Collective Historical Experience Research Articles

Science Fiction Series <i>Orville</i> as Space for the Memorial Cultures and Memory Wars

The relevance of collective memory analysis comes from the increasing role of memorization in social processes, which are currently acquiring increasingly significant conflict potential. The author analyses visual material of the popular science fiction series The Orville, which represents a segment of American political culture, as one of the cultural mechanisms for the assimilation of ideology and politics in mass cultural discourse. It is presumed that The Orville parodies the classic epics Star Trek and Babylon 5 and thus is part of the processes of deconstructing the historical collective memory of modern American society. This study intends to establish how a formally parody series not only mocks and imitates, but also constructs its own versions of memorial culture. The article aims: 1) to describe the universal tactics of deconstruction as a form of revision of existing memorial cultures; 2) to clarify the possibilities and boundaries of describing memorial culture through the prism of visual mass culture, using the example of a science fiction series; 3) to analyze the modes of updating political and social contradictions in American society on the example of the TV series The Orville; 4) to consider the specificity of the transformation of mass consciousness by constructing a new version of identity in the light of a radical revision of the narratives of classic science fiction series; 5) to analyze the political and ideological dimensions of the memory wars presented in the clash of traditional and liberal values of the characters in the series. Methodology of the article bases on the principles of the memorial turn and the analysis of the politics of memory within the paradigm of cultural and intellectual history and includes the methods of discourse analysis and intent analysis. The novelty of the study lies in determining the directions and specificities of the assimilation of the political, limited by the problems of collective memory, cultural, religious and gender identity along with military and ideological confrontation in modern mass culture of historical memory within the visual space of the science fiction series The Orville. The series is analyzed as an attempt to deconstruct the cultural experience and legacy of Star Trek, which actualized science fiction series as one of the sources of cultural and social meanings for modern consumer society. The author also analyzes the contribution of the series to the development of the collective memory of US society; the transformation of the concepts of Self and Otherness through the prism of specifying cultural, religious and gender roles. Revision of the past in popular culture as an alternative space for the functioning of collective historical memory is investigated. As a result of the study, it is presumed that The Orville actualizes modern American laughter culture and inspires attempts to rethink collective memory, the collective historical experience of trauma and represents an attempt to abandon the strategies of historical amnesia and ignoring politically inconvenient experiences.

The symbolization of a snake and tree among the devotees of the zar spirit in Sudan

This paper deals with a symbolic interpretation of the structural position that the snake and the tree possess in the local worship of the zar spirit within the borders of Islamic Sudan. The paper at hand aims to study, via bibliographic research, how the snake Azrag Banda, a manifestation of zar, and his tree-abode are regarded as significant symbols in the Sudanese zar tumbura, a self-nominated Islamic practice and spirit-possession cult with therapeutic functions. The snake Azrag Banda and his tree play a special role in the life of the cult and are meaningful symbols due to the collective historical experience of the Sudani, the devotees of zar tumbura. As it will be shown, the main characteristic of the Sudani Self is a past of slavery and displacement and a present of living on the margins of Sudanese society. In this regard, the current article aims at indicating what the snake entity Azrag Banda and his tree-abode mean for the Sudani. Adopting an emic approach, the snake and the tree will be seen as traditional Sudanese earth symbols, which are considered able to offer protection, heal the historical stigma of slavery, help the subaltern establish their “roots” in the Sudanese ground, and thus upgrade the low social status of the Sudani. In this way, the latter is transformed into free men and genuine landowners.

Восприятие Чемпионата мира по футболу 2022 г. в Катаре в арабской либеральной аналитике как форма политики памяти

Introduction. The author analyzes the informa- tional discourse of the World Cup in Qatar through the prism of collective historical memory. It is assumed that the Qatari Championship turned out to be both a sporting and political event. The article highlights the main problems that formed the information agenda, as well as the vectors and trajectories of the interpretation and perception of the Championship by liberal analysts and experts. Goal. The purpose of the article is to analyze the main directions of the liberal perception of the World Cup in Qatar in the information discourse of “Al-Araby Al-Jadeed” through the prism of the historical politics of memory. Methods. The author uses the methods proposed within the memorial turn in modern interdiscipli- nary historiography, which make it possible to iden- tify and systematize the features of the transfor- mation of the collective historical memory of Arab societies through the prism of sports, actualised by the 2022 World Cup in Qatar. Scientific novelty. The article is one of the few at- tempts to interpret the historical politics of memory in modern society in the context of the perception of sports as an element of the memorial culture and historical experience of the Arab societies of the Middle East. Results. The article analyzes the main vectors and trajectories of the use of sports for the politiciza- tion and ideologization of historical memory. It is assumed that the Championship stimulated political and ideological contradictions between Arab experts on the issues of collective historical and political experience, as well as its reflection in memorial cultures. The author believes that Arab analysts formally used sports events to update the political, social and economic problems and contradictions of the Middle East through the prism of historical memory, visualizing the trauma of the colonial and orientalist heritage. Conclusions. It is shown that the Championship ac- tualized political contradictions in the perception of current historical experience, visualizing the lines of ideological demarcation between Arab intellectuals who actively used sports as an information occa- sion for discussing the problems of historical poli- tics and the politics of collective memory, including the perception of the place and role of authoritari- anism, democracy and human rights in contempo- rary memorial cultures. The author believes that the reaction of the elites to the attempts of the liberal media to turn sport into a space for memo- rial conflicts and wars of memory was minimal, as the elites were focused on maintaining control and receiving economic dividends from the World Cup. It is shown that the politicization of sports has become the contribution of modern liberal media to the aggravation of wars of memory as a form of memorial conflicts in the Arab world.

Revision of Ataturk’s Legacy in Modern Turkish Historical Politics

The author analyzes the features and directions of development of revisionism in the modern memorial culture and historical policy of Turkey. It is assumed that the historical memory in its revisionist version reflects the main trends in the transformation of collective ideas about the past, including the images of the Ottoman Empire and Atatürk’s policies. The article highlights the main problems that form the information agenda of modern Turkish historical revisionism as a form of memory politics. The purpose of the article is to analyze the main directions of development of historical revisionism in the modern memorial culture of Turkish society. The author uses the methods proposed in the framework of the memorial turn in modern interdisciplinary historiography, which make it possible to identify and systematize the features of the transformation of the collective historical memory of Turkish society through the prism of historical revisionism. The article is one of the few attempts to interpret the historical politics of memory in modern Turkish society in contexts of the development of revisionism, focused on the revision of the legacy of the Ottoman Empire and the modernization policy of Atatürk. The article analyzes the main vectors and trajectories of the use of historical revisionism as one of the components of modern Turkish memorial culture. It is assumed that the policy of the ruling elites stimulates the processes of moderate re-Islamization of Turkish society, which inspires a revision of the collective ideas about the Empire and a revision of the interpretations of authoritarian modernization, proposed earlier in the political tradition of Kemalism. Modern ruling elites stimulate political and ideological contradictions between Turkish experts and intellectuals concerning collective historical and political experience of the Empire and the Republic, which is reflected in memorial cultures that have different ideological foundations. It is shown that modern historical politics actualizes the situation of parallel co-development of various memorial cultures based on mutually exclusive images of the Empire and the Republic. The author believes that the political elites of Turkey are forced to maneuver between the Kemalist and revisionist versions of historical memory. It is shown that revisionists are forced to take into account the norms of the Kemalist memorial canon, which does not allow them to radically revise the foundations of memorial culture, dismantling the cult of Ataturk and turning imperial images based on the neo-Ottoman ideology into the basis of the dominant memorial culture.

White Atlantic: Counterfeiting Race in France

This article proposes that a new white racial consciousness is emerging in France. Camouflaged as the default universal, unraced and unmarked, against which racial difference is measured, whiteness turns racelessness into power. We know as much from the critical race and whiteness studies that have dissected the normative apparatus at work in white pretentions to color-blindness. But if such a critique remains relevant in France—where color-blindness is the legally mandated norm—it also isn’t enough. Examining recent polemics against le racisme anti-blanc, or anti-white racism, I document how white color-consciousness is taking hold in the French mainstream. The new white identity revolves around a central premise: the victimization of white people by the forces of antiracism. Advancing a diasporic vision of beleaguered whiteness, French architects of what I call the white Atlantic issue dark warnings about the “genocidal” consequences for white people of Black Lives Matter and related social movements. In so doing, I argue, they counterfeit the collective historical experience that gives race meaning—in particular the experience of Black people, whose history of transatlantic suffering the new white identity simulates and exploits.

Sigmund Freud and Carl Jung on Myths and Archetypes of the Collective Unconscious: Unnoticed Similarity

Sigmund Freud’s psychoanalysis and Carl Gustav Jung’s analytical psychology are different in many ways and some of their differences are extremely crucial. It is widely believed that one of the most obvious examples of this intellectual confrontation is the difference between Freud’s and Jung’s views on mythology. Proponents of this view believe that Jung was much more interested in mythological issues and his theory of myth became much deeper and more developed than Freud’s one. In particular, it is believed that Freud focused exclusively on the individual’s psyche, while Jung allegedly reached the true origins of mythmaking in the collective unconscious, which is the sediment of the vast historical experience of mankind. The article shows that such statements do not reflect the real situation but just the point of view, which Jung began to spread after his break-up with Freud. In fact, the founder of psychoanalysis had a steady and deep interest in mythology. The manifestation of this interest was the formation of “psycho-analytics” of myth – a specific area of research, which in the early years of the psychoanalytic movement was joined by several first psychoanalysts, including Franz Riklin, Karl Abraham, Otto Rank, Ernest Jones, and Jung himself. It is essential that both Freud and Jung, before and after the break-up in 1913, have been and remain the supporters of the consideration of a man and culture through the prism of certain biological concepts of that time. Those are the principle of inheritance of acquired properties (Lamarckism) and the idea that ontogenesis recapitulates phylogeny (“biogenetic law”). Based on Lamarckian-biogenetic assumptions, both Freud and Jung saw the origins of mythology in the collective historical experience of mankind. The article demonstrates that the image of Oedipus and the associated motives of incest and parricide play almost the same role in Freud’s (and Freudian) model of mythmaking as the archetypes of the collective unconscious in Jung’s (and Jungian) concept of myth.

Axiological density of the linguocultural concept

The article is devoted to determining the factors of axiological features of cognitive forms. The main approaches related to the evaluation specification of linguistic and cultural concepts (structural and semantic) are outlined and analyzed. It is explained that the structural features of the linguo-cultural concept (historical and actual layers, domains and modular parts, nuclear and near-nuclear zone) determine its axiological features. The structure of the representation of knowledge is evaluative specified by the characteristics of its name (internal form, in equivalence, denotation and connotation, etc.). It is argued that the axiological characteristics of the concept are determined by external factors: belonging to one or different cultures, a particular subculture, the amount of collective historical, subjective emotional, and concrete-sensory experience, position on other concepts, rooted in the system of background knowledge, carrier mentality, stereotypes, as well as subjects of material and spiritual culture, etc. The term “axiological density of linguistic and cultural concept” was introduced into scientific circulation and an algorithm for its definition was proposed with the help of an integrative approach. Based on this algorithm, the modal (axiological) component of the linguistic and cultural concept of “time” in the poetic discourse of the 20th-21st centuries is analyzed.

On Seamus Heaney

On Seamus Heaney

ЖІНОЧІ ГОЛОСИ В УКРАЇНСЬКО-АМЕРИКАНСЬКІЙ ПРОЗІ: ПАМ’ЯТЬ, ТРАВМА І ЗАБУТТЯ

Стаття присвячена проблемі пам’яті та створення мнемонічного ланд-шафту в українсько-американській етнічній літературі. На прикладі опо-відання «Зобов’язання» Ірен Забитко зі збірки «Коли Люба йде з дому» (2003) й роману Аскольда Мельчука «Будинок вдів» (2008) проаналізовано способи художнього відтворення пам’яті та її зв’язок з травматичним досвідом насильства, втрати й еміґрації. Ключовою у згаданих творах стає жіноча перспектива переживання минулого. Художня модель пам’яті тво-риться за допомогою мотивів вразливості жіночого тіла (оповідання І. Забитко) і материнства та помсти (роман А. Мельничука). Теоретичну основу аналізу художніх творів складають концепції постпам’яті М. Гірш, забування П. Коннертона та культурної пам’яті А. Ерл. У статті наголошується на важливості матеріального й лінгвістичного маркування досвіду, а також мовних обмеженнях передавання травматичних переживань. Можливість способи передавання пам’яті є головною проблемою у згаданих творах. Насильство й породжена ним травма унеможливлюють нарацію пам’яті, як у випадку з головною героїнею оповідання І. Забитко. Забування як форма пам’яті стає захисним емоційним бар’єром, що дозволяє вижити. З іншого боку, в романі А. Мельничука індивідуальна пам’ять персонажів показана не лише як елемент колективної пам’яті мікросоціуму (етнічної громади), а й як складова культурної пам’яті народу. Нарації пам’яті трьох головних героїнь роману віддзеркалюють різне ставлення до досвіду минулого, яке, проте, має одну спільну рису – історичну зумовленість. Саме така мнемонічна модель є характерною для українсько-американської етнічної літератури загалом. Пам’ять героїнь переплітається з колективним історичним досвідом ХХ століття та інтеґрується в простір еміґраційної пам’яті, створюючи складну культурно-історичну амальгаму.

Establishing a new scopic regime: the new landscape painting of Mao’s era

ABSTRACTAfter 1949, with ‘serving the people’ established as the basic guideline of art, the reform of traditional landscape painting, which had been appropriated by the cultural elites for thousands of years, was put on the agenda as well. Beginning from the early of 1950s, there were continual debates on the reform of traditional Chinese painting within the art field, through which many artists gradually reached a consensus on the development direction of Chinese painting. At the same time, stimulated by the large-scale xiesheng movement sponsored by the government, Chinese landscape painting changed dramatically in subject, theme, and brushstroke technique, and developed a new style which has its own signifying system. Blending both Chinese and western drawing skills, the new landscape painting successfully created a unique scopic regime, which can establish an organic relationship between personal aesthetic experience and collective historical experience. As a prominent cultural achievement of Mao’s era, the new landscape painting embodies the cultural politics and the technologies of the self at that time.

Health care experiences of Indigenous people living with type 2 diabetes in Canada.

Indigenous social determinants of health, including the ongoing impacts of colonization, contribute to increased rates of chronic disease and a health equity gap for Indigenous people. We sought to examine the health care experiences of Indigenous people with type 2 diabetes to understand how such determinants are embodied and enacted during clinical encounters. Sequential focus groups and interviews were conducted in 5 Indigenous communities. Focus groups occurred over 5 sessions at 4 sites; 3 participants were interviewed at a 5th site. Participants self-identified as Indigenous, were more than 18 years of age, lived with type 2 diabetes, had received care from the same physician for the previous 12 months and spoke English. We used a phenomenological thematic analysis framework to categorize diabetes experiences. Patient experiences clustered into 4 themes: the colonial legacy of health care; the perpetuation of inequalities; structural barriers to care; and the role of the health care relationship in mitigating harm. There was consistency across the diverse sites concerning the root causes of mistrust of health care systems. Patients' interactions and engagement with diabetes care were influenced by personal and collective historical experiences with health care providers and contemporary exposures to culturally unsafe health care. These experiences led to nondisclosure during health care interactions. Our findings show that health care relationships are central to addressing the ongoing colonial dynamics in Indigenous health care and have a role in mitigating past harms.

Historia Conceptual y Filosofía de la Historia desde una perspectiva leibniziana

El presente trabajo pretende entablar un diálogo crítico entre la historia conceptual y la filosofía de la historia. Por una parte, en lo tocante al supuesto inicio de la “identidad semántica” de la modernidad; por otra, en la propia noción de “saber histórico” y con ella las experiencias históricas colectivas e individuales que lo conforman: no podemos olvidar que el sujeto del saber histórico no es sólo –o fundamentalmente- el estudioso de la historia, sino también quienes “hacen” esa historia o la “padecen” y que también contribuyen a gestar el humus conceptual de una experiencia que se traduce –o debería traducirse- en responsabilidad ética por esos mismos conceptos. La crítica a la filosofía clásica de la historia tiende así la mano a la propuesta de la rehabilitación de una filosofía crítica de la historia, aspectos ambos en los que se presentan como antecedentes diferentes conceptos leibnizianos, como no podía ser de otra manera en un trabajo dedicado a mi querido y extrañado amigo Quintín Racionero –que ya no será lo mismo sin poder discutirlo con él

History Moves: Mobilizing Public Histories in Post-Digital Space

Similar to most cultural forms today, history is collected, edited, manipulated, stored, displayed, distributed, and otherwise produced through a complex network of post-digital techniques and media. It is often produced only by historians. History Moves is a public history project that aims to produce cogent and collective historical experiences within the cultural frame of mutable and highly distributed media forms. It does this by bringing history, design, and historical subjects into conversation to shape public space. The project uses a participatory process that mobilizes people to interpret history by mobilizing digital and analogue media. History Moves transforms historical subjects into history-makers while simultaneously and repeatedly transfiguring media into forms that are engaging and accessible to widely distributed audiences. This article recounts a case study where History Moves worked with a group of women living with HIV/AIDS to present a history of the epidemic and a women’s history of Chicago. We suggest that the example provides a model for how to build participatory digital history projects and collaborative history displays.

History Teaching and Narrative Tools

Based on an analysis of five English-speaking students’ written narratives on Quebec’s history, this article proposes a pedagogical tool for better integrating and vitalizing these students’ language community in Quebec. Despite tendencies of reliance and opposition emerging from their historical consciousness, these students do not employ clearly articulated and coherent English-speaking storylines for positioning themselves as a minority group. To this end, I suggest the creation ofschematic narrative templatesof English-speaking Quebec’s collective historical experiences for offering students workable springboards to develop personal narratives of belonging, while taking Francophone concerns of linguistic and cultural fragility into account.

The past sits in places: Locality, violence, and memory in Sardinia

The aim of this paper is to situate the Sardinian village within the flux of contemporary social transformations that stand poised to redefine it. Specifically, it examines the highland village of Orgosolo, understanding it as a site that concentrates a clear set of cultural self-definitions that stand opposed to perceptions of life beyond the locality. A key element of local discourse is a view of the collective historical experience that underscores the social, political, and cultural marginality of rural life in central Sardinia, and associates the village with a dissident identity that is reaffirmed by a social memory of violence suffered at the hand of powerful outsiders from Antiquity onwards. Yet, this perspective on the locality is not the sole one, and as such the village presents a contested site where the normative traditionalist vision holds little traction among an ascendant generation of urban-oriented youth who, for their part, reject the past and any definition of village identity explicitly associated with it.

La enseñanza de la historia urbana y barrial. El caso del barrio San José de Bogotá

Este artículo destaca la importancia que tiene para la historiografía, laenseñanza e investigación en historia barrial. Se enfatiza en las relaciones delindividuo con su entorno, desde la perspectiva de la historia urbana en el barrioSan José, sur de Bogotá. Metodológicamente se apoya en la historia oral y enla pesquisa de archivos barriales, a partir de ahí, abre una reflexión que transitadel texto microsocial al contexto histórico amplio de la ciudad y el país.Luego, examina algunos elementos relevantes de la enseñanza de la historia yde la historiografía urbana y barrial; enseguida, explica las dinámicas socialesque se entrecruzan en un barrio; por último, pone en discusión las vivenciashistóricas de los habitantes del barrio.

Overcoming European Civil War: Patterns of Consolidation in Divided Societies, 2010–1800

Divided, sometimes antagonistic, communities in officially unified nations seem to be the rule in Europe. In some cases, they conjure up the most painful memories of actual civil-war events, but usually they constitute the common experience of most Europeans, who lived through different kinds of war, revolutions, counter-revolutions, coups d’état, dictatorships, totalitarian systems, regime changes, territorial losses, ethnic cleansings, and exchanges of population. In spite of major breakthroughs, we find all over Europe that the experiences and humiliations of previous generations have remained mainly unspoken and unelaborated at both individual and community levels. Dangerous as they are, such narratives and undigested traumas necessarily call for well-advised, learned and thoughtful acts of overwriting and reworking. A broadly based, well-founded, historical, multi- and interdisciplinary research project for the comparison of the various modes of trauma management in the different countries and regions of Europe can open up new perspectives and provide essential tools for working out individual and collective traumatic historical experiences. Its main question is how different communities were able to process their collective traumatic historical experiences, and what can be learned from the outcomes of these processes. The project will compare the common and different characteristics of the various regimes of memory and patterns of consolidation.

Mediatizing memory: History, affect and identity in Who Do You Think You Are?

Along with Australia, Canada and the USA, contemporary British society is immersed in a seemingly unprecedented boom in the family heritage industry. Drawing on recent work in memory studies which attends to the relationship between individual and collective historical experiences, this article analyses the celebrity genealogy BBC TV programme Who Do You Think You Are?, as well as viewers’ and critics’ reception of it, to problematize genealogy as a form of mediated or mediatized memory practice which mobilizes traces of the past through the idiom of family. It asks: what is the role of genealogy in facilitating the relationship between identity and memory, both for celebrity participants and viewers? How does television make memories remotely accessible, and how do viewers engage with such modes of accessing the past?

The contradictions of journalism in Germany

The year was 1908. It was the first time that German journalists realized what power they actually have. The catholic-centralist member of the national parliament Dr. Adolf Gröber called them during a debate on colonial policy publicly ‘Saubengel’ (something like ‘swine rogue’). All of them reacted spontaneously and decided to boycott any reporting from the Reichstag. Political communication came to a still stand until the chancellor intervened, because he planned to give a crucial speech. Herr Gröber had to apologize and information about parliamentary affairs went on as usual. The recent state of journalism reflects one way or another always the collective historical experiences of the culture in which journalists operates. The German experience is – of course – quite a mixed one. In terms of media technologies it was sometimes on top, in terms of content it lagged usually behind. Germany was shaped by its flourishing cities and the communication links they established across Europe. But its history also includes the tradition of a strong and authoritarian state that kept freedom of expression low and collapsed in the catastrophe of the Nazi era. What is the situation today?

Copyright and Democratization in Africa

Many studies have attempted to identify the factors that contribute to the institutionalization of democracy in Africa. Two of the most important of these factors are a robust civil society, and a democratic culture nurtured and supported by widespread dissemination of information, a free and independent media, and the belief in the ability and freedom of individuals to contribute to public discourse. Copyright law can be used to enhance the realization of these democratic ideals. Each African country should adopt a copyright regime that, given the country's collective historical experiences and specificities, can enhance the development of a robust civil society and a democratic culture, both of which can enhance the introduction of democracy, its deepening, and its institutionalization.