Forms Of Commemoration Research Articles

Міські кладо- вища Харкова у XVIII – на початку XX ст.: між традицією та інноваціями

The purpose of the study is to research the peculiarities of the creation, functioning, and evolution of cemeteries in the cultural and historical space of the provincial city, to demonstrate the role of local authorities and citizens in the process of desacralization of necropolises. The research methodology is based on the principles of historicism, comprehensiveness, and integrity, objectivity, and systematicity. The research was conducted within the framework of microhistory. T e thesis about the transformation of a sacred place into a place of collective memory, the emergence, and extinction of interest in necropolises among urban residents, is based on the typology of scenarios of anthropologist P. Connerton and the theory of heterotopia by M. Foucault. The scientifi c novelty of the study is that for the fi rst time in the national historiography, the Kharkiv city necropolises became the object of a special study. The regional material illustrates the process of transformation of the traditional attitude to the burial place of the dead. Based on archival materials, an attempt was made to analyze the combination of traditional and innovative approaches to the life of cemeteries, which gradually became widespread during the study period. Conclusions. The urban necropolises of Kharkiv during the XVIII – early XX centuries passed the path of transformation from sacred places on the consecrated church land, around the temples, to the territory used for economic and commercial purposes. The creation and existence of these cemeteries is an interesting example of constructing a symbolic space of the city, considering the sacred traditions and social stratifi cation, which resulted in the modernization of life in the country. During the study period, necropolises had been an important part of the public space of the city, and ritual practices had long demonstrated the stability of traditional forms of commemoration. Population growth and expansion of the city at the turn of the XIX – XX centuries led to the emergence of innovative approaches by local authorities to the organization of the funeral business.

Invoking the “Yolocaust”?

The present study understands comedy in relation to the Holocaust as an attempt by Germany’s third and fourth generations to create alternative forms of commemoration. Analyzing the country’s history of coming to terms with the Shoah, it highlights that recent forms of subversive satire are reacting to a crystallization in official memory politics through counter-discourse to political correctness and the defenders of moralism. The article finds that it is possible to combine comedy and Holocaust memory if Jewish victimhood is not spoofed and the limitations of official memory politics are debunked. Finally, it contends that not every historical assessment based on a local/national context can serve as a global blueprint. The recognition of national historical guilt and the establishment of distinct collective memories are still crucial for understanding specific pasts. Accordingly, German popular culture referring to the Nazi past differs from u.s. comedy dealing with the Holocaust.

Remembering, forgetting and memorialising: 1947, 1971 and the state of memory studies in South Asia

ABSTRACT The “cultural turn” in memory studies acknowledges that collective memory has a distinctive social aspect reflected in the manner in which it is communicated orally from one individual or generation to another. However, the point of departure is the emphasis on the need to account for the fact that memory is, in equal measure, shaped and mediated by tangible channels such as texts, images, objects, rituals, buildings and so on. The interactions and intersections between these two strands of approaching collective memory have been employed to write the most human and engaging histories of trauma and displacement – especially in the context of the Holocaust. This article takes this discussion forward by critically looking at the scope of the field of memory studies – with its largely Western frames of reference – to facilitate a deeper understanding of similar engagements and entanglements between communicative and culturally tangible forms of collective memory in South Asia. It looks at the ways in which the dominant discourse of nationalism is constructed and contested through the politics inherent in memorialization and memory in the South Asian context by comparing the partition of 1947 that resulted in the creation of Pakistan and the Liberation War of 1971 which gave birth to Bangladesh. Through a review of some important recent works of scholarship on the long, complex and intertwined afterlife of the partition of the Indian subcontinent in 1947 and the Bangladesh Liberation War of 1971, this article shows how the processes of the construction and contestation of a dominant discourse of nationalism and nationhood are fraught with their own forms of remembrance and forgetting. And yet they speak in a language of exceptionalism that mirrors a somewhat universal template for remembering “difficult pasts” characteristic of the memorial landscape of the Holocaust. Finally, it is argued that the interstices of “national memory” contain voices that unsettle or counter it. Acknowledging these voices while also recognizing their own memory politics shall broaden and nuance the dominant modes of memorializing the partition and the Liberation War in a way that better reflects the specificities and complexities of their context.

Wargaming and the Military: "Napoleon at Waterloo": The Events of June 1815 Analyzed via Historical Simulation

The Battle of Waterloo is one of the most memorable actions in world history and has in consequence given rise to both an enormous historiography and many other forms of commemoration. “Napoleon at Waterloo” examines one such form of commemoration, namely the traditional board wargame, and it examines how this activity can be employed to further understand how the battle was fought and won.

Unrecognizable, abandoned, unnamed, avoided places: On the murders committed against Jews in Poland in the period after the Second World War and their commemoration

The fall of the Third Reich, turning the “most tragic page” in the history of the Jewish nation, i .e . the Second World War, did not mean the end of the tragedy for Jews on Polish soil. Even before the end of the greatest conflict in the history of humankind, in the areas liberated from Nazi Germany occupation, many survivors of the Holocaust experienced acts of ruthless violence. However, very few of the numerous victims of the post-war anti-Jewish terror have been commemorated in public space. To a very small extent the form of public commemoration also covered earlier wartime cases of collective murders committed against Jews by Polish Christians. Even if the sites of the dramatic events which occurred in the shadow of the Holocaust were marked, the complete truth about their course was not restored everywhere.

The Writing and the Bronze: Commemoration as Historiography

Historic monuments are the most public and recognized forms of commemoration. In Canada, as around the world, many monuments have come under fire recently for celebrating a vision of the past that is no longer palatable to large segments of the population. The heroes and events they enshrine have been denounced by many as tributes to racism, yet they are valued by others as aspects of our collective history and a celebration of our national heritage. Both these positions gloss over the complexity of the historical act of raising monuments and interpreting their historical meanings. Monuments in Canada, like all forms of commemoration, are reflections of the historiographical and methodological trends contemporary to the discipline of history at the time of their creation. Changes in methods and interpretations have thus also affected their meaning over time. Thus, monuments are not straightforward representations of history but, instead, layered expressions of historiography in physical form. Ascribing to them singular meanings obscures the complexity of the societies that constructed them and simplifies their connections to public life.

Koniec przeobrażeń? Dekomunizacja przestrzeni publicznej w Polsce na Ziemiach Zachodnich i Północnych w latach 2016–2017 – wybrane przykłady

In Poland since 2016 there has been a legally mandated process of decommunization of public space which is to serve as an instrument for a cleansing of sorts of cities, towns and villages, including the expunging of all forms of commemoration of the Red Army and the Brotherhood in Arms of Soviet and Polish soldiers who fought in the final phase of World War II. What is the result of this radical reinterpretation and devaluation of the events of 1945 in the Western and Northern Lands, where almost everything changed at that time? This article presents the attitudes of selected local communities towards the current prohibition on „promoting communism and other totalitarian regimes”. The selected communities are: Szczecin, Legnica, Drawsko Pomorskie, Stargard, Nowogard, Gorzów Wielkopolski, Kęszyca Leśna, Kołobrzeg and Pyrzyce. However, this is not a complete, academic study; rather, it represents the viewpoint of a reporter, an attempt at an examination in a wider context of the effects of the current politics concerning history. The aim of this article is to present various dimensions of the decommunization of the public space, the collation of activities connected with this process and earlier decommunization practices, and the processes of accepting or not accepting and then dismantling of monuments. Moreover, the article seeks to consider residents’ endeavours to save those monuments that are important to them.

Remembering Emmett Till

Remembering Emmett Till

Please Help Yourself

Throughout 2017, cultural institutions across England and Wales marked the fiftieth anniversary of the partial decriminalisation of sex between men. In this article I explore two projects about public sex and queer space developed in London that year by two contemporary queer artists: Liz Rosenfeld and Prem Sahib. Both employ queer approaches to preservation and archival labour in the face of imminent material erasure, particularly the loss of dedicated queer cultural spaces as a consequence of gentrification, and exhibit a queer disengagement with the public forms of commemoration enacted that year. I consider how Rosenfeld and Sahib’s work from 2017, which casts endemic gendered and racialising practices of exclusion and denial in sharp relief, imbues the practices of preservation and archiving with an erotic complexity and an embodied and radical urgency that underscores the precarity of queer spaces and queer archives in contemporary Britain.

СМЕРТЬ В ЛАНДШАФТЕ: ПРОСТРАНСТВЕННЫЙ АСПЕКТ СОВРЕМЕННОЙ ТРАДИЦИИ ОТМЕЧАТЬ МЕСТА ГИБЕЛИ ЛЮДЕЙ НА АВТОДОРОГАХ (НА ПРИМЕРЕ РОССИЙСКИХ ФЕДЕРАЛЬНЫХ ТРАСС А 151, Р 178, Р 241)

An important aspect of the study of cultural space is the analysis of ways and forms of commemoration and memorialization of road accident victims. The placement of traditional cemetery monuments in it, installed at the place of people’s death, transfers the symbolism of death from strictly defined places of cemeteries into public space and turns it into sceneries of death or landscapes of death. It is no coincidence that many of the motorists and professional drivers who use such highways say that it is like driving in a cemetery. This article is the first in Russia to analyze this modern phenomenon based on the material obtained from a survey of part of three federal highways (A 151, R 241, R 178). It is shown that in Russia roadside monuments are not limited to the Christian cross, and their locations are much more diverse than in Europe and North America. In general, there are two trends – to place roadside monuments as close to the highway as possible (on the roadside, slope, behind the bump or on it) and in or near the green zone (in the forest or forest plantation) and a transitional one – to place them in the roadside lane. In the first case, the choice of the location is conditioned by the desire to approach the place of death of a loved one as close as possible, the second case demonstrates the desire to protect the memorial sign, to place it in accordance with the tradition of cemetery, primarily rural cemetery, where trees on the graves played an important role. Our analysis shows that different types of roadside monuments have different effects on the formation of the cultural landscape along the highways. Memorials are the most striking examples of ‘cemetery culture’, they mostly reformat the roadside space into landscapes or sceneries of death. In turn, gazebos, flowerpots with live or artificial flowers that do not have traditional plaques and photographs of the dead, i.e. do not reproduce the cemetery tradition, do this to the minimum extent. Crosses, steles and obelisks as the most typical cemetery structures occupy, to a certain extent, an intermediate position between memorials and flowerpots and gazebos.

Nagrobek Stanisława Staszica a polityka wizerunkowa Towarzystwa Warszawskiego Przyjaciół Nauk

Stanisław Staszic’s Tombstone and the Image-Building Policy of the Warsaw Society of Friends of Sciences The article is devoted to the artistic setting of Stanisław Staszic’s (1755–1826) burial place, for which his main heir, the Warsaw Royal Society of the Friends of Sciences (TKWPN), was responsible. The inspiration to raise this topic was the discovery of two previously unknown Jakub Tatarkiewicz’s designs of Staszic’s unrealized neoclassical tombstone in the collections of the Central Archives of Historical Records in Warsaw (AGAD). However, the projects were never commissioned by TKWPN but were the sculptor’s proposal. By analysing the relationship between these artistic projects and the initiatives concerning Staszic’s tomb which stemmed directly from the Society (a big raw stone as memorial), the article highlights the problem of TKWPN’s participation in creating the posthumous cult of its long-time president and most important benefactor. The TKWPN’s seemingly paradoxical reluctance to glorify Staszic by means of traditional (artistic) forms of commemoration can be interpreted as a logical action calculated to benefit the Society’s image. Therefore, focusing on this single aspect of the posthumous cult of Staszic, directly related to the TKWPN, this article refers to the image-building policy of this institution, and thus to the ways of building its social status. At the same time, it tackles the issue of the prestige of science and scientific patronage as a new (from the early 19th-century perspective) form of public merit.

ИСТОРИЧЕСКАЯ ПАМЯТЬ О ВЕЛИКОЙ ОТЕЧЕСТВЕННОЙ ВОЙНЕВ КОММЕНТАРИЯХ ПОЛЬЗОВАТЕЛЕЙ СОЦИАЛЬНОЙ СЕТИ «ВКОНТАКТЕ»

The purpose of the article is to identify the degree of presence of the Great Patriotic War theme in the network discourse and to analyze the attitude of users to the main events, personalities and forms of commemoration of this conflict. The research methodology is based on the interdisciplinary approach «Predictor Mining», which involves the analysis of Internet content for the sake of users’ behavior markers identification. The 10 largest news communities «VKontakte» (29 286 352 com-ments), as well as 7 political ones, representing the entire ideological spectrum (2 684 135 com-ments) are considered. The interim conclusions are supported by the representative opinion polls data, but its discussion is characterized by a high degree of involvement and emotional saturation. Commentators' historical perceptions are generally poor and stereotyped. The research is imple-mented at the expense of the RFBR grant «Constructing historical memory of military conflicts in network communities: basic narratives, the types of identity, political risks», project № 19-011-00833 A.

Commemorating from a distance: the digital transformation of Holocaust memory in times of COVID-19

The severe restrictions on public life in many countries following the spread of the COVID-19 pandemic specifically affected Holocaust memorials and museums in all parts of the world, especially in Europe and in Israel. These measures posed a significant challenge, because contemporary forms of Holocaust commemoration are particularly based on the personal experience of presence at museums and historical sites. In contrast to the experience of distancing in face of the COVID-19 pandemic, establishing the presence of the past is thus a crucial element of contemporary Holocaust commemoration. This article explores the relationship between presence and absence, proximity and distance, guided commemoration and online engagement by critically analyzing digital activities of Holocaust memorials and museums in response to the pandemic. It argues that in the wake of the COVID-19 pandemic, Holocaust memorials began experimenting with the potential of social media for Holocaust memory. These experiments finally accepted the ongoing generational change and reacted to significant previous shifts in media consumption that were already affecting Holocaust commemoration.

>>Puszcza Białowieska rośnie na osadach ludzkich<< – las i pamięć

Celem artykułu jest pokazanie specyfiki lasu jako miejsca pamięci, a punktem wyjścia – historia ukrytych w puszczy mogił ofiar Romualda Rajsa „Burego”. Kwestia lokalizacji ich grobów, a później – formy upamiętnienia, stanowi przykład konfliktów pamięci, do jakich często dochodzi na terenach o złożonej historii i niejednorodnej strukturze etnicznej, a do takich należy Podlasie. Wydarzenia 1946 roku i ich konsekwencje dla kolejnych pokoleń mieszkańców Hajnówki stały się faktograficzną kanwą kryminału Katarzyny Bondy Okularnik, którego interpretacja stanowi zasadniczą część zawartych w artykule rozważań. Las, ze względu na swoje ambiwalentne atrybuty i kulturowe konotacje, takie jak nieprzejrzystość, miejsce schronienia / zagrożenia, bliskość / obcość, trwałość / zmienność, okazuje się jedną z kluczowych metafor służących opisaniu trudnej wspólnotowej pamięci, którą ukrywa / utajnia i zabezpiecza zarazem. Zastosowana w artykule perspektywa badawcza to pamięcioznawstwo, ważna jest również kategoria nekropolityki w wersji Ewy Domańskiej.

Post‑monumentalne miejsca pamięci jako aktywne narzędzia doświadczenia (post)holocaustowego i (post)pamięci

Artykuł jest próbą znalezienia odpowiedzi na pytanie, w jaki sposób upamiętnić Holokaust w erze postpamięci. Jedną z możliwych odpowiedzi jest tworzenie tymczasowych, wymagających zaangażowania od chcących i potrzebujących tego odbiorców post-pomników. Post-pomnik odwołuje się do kulturowej i społecznej, ale również indywidualnej pamięci. Upamiętnia miejsca zapomniane, doświadczenia jednostkowe, zaprasza odbiorców do dialogu. Uaktywnienie oglądających, zaproszenie ich do wspólnego odtwarzania historii pokazuje, w jaki sposób traumę minionych pokoleń mogą przepracowywać i upamiętniać współczesne pokolenia. Aby historia była wciąż żywa, aby jej przesłanie posiadało funkcję performatywną, musi być podtrzymywana przez współczesne pokolenia. Tymczasowość post-pomnika zaś powoduje, że nie tylko upamiętnia, ale i tematyzuje proces umykania pamięci wraz z czasem jej zacierania. W artykule powyższe spostrzeżenia są przedstawiane w kontekście teorii pamięci, filozofii postmodernizmu, idei homo holocaustusa, w porównaniu post-pomnika do pomnika oraz na wybranych przykładach post-pomników.

Autofiction, Colonial Massacres and the Politics of Memory

: I argue that the emerging genre of autofiction provides a number of useful techniques and methods by which postcolonial writers engage with the politics of memory in their depiction of a number of largely forgotten brutalities committed by the European imperial powers during the colonial era. More specifically, two of the elements of autofictional practice that have been of particular interest to postcolonial writers are its capacity to mediate between individual and collective forms of memory on the one hand; while also radically destabilizing notions of absolute truth and authenticity on the other. Drawing on research into the relationship between writing and forms of public commemoration, the article analyses Fred D’Aguiar’s portrayal of the killing of African slaves thrown overboard the slave ship Zong in 1781 in Feeding the Ghosts (1997); Kamila Shamsie’s depiction of the massacre of demonstrators protesting against colonial rule in India in Peshawar in 1930 in A God in Every Stone (2014); and Jackie Kay’s homage to the sinking of the SS Mendi, a ship carrying southern African non-combatant personnel to assist in the British effort in World War One in “Lament for the Mendi Men” (2011). It will suggest that even though these texts are not strictly works of autofiction, the techniques afforded by that genre are useful to those writers seeking to draw attention towards a number of neglected historical events. Colonial massacres, enslavement of people and naval disasters during the imperial period have received far less historical or cultural memorialization than other more widely recognized historical events such as VE Day or the Somme. By establishing these events as being culturally and morally important to remember, the article will argue, autofiction provides a number of tools for engaging with the politics of public memory and commemorative events in the present

Laboratorium zagłady – nowa ekspozycja historyczna na terenie obozu zagłady Kulmhof w Chełmnie nad Nerem

Kulmhof w Chełmnie nad Nerem to pierwszy i najdłużej działający nazistowski ośrodek zagłady w okupowanej Europie. Stał się miejscem eksterminacji Żydów z ziem wcielonych do Rzeszy, w tym z getta łódzkiego, a także z innych krajów Europy. Mimo to obóz ten pozostawał długo zapomniany. Dopiero w grudniu 2019 r. na terenie właściwego miejsca zagłady w Chełmnie nad Nerem otwarto nową, stałą ekspozycję historyczną. Uporządkowano i oznakowano też teren obozu. Prowadzone przez ostatnie dziesięciolecia zarówno w Chełmnie, jak i w pobliskim Lesie Rzuchowskim prace wykopaliskowe pozwoliły lepiej odtworzyć topografię zbrodni oraz wydobyły na światło dzienne wiele cennych pamiątek po zamordowanych. Mimo, a może właśnie dzięki skromnej formie upamiętnienia uwydatniono specyficzny charakter tego miejsca. To nie obóz koncentracyjny typu Dachau czy Buchenwald, których architektura stanowiła butny wyraz nazistowskiej ideologii, to nie „fabryka śmierci”, miejsce przemysłowego mordu jak Auschwitz-Birkenau, ale wiejski folwark przekształcony pośpiesznie w ośrodek masowej i natychmiastowej eksterminacji

FROM ANNIVERSARY TO ANNIVERSARY: THE HISTORIOGRAPHICAL AND BIBLIOGRAPHIC REVIEWS OF COMMEMORATIVE PUBLICATIONS ON THE HISTORY OF ODESA I. I. MECHNIKOV NATIONAL UNIVERSITY

The article presents the analysis of a compressed historiographic and bibliographic review of commemorative publications dedicated to the anniversaries of the history of Odessa I. I. Mechnikov National University. The criteria for analysis are determined, on the basis of which the commemorative publications of the university history writing are considered. The conceptual ideas are highlighted, which are reflected in all publications dedicated to the anniversaries of the Odessa University in different historical periods of its existence. The critical understanding of the historical publications of university history shows the importance of the political and ideological context in their content, as well as the peculiarities of the construction of commemorative practices. The number of problematic and promising issues are outlined, the solution of which will contribute to the conclusion of commemorative publications to a higher level. Attention is drawn to the fact that commemorative publications devoted to the history of Odessa I. I. Mechnikov National University, while concentrating certain shortcomings of the genre, still remain an important phenomenon in the development of historiography and the formation of corporate identity, historical memory, and the construction of commemorative practices. The inevitability and prospects of the importance of expanding research optics and research tools for writing «anniversary» stories of Odessa University in particular, and other universities in general, are noted. Attention is focused on the fact that the historical anniversaries of Odessa University, as well as other universities, were one of the important means of influencing the consciousness of society through the formation of a «policy of memory» necessary at a particular moment in a certain historical era, propaganda of the historical legitimacy of the current government, which at all times organized and carried out the stipulated format of the celebration, with a clear control of their ideological content. One of the forms of commemoration of the Odessa University was the tradition of preparing and publishing historical essays on its history, which turned out to be stable and continues to this day. Historical descriptions of the history of Odessa University, compiled for its anniversaries, act as fulcrum in the development of historiography and bibliography of both the university itself and higher education.

Commemorative Print: Serialized Monuments during the Shakespeare Tercentenary Debates

Abstract This essay concerns Victorian debates about how best to commemorate Shakespeare at the tercentenary of his birth in 1864. Victorian enthusiasm for Shakespeare was all but ubiquitous, but it evolved in unpredictable ways. The National Shakespeare Committee’s proposal for a Shakespeare statue, for instance, ended in controversy and failure. By contrast, alternative forms of commemoration enjoyed notable success, such as Howard Staunton’s serialized facsimile of the First Folio (1864–66). Both the controversy and its potential resolution in Staunton’s Folio are revealed in essays published in the Reader, a short-lived literary weekly. Staunton’s facsimile came to be regarded by the Reader and commentators in other periodicals as the most apposite of tercentenary monuments. It remade the First Folio for middle-class Victorian readers, trading on the prestige of the First Folio and remaking a high-end book version of Shakespeare in the image of ‘shilling monthly’ serial literature. Taken together, the Tercentenary monument controversies and the Staunton Folio show the Victorian relationship to Shakespeare to be less settled than we have previously appreciated.

Theology of Revolution: In Ali Shari’ati and Walter Benjamin’s Political Thought

In this paper, I offer a comparative analysis of the political thoughts of twentieth century Iranian revolutionary thinker and sociologist Ali Shari’ati (1933–1977) and German-Jewish philosopher Walter Benjamin (1892–1940). Despite their conspicuously independent historical-theoretical trajectories, both Shari’ati and Benjamin engaged with theology and Marxism to create theological–political conceptions of the revolution of the oppressed. Shari’ati re-interpreted and re-animated Shia history from the angle of contemporary concerns to theorize a revolution against all forms of domination. In comparison, Benjamin fused Marxism with Jewish theology in his call to seize the possibilities of past failed revolutions in the present. Both Shari’ati and Benjamin conceptualized an active messianism led by each generation, eliminating the wait for the return of a messiah. As a result, each present moment takes on a messianic potential; the present plays an essential role to both thinkers. Past was also essential to both, because theology (through remembrance) had made the past sufferings incomplete to them. Both thinkers viewed past sufferings as an integral part of present struggles for justice in the form of remembrance (or yād or zekr for Shari’ati, and Zekher for Benjamin). I explore the ways Shari’ati and Benjamin theorized the role of the past in the present, remembrance, and messianism to create a dialectical relation between theology and Marxism to reciprocally transform and compliment both of them.