Construction Of Memory Research Articles

Tendencias de investigación en memoria histórica y sus desafíos pedagógicos en Latinoamérica

El presente artículo identifica las tendencias de las investigaciones en los procesos de construcción de memoria histórica desde el Estado, la sociedad civil y la escuela, y los desafíos que se advierten en el sector educativo frente a este estado del arte. Este trabajo se ocupa de un corpus de 38 textos derivados de investigaciones durante el período posterior a las dictaduras en Chile (1990) y Argentina (1983) y de posconflicto en Colombia (2012). A partir de allí identifica como tendencias la intención del Estado por fomentar la construcción de memorias y de conferir a la escuela esa tarea. En cuanto a la sociedad civil, advierte el afán de consolidar espacios para resguardar las memorias y de asegurar resistencia frente a los agentes victimarios del pasado. En cuanto a la escuela, reconoce avances y esfuerzos pioneros en los tres nodos del sistema didáctico: profesor, estudiante y saber.

The Multifarious Lives of the Sixth ‘Abbasid Caliph Muhammad al-Amin: Collective Memory Construction, Queer Spaces, and Historical Television Drama in Egypt and Syria

AbstractA vast array of narratives found in medieval historical chronicles and literary sources have referenced the particular ways in which the culture associated with the ‘Abbasid caliphate diverged from a binary model of gender. Despite debate about the historical accuracy of these early chronicles, the repeated references to the sixth ‘Abbasid caliph Muhammad al-Amin's non-heteronormativity indicate at least a kernel of truth. This article examines the collective memory construction of al-Amin in the Egyptian series Harun al-Rashid (1997) and two Syrian series, Abna’ al-Rashid: al-Amin wa-l-Ma'mun (The Sons of al-Rashid: al-Amin and al-Ma'mun, 2006) and Harun al-Rashid (2018). These contemporary portrayals of the life of al-Amin simultaneously illustrate the process by which history is altered by authorial perspective and the erasure of nonheteronormative space within the ‘Abbasid caliphate. My own authorial perspective inclines toward an interpretation of al-Amin as queer; through this lens, an inspection of wide-ranging accounts of al-Amin's life reveals the historical biases of his time and our current moment, too, as historians then and now variably recognize al-Amin's queerness in constructing collective memory. Some have argued that anti–al-Amin chroniclers may have engaged in historical revisionism and referred to al-Amin as queer to discredit the caliph, but ultimately, whether or not this is true, the current application of those early references by contemporary screenwriters is the most revealing historiographical decision, as his many representations serve as a mirror for our contemporary subjectivities, interests, and agendas. At a time when queer lives and experiences are notably absent from traditional historical narratives, this article proposes that regardless of the accuracy of the original sources, the absence itself in contemporary portrayals is significant, as patterns of exclusion yield tangible meaning. In this particular case, the ready elimination of queerness from contemporary narratives shows the ways in which queerness is vulnerable to erasure in favor of other, more politically expedient identity characteristics and values.

Quare Memory in Brendan Behan's Borstal Boy

This essay adapts David Cregan's concept of ‘queer memory’ – a form of memory defined ‘by exclusion rather than inclusion’ – to the author of The Quare Fellow, analysing narrative gaps in Brendan Behan's Borstal Boy in order to better understand its construction of cultural memory. Situating Borstal Boy within a growing canon of Irish writing on coercive confinement, the essay contends that draft versions act as an important component of textual memory, as can be seen by the more explicit portrayal of queer sexuality in Behan's drafts. Both in its transgressive portrayal of queer masculinity, and in the ‘quare’ narrative strategies used to incorporate this material into the published text, Borstal Boy presents an author whose ‘quareness’ is a key part of his literary aesthetic.

A gripe espanhola em Portugal: a construção da memória. O trabalho médico e a assistência hospitalar

Com este trabalho pretendemos refletir sobre a gripe espanhola em Portugal, procurando evidenciar o seu impacto na sociedade portuguesa e o papel desempenhado pelos profissionais da saúde, em particular pelos médicos, na assistência às vítimas da doença. Atingido pela primeira vaga da epidemia na primavera de 1918, o país, então governado por Sidônio Pais, já sofria as consequências da sua participação na Primeira Guerra Mundial. Era um tempo marcado por carências de toda ordem, em que as convulsões sociais davam expressão ao descontentamento e à revolta da população. O surgimento e a propagação da pneumônica puseram a nu as fragilidades do país em diversas áreas, nomeadamente, em matéria de prestação de cuidados de saúde, de assistência hospitalar, de higiene pessoal e pública. A impreparação e a incapacidade reveladas pelas autoridades administrativas e sanitárias para conter e combater a doença, apesar das medidas tomadas com esse propósito, motivaram reações violentas e geraram mesmo a desconfiança da população nas entidades públicas. Valeu, na altura, a intervenção de várias instituições, designadamente das Misericórdias, que tomaram a seu cargo a prestação de auxílio aos doentes e às respectivas famílias. Para a (re)construção da memória sobre a pneumônica, uma pandemia durante muito esquecida, e traçar um quadro mais geral da situação que se viveu em Portugal, recorremos a estudos efetuados por médicos e, em particular, à imprensa da época, reconhecido o importante papel que desempenhou, apesar da censura então vigente não apenas na transmissão de informação sobre o flagelo que afetava o país e o mundo, mas também na crítica e na denúncia do que se considerava merecer reprovação.

THE PHENOMENON OF LIES IN DOMESTIC AND FOREIGN PSYCHOLOGY

Background. The paper presents the results of analysis of the lie category research carried out in the XX–XXI centuries by domestic and foreign scientists. Many authors note that lying as a psychological phenomenon has been studied inconsistently and rather fragmentarily. The diversity of existing definitions of lies emphasizes the complexity of this phenomenon and indicates its insufficient theoretical elaboration, as well as the need to form a holistic, scientifically based understanding of the psychological nature of lies. Aim. The paper presents a comparative analysis of domestic and foreign research on the phenomenon of lies carried out in the XXI century. Results. It has been established that in the XX century researchers ceased to study the moral side of lies giving preference to its formal and dynamic features. In the XXI century, foreign experts describe the mechanism of cognitive distortion and control, as well as verbal and non-verbal signs of deception. The psychological portrait of a liar, the phenomenon of false memories, the role of responsibility, volitional qualities and behavioral attributes in the recognition of lies are being actively studied using a polygraph. Domestic science clarifies the phenomenology of lies, its psychological and psychophysiological mechanisms and pays particular attention to the subjective truth of the liar’s memories. Conclusion. An essential feature of domestic studies on the psychology of lies in the 21st century is the focus on elucidating its psychological mechanisms based on the phenomena of subjective construction of memories, false memories and false denial.

Sharing the Same Space: How the Memory of the Holocaust Travels in Political Speech

ABSTRACT In this research I examine how collective memory travels in political speech. I qualitatively analyze how the memory of the Holocaust is deployed in non-commemorative settings across three national contexts: Israel, Germany, and the US. Findings demonstrate how the memory of the Holocaust is selectively presented and rearranged to support a domestic agenda. Ever-expanding transnationalization has thus heightened interconnectivity, enabling the memory of the Holocaust to travel over and beyond traditional settings. It has also admitted memories from beyond the border into the national context of public sense-making through speech. Discussing implications for theory and scholarship, I argue that the social construction of memories as transnationalized entities, and their importation via political speech holds within it a socially-charged question, namely, to whom does this memory belong?

«Сибирские литературные воспоминания» Н.М. Ядринцева: память жанра и конструирование идентичности

«Сибирские литературные воспоминания» Н.М. Ядринцева: память жанра и конструирование идентичности

Robotic Episodic Cognitive Learning Inspired by Hippocampal Spatial Cells

This letter presents a robotic episodic cognitive learning framework based on the biological cognitive mechanism of hippocampal spatial cells. By emphasizing the cognition process and episodic memory in brain, the framework adopts the velocity modulated grid cells and place cells to afford the robot position cognition, abstracts the state neurons to represent the robotic state, and uses state neurons' activity and connection to simulate the episodic memory construction process. The episodic memory is formed by a sequence of particular events consisting of visual features, state neuron, phase, and pose information. Besides an episodic-cognitive map building approach based on this framework is proposed, which performs closed-loop correction by resetting the spatial cells phase to keep the map accurate. The episodic-cognitive map built in this letter is a topological metric map to describe the topological relations of the particular events coordinates in the unknown environment. The framework is applied on a mobile robot platform, the robotic episodic cognitive learning and episodic-cognitive map building approach are investigated. The robotic experiments demonstrate that the framework can effectively achieve the robotic incremental accumulative learning, update the spatial cognition to the environment and construct the episodic-cognitive map.

Tiempos cristianos y tiempos andinos en las crónicas coloniales y los qeros

Un conjunto de qeros andinos de los siglos XVII y XVIII, que muestran escenas correspondientes al pasado andino y a su presente colonial, permiten abordar la discusión acerca de los distintos conceptos de tiempo y espacio que tenían tanto las sociedades cristianas europeas de la época como la andina. En tanto que en las primeras ambos conceptos son autónomos, en los Andes el concepto de pacha supone la simultaneidad de tiempo y espacio. Mientras las crónicas escritas por europeos se organizaron con una concepción lineal del tiempo, las narraciones visuales en los qeros siguieron principios organizativos y enunciativos distintos. Se propone que ambos conceptos coexistieron colonialmente, y sirvieron de base para la construcción y/o conservación de las memorias en los Andes.

Emigration of Christians from Iraq as Reflected in Selected Post-2003 Iraqi Novels

In recent reflections on the current situation of ethnic and religious minorities in Iraq and the threat of their extinction, a number of Iraqi intellectuals have stressed they cannot imagine their society without the plurality and diversity that have contributed to the creation of a common interethnic and interreligious Iraqi identity and historical memory. Among them are writers who raise this issue not only in essays, articles and interviews, but also in their fiction. The aim of the present article is to show the interweaving of literary discourse on Iraqi minorities and the wider debate among Iraqi intellectuals on the deteriorating condition of Iraqi Christians – which has led to their mass emigration – as reflected in a number of post-2003 Iraqi novels. The literary image of this exodus cannot be discussed without addressing the position of Christians among other Iraqi communities currently and in the past, as well as the question of their identity. This article refers to the following novels: Taššārī (Dispersion, 2012) by In‘ām Kaǧaǧī, I‘ǧām (Diacritics, 2004) and Yā Maryam (Ave Maria, 2012) by Sinān Antūn, Sīra dātiyya riwā’iyya (An Iraqi in Paris: An Autobiographical Novel, 2012) by Samū’īl Šam‘ūn, Frānkanštāyn fī Baġdād (Frankenstein in Baghdad, 2013) by Ahmad Sa‘dāwī, and Sabāyā dawlat al-hurāfa (Slaves of the Imaginary State, 2017) by ‘Abd ar-Ridā Sālih Muhammad. The article is divided into four parts, including an introduction in which the above-mentioned debate is presented. The second part depicts the plight of Iraqi Christians after 2003 through a brief outline of the lives of four literary characters. The third part focuses on the situation of Iraqi Christians before 2003 by relating the memories of five fictional protagonists. These two descriptive parts are followed by some final remarks. The theoretical framework of this article is based on the reflections of Birgit Neumann and Astrid Erll concerning the role of literature as a medium in the construction of cultural memory.

Doing Family Memory in the Case of Emigration Experience

This chapter present the importance of memory making in migrant families lives and how emigrants ‘do’ family memory. A representative survey of Lithuanian residents shows that those with emigration experience since 1990 participate in family memory construction more actively. The development of such communicative family memory is family work which demonstrates family solidarity and occurs between and within generations. However, this research shows that gender, age and location influence who is involved in this process with men and younger family members less likely to participate.

Light storage and retrieval in spherical semiconductor quantum dots with on-center hydrogen impurity in magnetic field

We investigate the light propagation through the medium consisted of spherical semiconductor quantum dots with an on-center hydrogen impurity under the regime of the electromagnetically induced transparency. The weak probe and strong control laser couple to the medium, forming the three-level ladder-type coupling scheme. Maxwell-Bloch equations are solved numerically and analytically to obtain the spatial and temporal dependence of the probe pulse envelope. We observed that the probe pulse can be stored to and retrieved from the medium, with storage times of the order of nanoseconds being obtained. The external static magnetic field is shown to affect the energy level structure of the hydrogen impurity, reshaping the output probe pulse. We demonstrated that exposing the medium to cryogenic temperatures significantly increases the storage efficiency and storage time. These phenomena can greatly contribute to quantum information processing , leading to the construction of optical buffers, optical switches and quantum memories. • Slow light with the group velocity reduced by a factor 15 is achieved. • Storage times of the order of nanoseconds at room temperatures are obtained. • Approximate analytic results accurately describe the storage efficiency. • External magnetic field reshapes the output pulse and acts as an optical switch. • At cryogenic temperatures, storage times are increased to hundreds of nanoseconds.

A taste of nostalgia: Memory, culture and the senses in Joanne Harris’s Blackberry Wine (2000)

When it comes to food as a cultural entity, its importance as part of our communities of interaction goes well beyond its function as mere physical nourishment. It seems virtually impossible to talk about food and memory without talking about taste and smell. The connection between food, memory and the senses relies on the understanding that particular elements of the past are embedded in our identities and sense of self. Closely related to their food counterparts, drinks have also been at the centre of ongoing scholarly attention. Wine, in particular, has been the focus of debates surrounding notions of taste, provenance, storytelling, branding, habit and memory. As far as both food and drink are concerned, however, the remembrance of the senses – and the sociocultural experiences connected to them – is often shrouded in a layer of nostalgia, which inevitably complicates how we perceive experiences, as either authentic or (re-)constructed. Taking this idea as a point of departure, this article focuses on the connections between the sensorial experience of food and drink and the construction of memories in Joanne Harris’s novel Blackberry Wine (). Specifically, the article explores how Harris portrays the experience of wine-drinking – with a focus on taste, smell and the notion of terroir – as interdependent upon both cultural knowledge and familiar sensorial experiences. The discussion also exposes how these are eventually tacitly (and perhaps inadvertently) connected in the novel to the problem of consumerist exploitation, and how nostalgia is channelled in order to render products desirable to prospective customers.

Some Aspects of Associative Memory Construction Based on a Hopfield Network

An implementation of associative memory based on a Hopfield network is described. In the proposed approach, memory addresses are regarded as training vectors of the artificial neural network. The efficiency of memory search is directly associated with solving the overfitting problem. A method for dividing the training and input network vectors into parts, the processing of which requires a smaller number of neurons, is proposed. Results of a series of experiments conducted on Hopfield network models with different numbers of neurons trained with different numbers of vectors and operated under different noise conditions are presented.

Creating commemorative spaces in independent Ireland: the construction and use of publicly sited First World War memorials, 1919–1970

ABSTRACT In the aftermath of the First World War, widespread public commemoration of the war dead came to be focused on the war memorials erected on the squares and thoroughfares of many towns and villages in the countries involved in the conflict. For dead soldier’s families, not afforded an opportunity to honour their loved ones with the traditional rituals of mourning and interment, war memorials afforded a surrogacy for these important rites. However, the experience in Ireland was different. As Ireland embarked on a bloody and divisive journey towards political independence from Britain between 1916 and 1922, the commemoration of the 35,000 Irish men killed while fighting with the British Army during the war became highly politicized post 1919. In the nascent Irish-Free State, the socio-political space came to be dominated by nationalist rhetoric and ideologies and war memorial construction in this post-colonial context was stunted. While a national war, memorial was finally completed in Dublin by 1939 that memorial is outside the scope of this research, which instead focuses upon the construction of commemorative spaces outside the capital city, where only 12, publicly sited war memorials were completed during the period 1919–1930. This article charts the ‘life-cycle’ of these war memorials considering their planning, design, funding, location, unveiling and subsequent usage as sites for annual commemorative ceremonies of remembrance down to 1970. It highlights the range of challenges faced by organizing committees in securing sites for their memorials, while also demonstrating a heightened awareness within committees, as to how these memorials were going to be interpreted and ‘read’ by those who viewed them. Sensitivity and nuanced attention to detail with regard to the design, iconography, inscription and materials used in mediating a specific ‘Irishness’ for each memorial is detailed in illustrating how local war memorial committees tried to pre-empt challenges from those with antagonistic attitudes and views. Working within these constrained political environments, many of the resulting war memorials were based on conservative and hackneyed designs inspired by the Celtic Revival, in marked contrast to the more diverse range of memorials evident in Northern Ireland. Unveiling ceremonies provided opportunities to demonstrate the underlying purpose of each memorial as a site of commemoration for soldiers from each local area, a function which as this article articulates many fulfilled until 1970, when the outbreak of violence in Northern Ireland and the subsequent ‘Troubles’ brought a hiatus in commemoration in the Republic of Ireland.

Forging memory: the aftermath of the Saint Bartholomew’s Day massacre in Lyon

Abstract In the aftermath of the Saint Bartholomew’s Day massacres, Catholics and Protestants often had to explain or justify the extreme violence that marked this bloody episode. A process of memory construction therefore took place in the days and weeks immediately following the killings. Taking the city of Lyon as a case study, this article analyses how Catholics and Protestants constructed a partisan memory of the massacres and studies the role of these memories in subsequent conflicts and in the interpretation of the massacres, both during and after the Wars of Religion. The article shows that whereas Protestants relied on the model of the martyrology to formulate a theological response to the violence, Lyon’s Catholic elites preferred to insist on the legality of their actions and their respect of the royal will. This dual memory was not only built up gradually, it was also rewritten and reconstructed over the years and in different contexts.

Remembering atrocities: legal archives and the discursive conditions of witnessing

ABSTRACT International criminal tribunals and courts, such as the International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda (ICTR), are commonly understood within the legal transitional justice scholarship as the primary response to mass human rights violations. Tribunals and courts are expected to address the issue of impunity, but also uncover the truth of what happened and why. The legal scholarship often understands the ICTR as able to produce a collective legal memory of the atrocities through the memories of witnesses. Using the ICTR as a case study, the aim of this conceptually led article is to respond to these discussions by exploring the potential role ICTR archival material can have in extending our understanding of the construction of memory at international criminal courts and tribunals. The article uses insights from discourse studies, specifically based on the work of French philosopher Michel Foucault. It applies these insights to an exploratory analysis of legal documents relating to the selection of witnesses from the ICTR archive and interview transcripts with ICTR personnel from the archive of the University of Washington (UoW). This exploration suggests that the pre-trial stage shape, edit and restrict in significant ways, determining which individuals can be witnesses and what these witnesses can remember.

Memory production, vandalism, violence: Civil society and lessons from a short life of a monument to Stalin

Memory production, vandalism, violence: Civil society and lessons from a short life of a monument to Stalin

I Rate My Memory Quite Similar at Age 40 and at Age 70

Abstract. In 1987, we administered a subjective memory questionnaire to 143 40-year-old men, and 30 years later 67 of them again responded to the same questionnaire at age 70. At the follow-up, we also instructed participants to answer the questionnaire in the same manner as they thought they did at age 40 and to perform a picture recognition and a public event test. We employed confirmatory factor analysis to model a latent subjective memory construct. A single-factor solution provided acceptable model fit to data (χ2(12) = 9.33, p = .68; χ2(12) = 10.48, p = .57) and a decent reliability at both ages for the subjective memory measurements (omega = .82 and .93, respectively). Our longitudinal invariance testing revealed only a partial weak invariance. We also fitted a latent change-score model to the data. As expected, participants on average rated their memory as poorer at age 70 than at 40. Those who reported better overall health and less anxiety reported less memory decline up to age 70. Notably, this was also the case for those who rated memory as worse at age 40. Higher stress and depression at age 70, however, were associated with worse subjective memory already at age 40. The correspondences between memory ratings and tests were low. The correlation between the subjective memory factors at age 40 and 70 was 0.58, while the correlation between the memory factor at age 70 and the retrospective subjective memory factor was 0.87. Our findings suggest that subjective memory is quite consistent, and that we are inclined to preserve the continuity of our own memory functioning over the adult lifespan.

MEMORY, BIAFRA AND THE QUESTION OF NATIONHOOD IN BIYI BANDELE’S HALF OF A YELLOW SUN

The essential place of film in engaging the idea of memory and collective memory is established by the fact of its historical origins and development over the centuries. This, in every sense is connected to the socio-cultural, political as well as economic and aesthetic evolution, influenced and controlled by the reality of the people’s experience. From classical to the contemporary times, film makers have drawn montage-like pictures of their world, in concrete terms as historical films for the world to see. However, through the approaches of Social Interaction and Trauma Theories, Image Analysis and Historical Contextualization, this paper interrogates Biyi Bandele’s Half of a Yellow Sun, an adaptation of Chimamanda Adichie’s novel of the same title and how it has been deployed as a tool for the construction of collective memory of the Biafra/ Nigerian civil war experience. Data were collated through library research and critical study of related films. The findings therefore, reveal that memory plays cogent roles in the process of reconstruction of history. The film therefore serves as a point of reference for Nigerians to have reminiscence over the negative effects of the war on the people. It is however clear that the agitation by some groups to call for the renegotiation of the country’s unity is meant for the purpose of self- interest rather than collective. The reconstruction of the memory of agony of the war in the film, if not properly managed could be burdensome to the country, and may degenerate into another internal crisis. Hence, there is the need for any aggrieved party to be cautious in their approaches towards the question of National unity and perceived marginalization.