Day Of Mourning Research Articles

Leading Point Multi-Regression Model for Detection of Anomalous Days in German Energy System

In this article, the Leading Point Multi-Regression model was applied to identify days with anomalous energy consumption profiles. The data for the analysis come from the German energy system and they represent the hourly energy demand observed between 2006 and 2015. Days with abnormal daily profiles were identified based on the statistical analysis of the errors observed for the model. The accuracy of the model is very high and comparable with other models, e.g., LSTM, K-means, Recurrent NN, and tree-based ML methods. However, these methods rely on external factors (e.g., humidity, temperature, and sunshine) impacting energy consumption while our model uses only the energy consumption at specific fixed hours, regardless of external factors, thus being universal. Days with anomalous energy consumption profiles were identified as days related to celebration of New Year’s Eve and the New Year. Also, anomalies were identified for some other days, which were not that obvious, including Good Friday, National Day of Mourning, and, interestingly, the day of the Germany–Turkey match during the European Championship in 2008.

Protocol and Order during the Mourning Period for the Late President Moi: Understanding Official Discourse of the Disciplined Forces and Cultural Ideologies

This paper is a reflection on both the language and acts of protocol and honour witnessed during the days of mourning and funeral service of the second President of the Republic of Kenya, Daniel Toroitich Arap Moi, between the fourth and the twelfth of February 2020. Interviews with some military officers were used to shed light on the meanings of the texts and acts of honour and protocol. These include; the Presidential Proclamation, the flags traditions, the military marches, and the gun ceremony by army. The army was in charge of most of the ceremonies and activities that took place during that time of mourning. This discourse and honorary acts are contrary to another underplayed disgruntled discourse that those who suffered under the KANU regime had. Is it a cultural thing not to say ill of the departed? Was the media down playing these contrary views because of what they called ‘negative Kenyan groupthink’? Discourse analysis theory was used to help shed light on the intricacies of language and meanings in the discourse of the disciplined forces and other discourses backgrounded in these events yet are part of human experiences and activities. The gist of the paper is how discursive elements in the chosen texts and acts (for this article, the military) have practical, ritual, symbolic, semiotic, and cultural functions. In discussing this one event, the paper endeavours to show the importance of language in revealing social and cultural ideologies and how this knowledge helps in understanding peoples’ lives. As a social practice, language informs the social structure; who the people are, their behaviours and way of life

Seasonal Greeting: Rethinking Thanksgiving: Recognizing the real past and giving thanks to the gift of Mother Earth's abundance

While most people celebrate Thanksgiving, many Native Americans pause for a National Day of Mourning. Their National Day of Mourning represents the truth of Thanksgiving. Most people in the U.S. were taught that Thanksgiving is when “the Pilgrims and Indians celebrated” which isn’t true at all. Yet the myth of the first Thanksgiving is still taught in schools and passed on in homes.

Between the sacred and the profane: conflicts between football and sharia in Iran

The present article illuminates an aspect of relations between religion and society in Iran that has so far received scant scholarly attention. It describes and analyzes the interaction between religious law in Iran and football, to wit, what solutions the regime tries to find for cases in which religious law comes into conflict with the game's huge popularity, for example: how should Iran act when reaching the world finals means playing on the most solemn day of mourning in the Shiite calendar? What should female Iranian athletes do if participation in international tournaments means they would have to remove the hijab? In what way are male players allowed to celebrate a goal? May they adopt Western-style fashions (haircuts, clothes) like their counterparts elsewhere? And are superstitions, witchcraft and magic allowed in connection with the game?

Eulogy on King Philip

In the heart of New England, on the doorstep of the Pilgrim founding fathers, William Apess delivered this eulogy honoring their greatest enemy, Metacomet of the Wampanoags, known as King Philip, who led a coalition of Native peoples that came close to destroying the whole English colonial enterprise in 1675–76. In 1836, one hundred sixty years later, Apess chose to re-examine the circumstances of King Philip’s life and death, and pronounced him equal to or even greater than Washington in love for his country, military skill, and personal honor. While redeeming the memory of Philip as a martyr for his people, Apes takes opportunity to indict white Christian Americans for the false promises, broken treaties, murders, enslavements, and other oppressions visited upon the Native inhabitants by the European invaders. “We say, therefore, let every man of color wrap himself in mourning, for the 22d of December and the 4th of July are days of mourning and not of joy.… the prayers, preaching, and examples of those pretended pious, has been the foundation of all the slavery and degradation in the American colonies, towards colored people.” Apess’ was a brave voice amid the prejudice and Indian Removal policies dominant in the United States. His Eulogy is an early cry by a Native author for equity, for recognition, for common humanity, and for reconciliation: “you and I have to rejoice that we have not to answer for our fathers’ crimes, neither shall we do right to charge them one to another.” William Apess (1798–1839) was born to Pequot parents, grew up among whites as an indentured servant before running away to join the militia in the War of 1812. He became a Methodist minister, preacher, author, and publisher, advocating for Native rights and for anti-slavery causes.

SAR AND ITS IMPLICATIONS ON BIODIVE RESOURCES CONSERVATION IN WASUR NATIONAL PARK AREA, PAPUA

The landscape ethnoecological study approach also explores the significance of local systems in understanding ecological sustainability, including its implementation in biocultural conservation education. In this view, a study has been carried out on the traditions of the indigenous people of Wasur Village in Wasur National Park, regarding the practice of sar rituals and their relationship with education in Wasur National Park for biodiversity conservation to obtain an initial view from a biological perspective. This study uses an ethnological study approach with data collection through free interview techniques to key informants, library surveys, and free lists. The results of interviews with key informants revealed that the sar tradition is a ritual of respecting relatives who have died through a prohibition on the use of all forms of resources on family land that was left behind for a thousand days of mourning. Based on the literature survey, it was found that the period of a thousand days can support the regeneration of several specific macropod species in the Trans Fly area such as Dorcopsis spp, Macropus agile, and Thylogale spp. Sar is an example of a sasi system known by several tribes on the north coast of Papua which is promoted as culture-based conservation

COVID-19 and sonic governmentality: Can we hear the virus speak?

A virus is not only invisible; it is also inaudible. Alongside attempts to visualize COVID-19, this article inserts a sonic perspective to listen to encounters between authorities and populations during the pandemic in China. The article examines how sound (mal)functions to mediate, interpellate, and distribute authority and power in the name of national health and safety. We will concentrate on the use of sirens and loudspeakers. First, at 10 a.m. on 4 April 2020, sirens were sounded throughout the nation to mark an official National Day of Mourning (全民哀悼日). Second, to reach places not readily accessible by more modern means of communication, rural leaders resorted to loudspeakers to announce virus-related messages to offline populations. Our curiosity about the sonic element was piqued. At the same time, we were reminded of ocularcentrism – the tendency or the bias to place the visual at the centre of inquiry. We argue for the need to engage with sonic practices and politics, and to foreground sound as a tool of governmentality. We want to document how certain instances of sonic governmentality played out in China during the pandemic. Finally, this inquiry should help us explore possible avenues for future research on sound and politics.

Monumental Mobility: The Memory Work of Massasoit

In 2017, after a long reclamation battle, the Wampanoag ceremonially reinterred artifacts and remains associated with the seventeenth-century leader 8sâmeeqan (Ousamequin). Massasoit, the name widely used in histories and Thanksgiving pageants, was a title signifying 8sâmeeqan’s leadership role. A century earlier, a Euro-American fraternal order called the Improved Order of Red Men (IORM) commissioned a sculpture to commemorate the tricentennial of the pilgrims’ 1620 encounter with the Massasoit and his people.As current controversies attest, “the urge to commemorate” is never a straightforward one. In this timely book, Lisa Blee and Jean M. O’Brien trace the creation and installation of the Massasoit memorial on Cole Hill in Plymouth, Massachusetts, and its remarkable afterlife.Monumental Mobility explores the “memory work” of public history: “how individuals and collectivities make meaning of the past as distinct from the concrete matter of what actually happened” (7). O’Brien brilliantly addressed these themes in her earlier work on settler colonialism in New England, where displacement of Indigenous people from local history went hand in hand with dispossessing them from their land. The IORM hoped a monument on Cole’s Hill looking out over Plymouth harbor would cement the landing’s importance in the nation’s history. Achieving this goal meant presenting the European arrival as a peaceful encounter welcomed by Indigenous people, thus “shedding the violence” and exculpating guilt around dispossession. Sculptor Cyrus Dallin, raised in Utah Territory and an avid consumer of Buffalo Bill Cody’s Wild West show, brought his own stereotypes to the commission.Press for the unveiling advertised the presence of 8sâmeeqan’s “only living descendant,” Wootonekanuske/Charlotte Mitchell. The “disappearing Indian” image was so prevalent that newspapers casually erased her siblings and cousins. Mitchell resisted the subordinate role assigned to her in “helping celebrate the killing of my own people” (75). As the statue was unveiled and the band played the Star-Spangled Banner, she turned away from the camera and spoiled the shot. The Mitchells and other Wampanoag activists used commemoration events to bolster land claims and to subvert the narrative of disappearance. On Thanksgiving 1970, United American Indians protesters staged a “Day of Mourning.” They painted the Massasoit statue with red and buried Plymouth Rock in sand. Activism gained the Mashpee and Aquinnah Wampanoags authorship: they shaped interpretation to reflect Indigenous perspectives at Plimoth Plantation and Cole’s Hill, and in their own exhibits.The statue’s history outside New England occupies a significant portion of the book. Dallin donated the plaster cast to the state capitol, but it ended up at Brigham Young University. There, curators engaged in an elaborate tax fraud that involved making unauthorized new castings. The Massasoit figure became a generic trope untethered from tribe, geography, and history, with miniatures sold in tourist shops and larger copies installed in malls, museums, and sculpture parks in Kansas City, Spokane, Chicago, Dayton, and Salt Lake City. This mobility permits Blee and O’Brien to investigate settler colonial narratives in the West. Utah officials rejected Dallin’s proposal for a statue honoring Shoshone leader Washakie and removed the Massasoit from its place of honor in the capitol to make way for representations of Utah history centered on Mormon migrants, actions that simulated the literal dispossession of Utes, Navajos, and Shoshones. Brigham Young University framed its Massasoit statue as a “helper,” a symbol of Indigenous self-sacrifice necessary for Europeans to thrive.If memorials say more about who erected them than they do about the past, sponsors and artists cannot always control the message. Showcasing Blee’s public history expertise, the authors surveyed visitors’ responses to the Massasoit statues. In Kansas City and Dayton, Massasoit stands with other sculptures or art, convincing some that 8sâmeeqan was important without teaching much history. In Provo, the semi-nude statue’s violation of campus dress codes draws more comment than its historical message. Still, for a few individuals the monument inspires reflection about local Indigenous groups and America’s national narrative. As colonized people around the globe tear down monuments, this fascinating book offers a blueprint for closing the gap between the past and present understandings of history.

Two Poems

Two Poems by Amichai Chasson Angelus Novus On Saturday nights, when the family’s asleep and the head is bettered with wine, Walter Benjamin’s voice broadcasts on Radio Berlin: “The earth constantly trembles under the feet.” My body too trembles in an inciting devotion song I sneak through the rusty gate at Ibn Shaprut, collecting Gershom Scholem from his home on Abrabanel Street from Gaza to Berlin. Benjamin’s voice follows us, materializes in the filthy passages, Anglo-Saxon Haredi men wander around in three-piece suits. Benjamin in varnished shoes, Scholem in butterfly hunter’s hat, and I in black Adidas sweatpants. The young men recoil from us, crack sunflower seeds on the sidewalks, jerk off secretly to an ad on the back page of an abandoned newspaper, creating Angels of Sabotage summoning Lilith “Come come,” building a tabernacle for the Great Crocodiles not noticing that the earth is swarming with angels clad in dresses, gentiles’ jewelry, and three toes in every foot. Their eyes wide open, their mouths gaping, their wings spread as in a priestly blessing, they try to rise from the ground up to the Star of Redemption, moving slowly like Saturn toward Jerusalem (a guesthouse for broken angels tired of ruins who at the end of their lives come to die here, angels from America, from Ibiza, from Paris, from der Himmel über Berlin). I point to the smallest among them: Paul Klee painted him with watercolors. Benjamin hung him in every room he’d lived in, after his death the chopped-winged angel was sent to Scholem’s room on Abarbanel Street. In the courtyard children now play with curly payot mumbling in Yiddish, and I translate the warnings for Scholem: Sabateans on you, Gershom Scholem, naked punks rattling their organs, old Gnostics jumping from every direction. On the way home I count us aloud: “Iron numbers up!”* No one answers, they’re all absent. Benjamin did not reach Palestine, did not land in New York, committed suicide in the Pyrenees a moment before the border could have been stolen. Scholem died childless in Jerusalem. The Angel of History is now lying in the storerooms of the Israel Museum. I saw it a week ago. This is no London or Rome, here there’s no line, no guards, I stood alone in front of the angel who asked my name, I closed my eyes. I bought a poster from the souvenir shop near the exit. Now it hangs alone in my room, the angel redeeming me from all evil will bless the woman recumbent on the couch beside me with the weekend’s newspaper bleeding in her hands: “History!” And the portrait of Donald Trump smiling in it, tanned as ever. PAUL KLEE, ANGELUS NOVUS, 1920, OIL TRANSFER AND WATERCOLOR ON PAPER, 31.8 X 24.2 CM, ISRAEL MUSEUM, JERUSALEM POETRY Amichai Chasson (b. 1987, Ramat Gan, Israel) is a poet, author, journalist, film director, screenwriter, and artistic director. Chasson received the Minister of Culture’s prize in 2015 as well as the Dr. Gardner Simon Prize for Hebrew Poetry for his book Bli Ma in 2018. To read a bio of Maayan Eitan, turn to page 64. Saison We go hunting at the break of dawn, the parking inspector and me, not meeting each other’s eyes. Quietly walking searching for suspicious signs: him, on the windshields me, in the obituaries. Traces appear when the thirty days of mourning are over piled up on the sidewalks: Else Lasker-Schüler lying outside the fence, Martin Buber’s beard brushing the curbstones, Breakdown and Bereavement, first edition (Stiebel Publishing, New York), Tower and Stockade in volumes of the Encyclopaedia Hebraica, dedications in German. The neighborhood surrenders its assets. I sort books into produce cartons the inspector writes tickets, fixes them to the windshields on Hatibonim Street. When the hunt is over we sit down, sharing a conversation about the loot. The inspector takes Natan Zach, questions aloud: “How to sweeten days.” How else but with remnants. Translations from the Hebrew By Maayan Eitan Amichai Chasson / Photo by Moti Kikayon * Author’s note: “Iron numbers” is the name of a method for counting...

Two Poems

Two Poems by Amichai Chasson Angelus Novus On Saturday nights, when the family’s asleep and the head is bettered with wine, Walter Benjamin’s voice broadcasts on Radio Berlin: “The earth constantly trembles under the feet.” My body too trembles in an inciting devotion song I sneak through the rusty gate at Ibn Shaprut, collecting Gershom Scholem from his home on Abrabanel Street from Gaza to Berlin. Benjamin’s voice follows us, materializes in the filthy passages, Anglo-Saxon Haredi men wander around in three-piece suits. Benjamin in varnished shoes, Scholem in butterfly hunter’s hat, and I in black Adidas sweatpants. The young men recoil from us, crack sunflower seeds on the sidewalks, jerk off secretly to an ad on the back page of an abandoned newspaper, creating Angels of Sabotage summoning Lilith “Come come,” building a tabernacle for the Great Crocodiles not noticing that the earth is swarming with angels clad in dresses, gentiles’ jewelry, and three toes in every foot. Their eyes wide open, their mouths gaping, their wings spread as in a priestly blessing, they try to rise from the ground up to the Star of Redemption, moving slowly like Saturn toward Jerusalem (a guesthouse for broken angels tired of ruins who at the end of their lives come to die here, angels from America, from Ibiza, from Paris, from der Himmel über Berlin). I point to the smallest among them: Paul Klee painted him with watercolors. Benjamin hung him in every room he’d lived in, after his death the chopped-winged angel was sent to Scholem’s room on Abarbanel Street. In the courtyard children now play with curly payot mumbling in Yiddish, and I translate the warnings for Scholem: Sabateans on you, Gershom Scholem, naked punks rattling their organs, old Gnostics jumping from every direction. On the way home I count us aloud: “Iron numbers up!”* No one answers, they’re all absent. Benjamin did not reach Palestine, did not land in New York, committed suicide in the Pyrenees a moment before the border could have been stolen. Scholem died childless in Jerusalem. The Angel of History is now lying in the storerooms of the Israel Museum. I saw it a week ago. This is no London or Rome, here there’s no line, no guards, I stood alone in front of the angel who asked my name, I closed my eyes. I bought a poster from the souvenir shop near the exit. Now it hangs alone in my room, the angel redeeming me from all evil will bless the woman recumbent on the couch beside me with the weekend’s newspaper bleeding in her hands: “History!” And the portrait of Donald Trump smiling in it, tanned as ever. PAUL KLEE, ANGELUS NOVUS, 1920, OIL TRANSFER AND WATERCOLOR ON PAPER, 31.8 X 24.2 CM, ISRAEL MUSEUM, JERUSALEM POETRY Amichai Chasson (b. 1987, Ramat Gan, Israel) is a poet, author, journalist, film director, screenwriter, and artistic director. Chasson received the Minister of Culture’s prize in 2015 as well as the Dr. Gardner Simon Prize for Hebrew Poetry for his book Bli Ma in 2018. To read a bio of Maayan Eitan, turn to page 64. Saison We go hunting at the break of dawn, the parking inspector and me, not meeting each other’s eyes. Quietly walking searching for suspicious signs: him, on the windshields me, in the obituaries. Traces appear when the thirty days of mourning are over piled up on the sidewalks: Else Lasker-Schüler lying outside the fence, Martin Buber’s beard brushing the curbstones, Breakdown and Bereavement, first edition (Stiebel Publishing, New York), Tower and Stockade in volumes of the Encyclopaedia Hebraica, dedications in German. The neighborhood surrenders its assets. I sort books into produce cartons the inspector writes tickets, fixes them to the windshields on Hatibonim Street. When the hunt is over we sit down, sharing a conversation about the loot. The inspector takes Natan Zach, questions aloud: “How to sweeten days.” How else but with remnants. Translations from the Hebrew By Maayan Eitan Amichai Chasson / Photo by Moti Kikayon * Author’s note: “Iron numbers” is the name of a method for counting...

Ungrateful Children and Days of Mourning: Two Wampanoag Interpretations of the “First Thanksgiving” and Colonialism through the Centuries

When Boston entered its pandemic lockdown in early March, it forced the cancellation of the Congregational Library's symposium “1620: New Perspectives on the Pilgrim Legacy.” With the cooperation of the director of the library, the Rev. Stephen Butler Murray, the four presenters—Carla Gardina Pestana, David Silverman, John G. Turner, and Francis Bremer—agreed to have the QUARTERLY publish revised versions of their talks with Kenneth P. Minkema as the guest editor of the papers. Far from seeing Plimoth as a minor backwater in the English settlement of Massachusetts, each of the essays situates the history of Plymouth Colony in more complex contexts: in its web of Atlantic connections, in the Indigenous identification of Anglo settlement as a cause of mourning, in its participation in the processes of enslavement, and in its larger impact upon the puritan, New England Way.

The politics of mourning in post-communist Romania: unravelling the thanatopolitics of grievable deaths

ABSTRACT National days of mourning are state-sponsored rituals of collective grief enacted in the public sphere by political authorities to symbolically mark and emotionally cope with a socially significant loss. These officially declared and ceremonially performed state rituals of communion in grief provide privileged epistemic opportunities for unravelling the politics of grievability underpinning a society’s willingness to mourn its dead. This paper focuses on comparing and contrasting two case studies – the Colectiv nightclub fire and the flu epidemics – in order to grasp the politics of national mourning in the Romanian post-communist context. After identifying the criteria of grievability underlying the declaration of national mourning in cases of mass death as consisting in a ‘chronotopic togetherness’ in death that is characterised by an ‘instantaneity of emotional shock,’ the paper argues for enlarging these criteria of grievability so as to include the victims of socially invisible traumas inflicted by structural violence, such as those killed in epidemics and car road accidents.

Atzma’ut 69, Occupation 50

Atzma’ut 69, Occupation 50

Legal regulation of broadcasting on days of mourning and days of remembrance

The article investigates the question of determining the appropriateness of broadcasting regulation in the day of mourning and memorial days. The author analyses the experience of other countries in the organizational and legal support of state information policy in the field of television and radio broadcasting during the days of mourning and memory. Proposals are prepared for improving the legal regulation of social relations that arise during the broadcasting in the days of mourning and memory.

Forty days of mourning

The author writes about the death of her father, her period of mourning for him during the Arab tradition of 40 days, and the surprising results that followed.

The Woman Without A Head

The Woman Without A Head Marlène Amar (bio) Introduced and translated in French by Eva Martin Sartori Marlène Amar's novel The Woman Without a Head examines the trauma of exile experienced by Jews for millenia through the prism of the experiences of the French-speaking Jews expelled from the Arab countries when nationalist fever spread through the region. Amar's parents' families had deep roots in the North African Jewish communities and prior to the Algerian war for independence led a comfortable life, seemingly at peace with their neighbors. When the war broke out Jews were no longer welcome and the Amar family was forced to emigrate to France. For several reasons Paris was a logical destination for the French-speaking Jews. Algerian Jews, unlike Algerian Muslims, had held French citizenship since 1870. In addition, the schools of the Alliance Israelite had for almost a century promoted French culture as part of its "civilizing mission." However, the close ties between Algerian Jews and metropolitan France did not make the family's move an easy one, as Amar's novel makes painfully clear. The move was an involuntary one, viewed not as homecoming but as exile. Each member of the family adapted to [End Page 123] the new culture in a different way. The prophet Jeremiah counseled the Jews exiled to Babylon to assimilate, to adopt the ways of their hosts (Jeremiah, 29:18). But to what degree, the prophet did not say, leaving it to the individual to decide how much of the birth culture she will shed as she adapts to the new one. The assimilation process that follows immigration always involves translation, even when the language doesn't change. Words and gestures have different meanings: the gray sun of Paris has little in common with the Algerian sun, greetings are performed in a different manner, family relationships are altered, expectations revised. It is the central character of the novel, the nameless and finally headless "sister," however, who most dramatically, and most tragically, embodies the drama of the exiled individual. The poignancy of The Woman Without a Head resides in the fact that the translation from one culture to another is effectively and brutally inscribed on the body itself. It is not metaphoric and it is not abstract. The words have been traced by the surgeon's scalpel. The Woman Without a Head I. Everyone in B. was crying when we left. Women were scratching their cheeks, as they did on days of mourning. The men, with red eyes, kept quiet and pressed their kippas in their hands. I understood that something serious was taking place, that it was possible that we would never return. I started shaking uncontrollably. My mother looked at me with a vacant air and reached into her bag for a pill that she handed me mechanically. I was six years old and on that day, my nose glued to the car window which was beginning its journey in the desert, I saw, as we were leaving the Ouakda oasis, my last mirage: at the edge of a vast expanse of water of an almost fluorescent green a camel was smiling at me. I smiled back, then the vision evaporated and, under the influence of the pill, I fell asleep. The strange thing about mirages is that they have the diabolical clarity of reality. This camel that was cooling himself on the banks of a lake that appears on no map in the world is lodged in my memory as distinctly as if it were made of flesh. By contrast, everything that followed when we had settled in France seemed to me unreal. However, it was there that we would have to live from then on. Or at least pretend that we lived. That first summer we spent in Paris I remember that I took a summer course in a Catholic institute. Every morning before class we were taken to the chapel where I witnessed a mass for the first time. I didn't want to be noticed so I pretended to sing like them by reading their lips as they sang the hymns. "Practice makes perfect," my mother often said at...

Day of mourning and time of reminiscence: Death, funeral and reminiscence of political famous persons in Serbia in socialist era and afterwards

The most impressive event of death in the Yugoslav region in the last 50 years was definitely associated with death and funeral of Josip Broz Tito, in May 1980. The departure of one of the last European pharaohs has marked the beginning of an end of an era, with still hard to measure ideological and political consequences. In a symbolic sense, the departure represented a final breakdown of the proclaimed rational and secular walls of communist ideology, whose foundations contained complex religious symbolic and rhetoric. Tito came to be remembered while he was still alive. He was the only living hero portrayed in monuments, whose name was displayed in street appellations and public institutions. Media concept of his death and funeral represented a confirmation and continuation of this reminiscence; in addition, the deeper meaning of this reminiscence revealed an essential negation of the fact that the mighty ruler is actually dead. Tito's position of a supreme deity, acquired during his lifetime, was even more firmly established by his death. In this way, it could be argued that death has contributed to Broz' deification, thus extending his cult furthermore. The question remains whether the faith in his divine soul would persevere the temptations of history if he had lived for a few years more? It appears that the same question could be posed in regards to the deification of assassinated prime minister, Dr Zoran Djindjic, whose death, funeral and post mortem glory represent almost the only comparable event from the recent Serbian history, to those of the complex death related rhetoric of Broz? The post mortem image of Dr Djindjic was created based on Christian model of martyr and sufferer, but also on the model of exemplar death, that is, heroic and martyr's death in the name of nation, an important element of a special religious system, i.e., religion of nation. In 2006, during the annual commemoration dedicated to Zoran Djindjic, media coverage had turned to another event: Slobodan Milosevic had suddenly died in Scheveningen. Date of dying was not the only thing that has, for a moment, put these two celebrated politicians together. Death in prison, in Hague tribunal, while being in exile, has allowed that (short-lived) post mortem glory of the former president of FRY be built according to the Christian model of martyr and sufferer. On the other hand, Milosevic's ideological position (in between communism and democracy) has determined that the rhetoric associated with his departure is a combination of pagan and Christian motives. Hence, media and public images from the day he died until the funeral, were saturated with pagan symbolism and myths. It is interesting to note that these cited examples reflect the process where changes in basic secular ideologies are accompanied by a change in religious patterns as well. In turn, these religious patterns help to solve cultural contradictions and doubtfulness.

Performing the New German Past: The People's Day of Mourning and 27 January as Postunification Commemorations

The article sketches the ruptures in today's German memory culture, concentrating on the Volkstrauertag (People's Day of Mourning) and the Gedenktag für die Opfer des Nationalsozialismus (Remembrance Day for the Victims of National Socialism) on 27 January. It starts with an overview of the history of the Volkstrauertag with its (outward) transformation from a commemoration day for dead German soldiers into one for “all victims of war and violence.” The inclusive model of commemoration that was typical for the Bonn Republic is disintegrating today. In united Germany, the Volkstrauertag and 27 January reflect antagonistic memory strands, that is a memory focussed on the war dead and German suffering or on the Holocaust and German guilt. In light of discussions about commemorating Bundeswehr dead, the article ends by describing a re-heroicizing of the Volkstrauertag and, in a more general way, tries to outline the shifting construction of German national identity.

Death and Life in Residency

Back to table of contents Previous article Next article Residents' ForumFull AccessDeath and Life in ResidencyNatalie Gluck, Natalie GluckSearch for more papers by this author, M.D.Published Online:5 Aug 2005https://doi.org/10.1176/pn.40.15.00400032A couple of weeks into my third year of residency, just as I was beginning to acquaint myself with a large and daunting caseload of outpatients, my father died. Without warning, I went from navigating another day in the clinic to making travel plans and funeral arrangements. My life as a resident would have to be put on hold.When I received the devastating phone call on that balmy afternoon, my immediate response—thanks to a ready reserve of ego defenses—was to agonize over my patients. How would a sudden, unexplained departure affect a group of people already traumatized by the recent changeover of doctors? How could I gracefully maneuver through all of the phone calls without sounding panicked or betraying my veil of neutrality? I was stuck in a quagmire of technical questions, the answers to which were not easily found in a Glen Gabbard textbook.As a resident in a program that clings doggedly to modern psychiatry's psychoanalytic roots, I have been served ample portions of dynamic theory. But in all our lectures on process in psychotherapy, not a single one had addressed the transference and countertransference implications of a therapist's crisis. I thought a lot about this during that period of suspended reality known as shiva, the first seven days of mourning in the Jewish tradition, and questioned whether I could treat people in pain while I myself was suffering. I grappled with issues of self-revelation, wondering how I would explore my patients' fantasies of where a “family emergency” had taken me. My own fantasies led me to fear the worst— that my patients would flee treatment, stop their medication, or decompensate.I returned to work, emotionally at half-mast and with no clear idea of how I would manage. But I quickly found that, consciously at least, it was possible to keep my father's death out of the room. Many of my higher-functioning patients expressed relief at my return but did not linger on the issue, and we were quickly able to pick up where we had left off. For those in a more supportive therapy, I offered a direct explanation for my absence, accepted their condolences, and moved on.Outside of the therapeutic interaction, however, I noticed a kind of self-consciousness about being a person in mourning, unsure of what others expected of me. I worried that supervisors would restrain their questions in an effort to avoid the dangerous territory where supervision becomes individual therapy. I worried that my colleagues might interpret a bright affect as pathologic. I even scanned the DSM-IV criteria for abnormal grief reaction for fear of confirming their suspicions.I'd often respond to inquiries with intellectualized defenses, including quoting the stages of grief described by Elizabeth Kubler-Ross, who, ironically, died a few weeks after my father. There were questions of whether I was in therapy (twice weekly, thank you very much) or had considered joining a bereavement group (I had, but couldn't find one where phrases like“ identification with the lost object” were appreciated). After a while, I developed a sort of haughtiness, as if the death of a parent somehow adds to your life's curriculum vitae. Yep, now I can say that I get loss.As I enter my final year of training and approach the first anniversary of my father's death, there are many things for which I am grateful. I am grateful for my fellow residents, who have showered me with kindness and support, offering everything from taking extra call to permitting a space for bereavement in process group. I am grateful for the supervisors who acknowledged my sorrow, but respected the work enough to keep me from drowning in it. I am grateful that patients are more resilient than I gave them credit for and that my sudden departure weaved its way into their therapies in subtle but meaningful ways.Through the tribulations of residency, I've battled self-doubt and uncertainty. But even as I weather sadness and anger, I realize that most of my patients are doing well, and a few have even gotten better. And like my father—himself a physician who devoted much of his life to the practice of medicine—I continue to derive satisfaction from my work.My dad would have been proud. ▪Natalie Gluck, M.D., is a PGY-4 resident at the New York University School of Medicine. ISSUES NewArchived

The Role of Social Anthropology in the Debate on Funeral Rites in Africa

AbstractIn view of the actual debate on funeral rites in Christian Churches in Africa, a revision of the old position of missionaries that forbade all traditional ritual concerning death as belonging to paganism should be undertaken on the basis of social anthropological research which analyses structure and function of the funeral practices. Thus the mourning rites are understood as means of purification and reconciliation of the bereaved extended family. Parallels between African rituals and those of Israel of the Old Testament may also be taken into account. The efforts towards contextualisation of the Christian message in days of mourning by the ancient Ethiopian Church and by churches in Zimbabwe of today may serve as guidelines for developing rituals marking the end of mourning focused on reconciliation and the victory of life over death.