Catastrophic History Research Articles

Христианская истина и политика в романе Ивлина Во «Елена»

The novel Helena (1950) is analyzed as Evelyn Waugh’s profound statement on his most significant problems: the possibility to resolve the crises of the 20th-century consciousness through Christianity and on the nature of power. Cradle Anglo-Catholics were always suspicious of Waugh, seeing him as an errant Catholic; the paper uses the work of Waugh’s biographers and interpreters to pinpoint his personal reception of Catholicism as the most sophisticated, strictly logical system, firmly grounded in historical fact. Waugh’s story of St. Helena is simultaneously a biography of half-legendary Saint, known for her discovery of the Cross of Golgotha, who thus proved the truthfulness of the founding Christian narrative, and an ironic modern historical novel on the decline of the Roman Empire. Many parallels between the period of Helena’s husband and son (Constantius Chlor and Constantine the Great, respectively) and the catastrophic history of the 20th century are suggested through the devices of anachronism, grotesque, figurative style. The author depicts the persistence of paganism, the use of religious cults as political instrument by cynical persons in their pursuit of individual power. High dose of irony prevents the novel from going in the direction of hagiography; nevertheless the author’s concept of his title character brings to life the most positive and optimistic text in Waugh’s whole oeuvre. By the end of her long life, by converting to Christianity, Helena finds her vocation, her providential mission, completes it, and gains in the fact satisfaction and peace.

Generational translation in the Jewish Museum, Berlin

Abstract This paper addresses the challenge museums of catastrophic history face, striving to translate between history and memory in creating a meaningful and sensitive experience for individual visitors, not only evoking the past but also impacting the present and future. This study focuses on the Jewish Museum Berlin and asks how the museum can impact individual visitor journeys and concurrently address the public demand for memory, the contradictions between museum mission and public perception, and the perceived distance of visitors from historical events. The study builds on memory and translation studies research and the concepts of history, story, and identity. An analysis of entangled memory (Feindt et al. 2014), here applied as an inspiration for generational translation, shows how the crossover between memory and translation studies provides insight into the work of memory museums. Previous research and the history, mission, identity, architecture, and conflicts of the Jewish Museum Berlin show that museums – as (unfinished) collective memories – allow the creation of space for individual reflection and the interpretation of past and present to create a narrative. The work of memory museums is complex, but the concepts of generational translation and entangled memory are valuable tools in provoking and enabling meaningful experience and reflection.

Continuity as Catastrophe: Origins of a Thesis in Walter Benjamin

In an unpublished fragment from the late 1930s, Walter Benjamin famously calls for a recasting of the idea of catastrophe and its relation to the progression of history. Catastrophe, Benjamin contends, is not to be understood as an exception to the regular course of history; rather than being conceived as a singular event marking the end of the world in its given form, catastrophe is to be located in its persistent continuity—the simple fact that “things ‘go on like this.’” This article traces the origins of this thesis to an earlier text: a 1923 manuscript that Benjamin wrote during a journey through Germany at the peak of the hyperinflation. Examining this text in relation to a treatise that was of particular significance to Benjamin—Erich Unger’s 1921 Politics and Metaphysics—this article offers a reconstruction of the image of catastrophic history presented here as well as its significance for Benjamin’s emerging political thought of the early 1920s. Through a commentary on both texts, the article seeks to contribute to a better understanding of the sources and meaning of the “continuity as catastrophe” thesis, sketching out how Benjamin’s singular vantage point could inform contemporary debates on catastrophe, apocalypse, and the politics of interruption.

The eternal cold of Tarquinia Molza. Nature and history of catastrophes in the works by Francesco Patrizi of Cherso

The eternal cold of Tarquinia Molza. Nature and history of catastrophes in the works by Francesco Patrizi of Cherso

The Hope of a New Narrative: The Nurenebi File By Tefaye Gebreab, Translated by Alemseged Tesfai

Reviewed by: The Hope of a New Narrative: The Nurenebi File by Tefaye Gebreab Charles Cantalupo The Hope of a New Narrative: The Nurenebi File BY TEFAYE GEBREAB, TRANSLATED BY ALEMSEGED TESFAI Gabriel and Son Publishing, 2021. 400 pp. ISBN 9780692877746 paper. For we are saved by hope: but hope that is seen is not hope: for what a man seeth, why doth he yet hope for? But if we hope for that we see not, then do we with patience wait for it. —Paul, Romans 8:24–25 (KJV) Alemseged Tesfai writes in his “Translator’s Note” on The Nurenebi File, , that he hopes it will “be recognized as a leading addition to the emerging new narrative and historiography of the Horn of Africa” (6). Ironically, such a “new narrative” may be the only hope for the Horn, considering the “one hundred years of Eritrean history and the chronicles of a family from Bogos” that the novel portrays. “New” can refer specifically to Tesfaye Gebreab’s molding of such a diverse, complicated, and cruel history into a single and continuous story that has previously only been told in pieces. Furthermore, writing in fluent Amharic, Tesfaye produces a direct, unprecedented challenge to an ethnic and political constituency that has dominated the region. Also “new” is Alemseged’s translation of The [End Page 224] Nurenebi File into English, so that the story can be read and appreciated for the first time by readers worldwide. Based on history and the story of a real family over four generations, the book is a sequence of one catastrophe after another in which no one is spared. An apocalyptic landscape of drought, hunger, disease, locusts, forced migration, and death initially set the stage for the saga. Nature, community (urban or rural), family, charity, respect, sympathy, commerce, religion, monarchy, colonialism, anticolonialism, ethnicity, orthodoxy, revolution—all fail to mitigate this fundamental, tragic condition of life in the Horn. It’s almost too much to continue reading beyond the book’s first chapter. However “new” the literary representation of such a harsh and unforgiving course of history may be, it’s anything but new to the region’s inhabitants, who have continuously endured such a reality. Their stories have been recited in unwritten form, including songs and folklore, for generations. The fact remains that Eritrean societies, including those depicted in The Nurenebi File’s first chapter, existed as frontier communities for competing empires to prey on. From the north and east came Egyptians and Turks. From the south came Abyssinian/Ethiopian war lords. In the latter part of the 19th century, the Italians came next. They fashioned a distinct colony and changed the local name, Medree Bahree, “Land of the Sea,” to Eritrea, derived from the ancient Greek name for the Red Sea, Erythra Thalassa. With the British taking over in 1941 from the Italians, who were defeated in World War II, and the Ethiopians taking over again in the 1950s; not until 1991, with Eritrean forces winning their independence, did such nonstop historical brutalization seem to come to an end—but no. In 1998, war between Eritrea and Ethiopia broke out again, resulting in horrific casualties before it became an untenable stalemate of “no war no peace” for the next twenty years. Yet over a century past the point when The Nurenebi File begins, specific historical developments like Ethiopian as well as Eritrean government armies battling Tigray Defense Forces, low to nonexistent COVID-19 epidemic vaccination rates in the region, substantial economic sanctions by Western governments, drastic climate change, and a renewal of proxy wars seem to confirm that a history of the Horn is to confront a history of catastrophes. From its first few pages, The Nurenebi File is fully aware that life in the Horn is a history of recurring and interminable tragedy. Tesfaye Gebreab renders a death verdict in sentence after sentence to make that starkly clear. “Self-preservation ha[s] … become every person’s chief concern. Even children’s tears fail … to move once tender hearts. Killing for food bec(omes)…a common occurrence” (12). “Seeing the betrayal of the land, the Red Sea seem[s] … saddened from the heart” (14). “These may...

Review on the current treatment status of vein of Galen malformations and future directions in research and treatment

ABSTRACT Introduction Vein of Galen malformations (VOGMs) represent a rare pathologic entity with often catastrophic natural history. The advances in endovascular treatment in recent years have allowed for a paradigm shift in the treatment and outcome of these high-flow shunts, even though their pathogenetic mechanisms and evolution remain in part obscure. Areas covered The overall management of VOGMs requires a tailored case-to-case approach, starting with in utero detection and reserving endovascular treatment for indicated cases. Lately, the advances in translational research with whole-genome sequencing and the coupling with cellular-level hemodynamics attempt to shed more light in the pathogenesis and evolution of these lesions. At the same time the advances in endovascular techniques allow for more safety and tailored technical strategy planning. Furthermore, the advances in MRI techniques allow a better understanding of their vascular anatomy. In view of these recent advances and by performing a PUBMED literature review of the last 15 years, we attempt a review of the evolutions in the imaging, management, endovascular treatment and understanding of underlying mechanisms for VOGMs. Expert opinion The progress in the fields detailed in this review appears very promising in better understanding VOGMs and expanding the available therapeutic arsenal.

ГЕОТУРИЗМ КАК НОВЫЙ ОБЪЕКТ ИССЛЕДОВАНИЙ В НАУКАХ О ЗЕМЛЕ

Geotourism is here considered as an outdoor extension of the study of geological and geographical museum collections. Like ecotourism, geotourism is an integral constituent of scientific tourism. Whereas ecotourism is interested in biodiversity, geotourism is concerned with the variety of geological structures, minerals, rocks, fossils and landforms. Forms of synthesis of museum work and geotourism in the preservation and study of geological and geomorphological objects are traced. The importance of geoparks in the conservation of geoheritage and the prospects of their creation in Russia are considered. Expansion of geopark network is proposed, in view of the experiences of museum geological departments. Abandoned underground mines and similar objects are proposed as a basis for geotourism and as objects of geodiversity. The experience of creating geological museums on their basis is given. Coal mines present an example of such potential for geological excursions, given the history of past catastrophes. The elements of mystery inherent in geological and geomorphological excursions captivate tourists, increasing the attraction of earth sciences. The possibilities of geotourism in expanding the subject field of geology, geography and geomorphology are considered. Along with the activities of geological museums, geotourism is seen as one of the main avenues for integrating geosciences with society. Amateur science is able to contribute to the verification of scientific knowledge, and to new breakthroughs in science.

Spectrality, Partition and Borders

Foregrounding Vishal Bhardwaj’s Haider (2014), the Hindi cinematic adaptation of Shakespeare’s “Hamlet,” this paper extends the spatial and temporal aspects of haunting to the political and ethical questions concerning the framing of “spectrality of the postcolonial nation,” catastrophic history, negative heritage, the problem of the haunted subject, the social and phenomenological aspects of ghosts, and the political responsibility of the people as implicated subject. In Haider, the specter of Hilaal Meer arises as a symbol of radical alterity that haunts contemporary Kashmir, and the specter offers a route into thinking about the psychic effect of comprehending a present marked by trauma, loss and violence that conjure the Partition of the Indian subcontinent as a foundational phantasmatic moment. The uncanny in Haider underscores the performative potential and the full ethical implications of discursive practices of cinema, which deepen our understanding of the irrevocable past, violent memories, mourning and death.

The dialectics of homeland and identity: Reconstructing Africa in the poetry of Langston Hughes and Mohamed Al-Fayturi

The article investigates the dialectics between homeland and identity in the poetry of the Sudanese poet, Mohamed Al-Fayturi and his literary master, Langston Hughes in order to underline their attitudes toward crucial issues integral to the African and African-American experience such as identity, racism, enslavement and colonisation. The article argues that – in Hughes’s early poetry –Africa is depicted as the land of ancient civilisations in order to strengthen African-American feelings of ethnic pride during the Harlem Renaissance. This idealistic image of a pre-slavery, a pre-colonial Africa, argues the paper, disappears from the poetry of Hughes, after the Harlem Renaissance, to be replaced with a more realistic image of Africa under colonisation. The article also demonstrates that unlike Hughes, who attempts to romanticize Africa, Al-Fayturi rejects a romantic confrontation with the roots. Interrogating western colonial narratives about Africa, Al-Fayturi reconstructs pre-colonial African history in order to reveal the tragic consequences of colonisation and slavery upon the psyche of the African people. The article also points out that in their attempts to confront the oppressive powers which aim to erase the identity of their peoples, Hughes and Al-Fayturi explore areas of overlap drama between the turbulent experience of African-Americans and the catastrophic history of black Africans dismantling colonial narratives and erecting their own cultural mythology.

Myocardial Infarction at the Background of Left Bundle Branch Block in the RECORD-3 Registry - Management and Prognosis

To study prognostic value of left bundle brunch block (LBBB) in patients with verified myocardial infarction in real clinical practice. This analysis has been based on data from the RECORD-3 registry. This registry enrolled consecutive patients hospitalized in participating centers with suspected acute coronary syndrome. Among 2368 included patients 91 (3.84%) had LBBB on admission ECG ("new" in 25 [27.4%], "old" in 28 [30.8%]), and of "undetermined duration" in 38 [41.8%]). Myocardial infarction (MI) was verified in 871 patients, 48 of them (5.5%) had LBBB. MI patients with compared with those without LBBB were significantly older (70.5 vs. 64 years, p=0.011), more often had history of MI and cerebral catastrophes, effort angina, symptoms of chronic heart failure and renal pathology. Patients with LBBB twice more often complained of dyspnea/suffocation and had significantly lower mean ejection fraction (44 vs 52%, p=0.001). At prehospital stage, they less often received aspirin, clopidogrel, β-adrenoblockers. Patients with LBBB more often required artificial pulmonary ventilation (APV) and temporary cardiac pacing, and were less often subjected to reperfusion strategy (52.1 vs. 85%, p.

At ophæve verdens vægt. Om nostalgi og nærvær hos W.G. Sebald

Martin Baake-Hansen: “Dissolving the Weight of the World. On Nostalgia and Intimacy in W.G. Sebald”This article argues that nostalgia is an important, if often overlooked, aspect in the work of W.G. Sebald. It argues that Svetlana Boym’s concept of reflective nostalgia is key to understanding the way in which The Rings of Saturn (1995) and Austerlitz (2001) meditate on history and memory. Thus, the concept of reflective nostalgia helps us realize that the work of Sebald does not ‘only’ concern melancholy, trauma and the catastrophic history but also contains elements of lightness, intimacy and warm feelings.

Pulmonary artery dissection caused by extension of a chronic type a aortic dissection through a patent ductus arteriosus.

A 41-year-old woman presented to our hospital with chest discomfort, cough, and worsening shortness of breath for 2 months. She had no history of connective tissue disease or family history of aortic catastrophes. Five years before this presentation, she had undergone physical examination in a hospital, and transthoracic echocardiography showed type A aortic dissection. The patient, despite the advice of several cardiologists and cardiac surgeons, had always refused surgical correction. Routine contrast-enhanced computed tomography and transthoracic echocardiography were performed. Imaging revealed a chronic type A aortic dissection originating from the aortic annulus and extending to the aortic arch that was associated with moderate aortic regurgitation. The aortic dissection infiltrated the pulmonary trunk through the patent ductus arteriosus (PDA; Figure 1). The concomitant anomaly was moderate mitral valve insufficiency diagnosed on the basis of transthoracic echocardiography. The patient underwent elective surgery. After induction of general anesthesia, the procedure was performed through a full median sternotomy under cardiopulmonary bypass with moderate hypothermic circulatory arrest at 25°C, right axillary artery cannulation for cardiopulmonary bypass, and selective antegrade cerebral perfusion. Figure 1. Routine contrast-enhanced computed tomography ( A ) showing aortic dissection infiltrating the pulmonary trunk through the patent ductus arteriosus (arrow). Transthoracic echocardiography ( B ) showing that the dissection flap is visible in the ascending aortic artery (AAO) and pulmonary artery (PA; arrow). Computed tomography angiographic images …

Strange passages: carceral mobility and the liminal in the catastrophic history of American deportation

In the early twentieth century, the United States developed an integrated, continental deportation network based on rail travel. This new state apparatus would enable the restrictionists’ dream of immigration control and speed the elimination of those they deemed unfit for American life. It set a template for mass removal that would expand in the century to come. Scholars of immigrant detention and removal commonly employ Victor Turner’s concept of liminality to understand migrant experiences, but this paper suggests the need for an expanded theorization of the liminal as manifold rather than singular. Drawing on deportee case files and literature from the early twentieth century, this paper explores the complex, variegated and painful liminalities of the deportation journey. It argues that power affected deportees’ experience of space and time across different liminal zones and interprets the embodied catastrophe of deportation for migrant communities. If traumatic experiences reconfigure the meaning of time into a ‘before’ and ‘after’, deportation was an ongoing catastrophe that offered little sense of completion.

ASSOCIATION OF CLINICAL MANIFESTATIONS AND COMORBIDITIES WITH QUALITY-OF-LIFE MEASURES IN PATIENTS WITH GOUT

Objective: to identify factors associated with low quality of life (QL) in patients with gout. Subjects and methods. The investigation enrolled 175 patients (153 men and 22 women) with a definite diagnosis of gout. Their mean age was 48.0±12.3 years; median disease duration – 5.7 [3.0; 12.3] years; the annual number of arthritis attacks – 3 [1; 5]; and the mean serum level of uric acid (UA) – 510±120 μmol/l. 31.4% of the patients received allopurinol; 40.5% had chronic arthritis; 36.5% – subcutaneous tophi, 23% – coronary heart disease (CHD); 76% – hypertension; 15.4% – type 2 diabetes mellitus (DM); 10.2% – chronic kidney disease (CKD) at a glomerular filtration rate of <60 ml/min; 56% – obesity; 5.1% – chronic heart failure (СHF); 9.1% – history of vascular catastrophes. Pearson’s and Spearman’s correlation analyses were made to reveal correlations between QL measures according to the EQ-5D and SF-36v1 questionnaires, HAQ functional status (FS), and the clinical characteristics of the disease, as well as comorbidities. Multiple regression analysis was used to identify factors worsening QL. Results and discussion. Negative correlations were found between SF-36 QL measures and age, disease duration, serum UA level, presence of chronic arthritis and tophi, use of allopurinol, diuretics, alcohol, as well as hypertension, CHD, obesity, vascular catastrophes, CKD, and CHF. The multiple regression analysis established a direct association between HAQ FS worsening and female gender, elderly age, number of inflamed joints and frequency of arthritis attacks; the coefficient of multiple determination (R 2 ) was 0.41. EQ QL correlated inversely with age, number of inflamed joints, frequency of arthritis attacks, intake of diuretics and obesity (R 2 = 0.33). The reduction in the SF-36 physical health component correlated with increases in age, number of inflamed joints, and frequency of arthritis attacks, presence of CKD (R 2 = 0.3); a weak association was noted between worsening mental health component and female gender, increased number of inflamed joints, and vascular catastrophes (R 2 = 0.1). Conclusion. Decreased QL in gout is independently associated with higher number of inflamed joints, frequency of arthritis attacks, elderly age, female gender, and comorbidities (CKD, obesity, vascular catastrophes).

Pleasure and apocalypse: The relation of pleasure and horror in images of a catastrophic history

Abstract This article discusses the piece Salves, a performance choreographed by Maguy Marin in collaboration with Denis Mariotte that premiered at the Biennale de la Danse de Lyon in 2010. With regard to the choreographer's statement that Salves - an attempt to stage a catastrophic past and apocalyptic visions - would be an invitation for resistance, the text questions whether the performance raises any urge for resistance. With reference to Jacques Rancière's thoughts in The Future of the Image, the review scrutinizes efforts of representing catastrophic events with theatrical means and reflects on the pleasurable experience of watching Marin's visual poetry, which stands in vast contradiction to the proclaimed horror of the performance.

Immanuel Velikovsky and the return of the fringe

Many of us who worked in the early sociology of scientific knowledge (SSK) cut our teeth on fringe science (e.g., Shapin 1975; Wallis 1979; Collins and Pinch 1982). It was important in arguments with philosophers of science to show that their demarcation criteria for separating the wheat of science from the chaff of error were untenable. Later, what Harry Collins termed the ‘‘hard case’’ for SSK (physics) took priority over the ‘‘marginal case.’’ The SSK research program was to make progress against the head winds coming from philosophy of science by tacking between the most credible science, such as physics, (which was hard to show as social) and the fringe sciences, such as parapsychology, which philosophers considered could only be social because they were in error. With the battle against the philosophers of science won by the mid-1980s, the issue of demarcation was largely left behind. Michael Gordin, a historian of science, in this important book on Immanuel Velikovsky returns us once more to the fringe. You know you are in good hands when the opening sentence begins, ‘‘No one in the history of the world has ever selfidentified as a pseudoscientist. There is no person who wakes up in the morning and thinks to himself, ‘I’ll just head into my pseudolaboratory and perform some pseudoexperiments to try to confirm my pseudotheories with pseudofacts.’’’ (1) Quite! Gordin rightly takes up from where SSK left off 30 years ago and makes it the point of his investigation to find out why some sorts of activities, which to all intents and purposes look like the real thing, get labeled and demonized as not the real thing. As we shall see, he advances our understanding of fringe science by making an important new historical argument about this demarcation process. He not only covers the original controversy over the 1950 publication of Worlds in Collision, in which Velikovsky first posited his cosmic catastrophic history of the Earth and its close encounters with the planet Venus, but also sets Velikovsky and his dismissal in the context of postwar science and follows him and his loyal

Understanding of failure and failure of understanding: Aspects of failure in the Old Testament

Taking its cue from Rudolf Bultmann’s famous verdict that the Old Testament is a ‘failure’ (‘Scheitern’), the article reviews three influential negative readings of Israel’s history as told in the Former Prophets. It is then argued that awareness of the theological problem posed by Israel’s history enabled the redactors of both the former and the latter prophetic collections to deal with the element of human failure in a way that facilitated Israel’s retaining of her faith. Next, the sapiential insight in failing human discernment is drawn into the equation. Failure of human action is here interrelated with failure to comprehend God’s order. By virtue of its incorporation into the totality of the Tanak, this insight became a constructive part of Israel’s faith. Therefore the concept of failure comprises more than coming to terms with Israel’s catastrophic history. Since it is encoded in Israel’s Holy Scripture, ‘failure’ is a major concept within the Old Testament internally and is therefore not suitable as a verdict over the Old Testament by an external value judgement. ‘Failure’ thus becomes a key hermeneutical category, not merely so that the Old Testament could become a ‘promise’ for the New Testament to fulfil, but as a manifestation of limits in human religion and thought. Far from undermining self-esteem, constructive use of the concept of her own failure sustained Israel in her catastrophe and should be adopted by Christianity – not least in South Africa, where the biblical message was often misappropriated to bolster apartheid.

Overturning the Sudden End: New Interpretations of Catastrophe

Overturning the Sudden End: New Interpretations of Catastrophe

New Orleans: A Disaster Waiting to Happen?

New Orleans: A Disaster Waiting to Happen?

From sugar to revolution: women's visions of Haiti, Cuba, and the Dominican Republic

In this original and provocative study, Myriam Chancy reads the catastrophic history of the Caribbean in the narrative and visual fictions of a number of remarkable women artists, disclosing hitherto uncharted maps of time and voice and remembrance. A work of studied insight, engaged criticism, and graceful sentences, it will alter not only the frames in which Haiti, Cuba, and the Dominican Republic are represented, but the very conditions for a gendered and transnational inquiry into the Caribbean present. – David Scott, Columbia University; Editor,