentieth anniversary. This article revisits Cathy Freeman’s historic gold-medal-winning performance in order to ponder the lost promise of reconciliation. At the time, and still today, Freeman’s victory is overwhelmingly celebrated as more than just an athletic feat; it is also lauded as a victory for reconciliation. Rather than trying to determine the extent to which Freeman’s race did bolster reconciliation, or even whether it contributed to reconciliation at all, this article instead analyses the metaphors, rhetoric and images through which Freeman’s victory was represented as an act of reconciliation, and what this tells us about how reconciliation plays out in the Australian context. In particular, it argues that the complex ways in which Freeman’s victory were represented, and continue to be understood, reveal a widespread desire to be free from the burdens of history by projecting the work of reconciliation onto Freeman herself.

Shouldering the Burdens of History: The Parrot as Postcolonial Satirist in Gary Barwin's Yiddish for Pirates

Shouldering the Burdens of History: The Parrot as Postcolonial Satirist in Gary Barwin's Yiddish for Pirates

Beyond the Burden of History in Indigenous Australian Cinema

How Indigenous Australian history has been portrayed and who has been empowered to define it is a complex and controversial subject in contemporary Australian society. This article critically examines these issues through two Indigenous Australian films: Nice Coloured Girls (1987) and The Sapphires (2012). These two films contrast in style, theme and purpose, but each reclaims Indigenous history on its own terms. Nice Coloured Girls offers a highly fragmented and experimental history reclaiming Indigenous female agency through the appropriation of the colonial archive. The Sapphires eschews such experimentation. It instead celebrates Indigenous socio-political links with African American culture, ‘Black is beautiful’, and the American Civil Rights movements of the 1960s. Crucially, both these films challenge notions of a singular and tragic history for Indigenous Australia. Placing the films within their wider cultural contexts, this article highlights the diversity of Indigenous Australian cinematic expression and the varied ways in which history can be reclaimed on film. However, it also shows that the content, form and accessibility of both works are inextricably linked to the industry concerns and material circumstances of the day. This is a crucial and overlooked aspect of film analysis and has implications for a more nuanced appreciation of Indigenous film as a cultural archive.

Reflections on the passing of Prof Bongani Mayosi: Universities and the burden of history

Reflections on the passing of Prof Bongani Mayosi: Universities and the burden of history

Object Afterlives and the Burden of History: Between “Trash” and “Heritage” in the Steps of Migrants

ABSTRACTWith modern ruins, there may be diverging perspectives about whether the sites or objects are unsightly waste or artifacts. Among the local communities who routinely come into contact with such ruins, this viewpoint is often actively negotiated, and with it, so is history itself. Scholars of contemporary archaeology discuss the value of tracing these negotiations to understand the wider political and cultural process of historical creation, or negation. The situation becomes more complex in the wake of tragedy or disaster. Here, I explore the relationship of stakeholders on the Arizona–Sonora international border to the material culture of undocumented migrants, the objects left behind along the clandestine wilderness routes of migrant travelers abandoned en masse to ruin, as if in the fallout of disaster. But this disaster is human made, the product of US border policy. I consider these objects as a form of modern ruins that occupy a politically laden dialectical space between trash and heritage, a negotiation with ramifications for border policy. [contemporary archaeology, ruins, trash, heritage, US‐Mexico border]

The burden of history(?): Remembering the Holocaust and Attitudes toward Asylum Seekers in Israel

Two connected studies examine how universalist and particularist views of the Holocaust influence Israeli Jews’ attitudes toward asylum seekers. Study 1 (N = 500) investigated the degree to which universalist and particularist perceptions of the “lessons” of the Holocaust correlate with exclusionist views toward asylum seekers. It was found that a universalist perception of the “lessons” of the Holocaust was negatively related to exclusionist attitudes, and a particularist perception positively related to exclusionist attitudes—even after controlling for religiosity and political affiliation. Study 2 comprised three survey experiments (N = 298, 280, and 320, respectively) investigating whether presentation of universalist versus particularist texts about the Holocaust would impact exclusionist attitudes. It was found that exposure to a universalist text reduced negative attitudes toward asylum seekers and increased support for treating wounded Syrians in Israeli hospitals. Exposure to a particularist did not increase exclusionist attitudes.

China-Pakistan Economic Corridor: A Perspective from Pakistan

The framework of China-Pakistan Economic Corridor CPEC envisions an intrinsic regional development goal. It promises connectivity across the length and breadth of the region and its periphery, together with achieving an economically strengthened neighborhood. It is this compulsion that merits deliberations on the strength of Pak-China relations and their impact on the phenomenal CPEC vision. The idea rests on the notion of China’s newer role in the evolving geostrategic and geo-economic underpinnings of the world, and also Pakistan’s resilience towards carving out a strengthened economic base amidst major security challenges. Hence, with the opportunities that lay ahead of CPEC for the region and beyond, Pakistan holds high the dictum of ‘strong economy is sin-qua-non for strong security’. With its significant geostrategic location as a mainstay of CPEC, Pakistan aims to provide a platform for economic growth for the region and beyond. It has also envisioned to booster development and raise the standards of living across the corridor, which includes Western China as well as areas of Pakistan which have suffered at the hands of agitated neighborhood as a burden of history. However, it is also worth mentioning that, viewing the opportunities that lie within CPEC, in isolation from the challenges may indeed be delusional. Particularly, in the security, socioeconomic and cultural domains, CPEC may generate challenges to Pakistan and the region, which need to be considered seriously. Nonetheless, this study aims to provide an insight to Pakistan’s resolve towards domestic and regional developments amidst the Chinese vision of CPEC and also considers the strength of Pak-China relations as the mainstay of materializing the CPEC goal of development for all.

Hayden White’s Anthropocentric Posthumanism

This article reflects on Hayden White’s essay “Posthumanism and the Liberation of Humankind” (2000) and indicates its relevance for the current critique of anthropocentrism and on-going discussions about human agency, the non-human condition and posthumanism. It revisits White’s interest in antihumanism, existentialism, the work of “unbinding” humans from the burden of history and their humanity and the liberating potential of “deonerate art” (White’s term). It problematizes Sartre’s well-known statement and asks: “is man really nothing other than what he makes of himself?”

Reinterpretasi Konsep Bidah Menuju Islam Transformatif

Reinterpretation the Concept of Heretic toward the Transformative of Islam. This articles aims to reinterpret the concept of heretic (bidah) with a philosophical approach, based on the concept of the transformative of Islam proposed by Moeslim Abdurrahman. The data were collected through library research of the whole concept of heresy, both conservative and moderate then analyzed based on the concept of the conceptual, sociological and antropological approach. This paper found the need to think philosophically about the concept of heretic, by finding the basic purpose of the revealed of religion, so that there is no contradiction between one doctrine and another. Thus, heresy is no longer as the burden of history of Muslim creativity and innovation, but it is indeed the impetus to find breakthroughs in the settlement of various social problems of society.

The ‘Burden of History’ and Controversial Issues

The ‘Burden of History’ and Controversial Issues

Enemy, Friend, Martyr: Commemorating Liangbi (1877–1912), Contesting History

Enemy, Friend, Martyr:Commemorating Liangbi (1877–1912), Contesting History Hu Ying (bio) In the early days of the 1911 revolution, even as one southern province after another seceded from the empire, the Qing was not yet vanquished. It was buttressed by the fierce loyalty of the Imperial Guards and the substantial military might of Yuan Shikai (1859–1916), recently called back from retirement by the court. To many at the time, a protracted stalemate between the north and the south seemed likely. But then, on January 26, 1912, a bomb-thrower assaulted Liangbi, head of the Imperial Guards, in front of his Beijing residence.1 The assassin died instantly and Liangbi died an agonizing death three days later. Historians generally agree that this assassination, coming at it did on the heels of several similar high profile strikes, "took the wind out of the Manchu resistance."2 Within days, the Empress Dowager Longyu agreed to the child-emperor Puyi's abdication and on February 12, the Qing Empire formally ended. Liangbi (zi Laichen) was known as one of the up-and-coming young Manchus of his time. A collateral descendant of the ruling Aisin Gioro family, he acquired modern military training at the Imperial Japanese Army Academy (Rikugun shikan gakkō) and played a significant role in modernizing the Qing military. In history books, he is chiefly [End Page 1] remembered as one of the leaders of the Society for the Support of the Constitution, better known as Zongshe dang (imperial clan faction), a group of Qing nobles who banded together in a last ditch effort to revive the empire. This study focuses on the curious project of Liangbi's commemoration, which began soon after his death, with a grassroots petition for his canonization as a martyr. All told, 184 people signed, but the project went nowhere, ignored by the deposed Qing court and rebuffed by the newly established Republican government. Although Liangbi was never recognized as a martyr in any official capacity, his commemorators conferred on him a private canonization (sishi) title of "Loyalty and Peacefulness" (Zhongjing), established a memorial hall in western Beijing, and more than a decade after his death, published a commemorative volume in 1923. In addition to the usual tributes from friends and family, the list of those who endorsed a private canonization consists of Qing loyalists as well as a good number of revolutionaries. Still more surprising, the volume contains a lengthy eulogy to Peng Jiazhen (1888–1912), Liangbi's assassin. At the very end of the volume, yet another surprise awaits — a letter from Sun Yatsen (1866–1925) that explicitly refuses the organizer's invitation to contribute a commemorative plaque for the deceased. Thus bound in one volume, assassin and victim are commemorated back to back; revolutionaries and Qing loyalists spar between the pages. This slim volume raises large questions about the dead: Who got to be recognized as a martyr? What kind of death deserved collective grieving and was allowed to acquire lasting meaning? If Peng Jiazhen was to be celebrated as a martyr for the new Republic, one of "our martyrs" in Sun Yatsen's words, what of Liangbi, one of "their dead"? Was Liangbi a victim, whose death was something to regret and lament? Or was he simply an enemy, whose death cleared the way for the revolutionary cause, and thus a matter for celebration? Or was he, as his friends would have it, also a martyr, to be commemorated and celebrated? But a martyr for what? What burden of history did he bear? Equally important, the commemorative volume raises questions about the living; for after all, martyrs are made by the living and largely for the living. Although private canonization had a long history (at least to the sixth century BCE)3, this particular one carries a whiff of tension, even of [End Page 2] contention, as it conferred a posthumous title on the deceased that in its highly compressed two-character form passed judgment on the deceased and on the changing times. To whom was he loyal? And why peaceful? What did it mean to be loyal to a defunct dynasty — and how could he rest in peace given the...

Unanimity overruled: Majority voting and the burden of history

Sequential majority voting over interconnected binary decisions can lead to the overruling of unanimous consensus. We characterize, within the general framework of judgement aggregation, when this happens for some sequence of decisions. The large class of aggregation spaces for which this vulnerability is present includes the aggregation of preference orderings over at least four alternatives, the aggregation of equivalence relations over at least four objects, resource allocation problems, and most committee selection problems. We also ask whether it is possible to design respect for unanimity by choosing appropriate decision sequences (independently from the ballot). Remarkably, while this is not possible in general, it can be accomplished in some interesting special cases. Generalizing and sharpening a classic result by Shepsle and Weingast, we show that respect for unanimity can indeed be thus guaranteed in the cases of the aggregation of weak preference orderings, linear preference orderings, and equivalence relations. By contrast, impossibility results can be obtained for the aggregation of acyclic relations and separable preference orderings. As a key technical tool, we introduce the notion of a covering fragment that serves as a counterpart and generalization of the notions of covering relation/uncovered set in voting theory.

Hayden White and the Burden of History

In his essays “The Burden of History” (1966), “Interpretation in History” (1972), “The Historical Text as Literary Artefact” (1974), “The Value of Narrativity in the Representation of Reality” (1980) and “Getting Out of History” (1982), Hayden White discusses the main tenets of his theory of historiography, narrativity and, inevitably, the relationship between the history and literature. In the essays, White argues for a common constructivist character of history and fiction, and rejects the Rankean notion of a ‘science of history’. Drawing support from the historiographical and literary theories of Claude Lévi-Strauss, R. G. Collingwood and Northrop Frye, White suggests historians must acknowledge history’s basis in the literary arts and treat the historical text as a literary artefact in order for the discipline to regain the prestige that it enjoyed in the early nineteenth century. The kind of eclectic history that White advocates is found in Klaus Neumann’s Not the Way it Really Was, a text that itself rejects a positivist view of history.