Lieu De Research Articles

Ruotsinkieliset kirjailijat Karjalassa ja Viipurissa: aikalaishavaintoja ja nostalgiaa


 
 
 Swedish-speaking writers in Karelia and Vyborg: contemporary observations and nostalgia
 The article examines Swedish and Swedish-speaking Finnish writers in Karelia and their descriptions of Karelia. The main focus is on the period between the world wars, but there are also some examples from both earlier and later peri- ods. Some of the writers were born in Karelia, while others visited more occa- sionally. The material under study includes fictional prose, poetry, memoirs, and historical studies. The examples illuminate ethnographic and folk-type descrip- tions; nostalgic descriptions of villa and manor life; the impressions of Swedish writers (especially Gunnar Ekelöf, Johannes Edfelt and Harry Martinson); Olof Enckell’s Karelian trilogy; and some other descriptions of wartime history and a couple of works of history. The main themes are: nostalgic memories, the joys and sorrows of the artist’s life, the experience of loss, and the contrast between East and West, and Karelia as a borderland. For many, it was an impressive experience to visit Edith Södergran’s home and meet the poet’s elderly mother. Karelia became a large place of memory (lieu de mémoire), within which were smaller places of memory, such as villas and mansions, which were constantly repeated in the writers’ presentations.
 
 

Introduction: <i>lieux de savoir</i> and <i>archéologie du savoir</i>

The introduction to this special collection addresses a fundamental issue: the link between savoir/knowledge and the spatial turn in the humanities. This point, which will be the connecting thread of the articles to be published in the collection, is addressed and discussed through an analysis of two books that have significantly influenced theoretical reflection in the mentioned field: Michel Foucault's L'Archéologie du savoir (1969) and Christian Jacob's Qu'est-ce qu'un lieu de savoir? (2014). Keeping in mind the theoretical developments of the past half century, the introduction will look back on Foucault's concepts in order to see how they can be re-read in the light of recent developments in the spatial humanities and in particular in connection with the concept of lieux de savoir and the history of (religious) reading and knowledge transfer in medieval and early modern culture.

Notes on Contributors

Notes on Contributors

Songs of subordinate integration: music education and the Palestinian Arab citizens of Israel during the Mapai era

ABSTRACT This article traces the role of music in Arab public schools during Israel’s early decades, as a unique window into the dynamics of inclusion and exclusion that underline the encounter between the state and its Palestinian citizens. We interpret the case of music education in Arab schools through the lenses of a larger historical process of the “subordinate integration” of Palestinians into the Israeli polity. In addition to reviewing the emergence of formal music education for the separate Arab school system, we analyze state-sponsored songbooks produced in the 1960s, discussing editorial motivation and the musical practices reflected and inscribed therein. We then focus on the role of a well-known Independence Day song, exploring both its emergence and early reception, and its persistent function as a lieu de mémoire, representing the larger trauma of forced spectacle of loyalty for an entire generation of Palestinian citizens of Israel schooled during those years.

Light from darkness, truth always rises: archiving memory and war trauma

Taking a case study approach, this paper focuses on Light from darkness, truth always rises, a series of photographs developed by Vietnamese-American artist Dinh Q. Lê to address the physical and psychological trauma inflicted by Agent Orange on the Vietnamese people in the aftermath of the Vietnam War. From a theoretical and technical perspective, the paper first evaluates the role of memory in Light from darkness, truth always rises. To do so the paper argues for this work to function as Pierre Nora’s lieu de mémoire to reflect on what history transforms and deforms. This is consequently unpacked in the paper as a second line of inquiry: to investigate the relation between contemporary and archival images and how Light from darkness, truth always rises is able to revisit the latter in order to narrate historical events. The photographs are, in fact, inspired by archival images collected from the repository of Tu Du Maternity Hospital in Saigon. Today the archive is available to the public on the internet. This in turn raises ethical questions on conflict of conscience, also discussed in the paper and how Lê navigates these ethical conflicts in his photographs through an aesthetics of divinity.

A Post/Colonial <em>Lieu de mémoire</em> in India: Commemorative Practices Surrounding Puducherry's French War Memorial

A Post/Colonial <em>Lieu de mémoire</em> in India: Commemorative Practices Surrounding Puducherry's French War Memorial

Bruttedius Niger, Cicero and the Forum: Constructing a Ciceronian lieu de mémoire

In the only surviving fragment of Bruttedius Niger’s historical work the Romans deplore Cicero’s death; collectively they pronounce the funeral speech of the pater patriae and tell each other that “there is no part of the Forum which is not sealed by some traces of one of his famous speeches”. This article contextualizes the fragment and offers a new interpretation of it. First it gives an overview of Cicero’s visual presence in early imperial Rome, especially focussing on his house as a symbolic place. In a second step, it argues that Bruttedius creates a lieu de mémoire of Cicero on the Forum, which Augustus had just transformed into a symbolic space for his dynasty. Against recent interpretations, which stress the subversive potential of Bruttedius’ description, this article argues that the Tiberian historian follows Augustus’ attempt to turn the Forum into a symbolic space for synchronous and diachronous consensus. Cicero’s presence on the forum fits this strategy: he is turned into a kind of predecessor of Augustus and thus into political symbol for the republic’s alleged sublimation in the new imperial era.

Recovering Jewish Identity in Contemporary Portugal

Portugal’s relation to its Jewish heritage is complex and marked by fears and distrust due to centuries of inquisition and another half century of national Catholic dictatorship during the twentieth century. It was not before the end of the twentieth century that Jewish Studies gained relevance, contributing to the discovery of the Jewish past both of the individuals interested in their Jewish ancestors and of the national collective identity. The generation of scientific knowledge and a widespread appreciation of the Jewish heritage by state institutions and official discourses have resulted in an implosion of congresses, courses, exhibitions and publications on the Portuguese Jewish past in the second decade of the new millennium. The recent Nationality Law, which grants nationality to the descendants of Portuguese-born Jews is an important milestone of this process. The article explores the process of recovering the Sephardic past as a lieu de memoire of Portuguese cultural identity, zooming into the initiatives, institutions, contents and reasons that motivate such rediscovery. It discusses the singularity of this memory boom in a country with a small Jewish population and examines how state institutions interact with the Jewish communities in Portugal which are composed, to a large extent, of Ashkenazi Jews.

Bricks in the Making of Race and Place: Excavating aLieu de Souvenirin New Orleans

This essay facilitates a multi-dimensional immersion into the life and rhythms of New Orleans, an entrée to the past that equips us to better understand the present and, from there, critically and creatively to envision our possible futures together. We explore the Faubourg Tremé by traversing layers of its lieux de souvenir - places of remembering, a concept inspired by but distinct from Pierre Nora’s lieux de mémoire - across three time periods. Each lieu de souvenir we visit from 1720 to the present will highlight material and symbolic foundations in Tremé that help us to understand key aspects of New Orleans’s past and present. The object that will guide our travel and meditation through each layer is the lowly but highly serviceable brick. At a purely material level, bricks are the literal building blocks of the city. Roads were paved with them and homes and other buildings were constructed with bricks as well. And at a symbolic level, bricks carry multiple rich and complex significations: Who makes them? How does their manufacturing shape the lives of the laborers who create them? Who buys them, and who profits from their sale? Tracing the brick and its uses throughout each lieu de souvenir sheds light on key social relationships, inequalities, and cultural practices that form the foundation of New Orleans’s past and present.

STAGING FAILURE? BERTA LASK'S THOMAS MÜNZER (1925) AND THE 400TH ANNIVERSARY OF THE GERMAN PEASANTS’ WAR

ABSTRACTThis article examines Berta Lask's drama Thomas Münzer (1925), which was commissioned by the Kommunistische Partei Deutschlands (KPD) and staged in Eisleben to mark the 400th anniversary of the German Peasants’ War (1524–5) and the execution of Thomas Müntzer. Drawing on cultural memory theory and reading the play as a multi‐layered lieu de mémoire, it argues that Lask attempts to recuperate the revolutionary potential of the failed Peasants’ War and harness it to the agenda of the KPD of the 1920s. The article begins by situating Lask's play in a tradition of leftist writing about the Peasants’ War dating back to the mid‐nineteenth century. It then considers the ways in which Lask uses historical analogy to create connections between the sixteenth‐century uprising and events in post‐World War I German political history. Finally, the article explores the techniques used by Lask to create a sense of revolutionary community among her actors and audience.

The illusive collective memory: Revisiting the role of law in Israel’s Holocaust narrative

ABSTRACT The article focuses on three “Holocaust trials”: the Kapo Trials (1950–70); the “Kasztner Trial” (1953–58); and the Eichmann Trial (1961), to decipher the illusion of collective memory that marks the Eichmann Trial as the first Israeli legal confrontation with the Holocaust. It argues that the historical–legal oblivion into which the “Kapo Trials” sank is not a product of the mere passage of time, but a systematic reconstruction located in the socio-political and legal contexts of Israel’s early years. The article shows that, when neglecting certain socio-legal conditions, the law can operate not only as a “lieu de mémoire” as Pierre Nora showed us but also as a site of forgetting.

The Social Flow of Historical Narratives and its Many Names

This paper is a first, partial, and short exposition of a larger research project on the phenomenon of the social flow of historical narratives, which is named for the first time here. It presents a preliminary analysis of four different Western scholar traditions that arose at the end of the twentieth century to understand this phenomenon, although the representatives of these traditions were not completely aware of it: the West German tradition called it Geschichtsdidaktik (History Didactics), the British/Californian/American tradition called it Public History, the Parisian/French tradition called it Lieu de Mémoire (Places of Memory) and the Soviet/Russian tradition called it Социальная Память (Social Memory). This analysis is based on Data Science/Digital Humanities methods related to semantic networks and used Linux and Python scripts to compare these four corpora. The main goal of this project is to present the differences between the official definitions and the semantic-based definitions to help scholars from these fields to think over their tradition on further research. The main conclusion of this study is that, although these four traditions are designed to deal with the same problem (the social flow of historical narratives), the analysis of the semantic networks of their corpora indicates that they have followed completely different paths. We have also noted some inconsistencies between the official discourse of these traditions and their semantic networks, which were described throughout the text.

Colonial statues and their afterlives

ABSTRACT Statumania invaded Algeria after the 1840s, and later affected Tunisia. Through an art form that contradicted local values, it conveyed charged messages about colonialism and its various missions. Statues of French military, civilian, and religious actors who had served the colonial project in one way of other appeared in the public spaces of cities ranging from Algiers to Tunis, Tlemcen, and Sfax. Focusing on four case studies, this paper traces the history of these statues from the colonial era to the present day. I show how Algerians and Tunisians struggled to deal with their memories of French rule by highlighting three practices applied to the statues: erasure, substitution, and manipulation. I argue that colonial statues were resilient markers of memory and obstinate survivors, imbued with a curious flexibility to take on and reflect different agendas according to changing circumstances. Their ability to express and manoeuver collective memory is associated with the concept of lieu de mémoire, albeit as a highly dynamic notion.

R.I.P., Rest in Pieces: Mnemonic Transnationality, Travel, and Translation of the Marcos Burial in the Heroes’ Cemetery

On 18 November 2016, Philippine President Rodrigo Duterte allowed the interment of former dictator Ferdinand Marcos in the Libingan ng mga Bayani or Heroes’ Cemetery. This essay interrogates the discrepancy between two mnemonic signifiers that lay claim to patriotism and nationhood: the Libingan and Marcos’ body. Close reading the burial process via the frameworks of memory, ideology, cultural studies, and translation studies allows a focus, not only on the cemetery as a site but also on the mnemonic discursive interventions of the Marcos family. As hegemonic memory agents fueled by money, myth, and exilic privileges linked to the USA, the Marcoses exploit the political translated body of the patriarch. As such, dictatorial exile is partly divested of its admonishing power. While the translation (as mobility and “survival”) of the corpse attempts to absorb the heroic signification of the cemetery, in turn, the honorable signification of the lieu de memoire is also discursively challenged. Hence, while Marcos now rests among the heroes, most of his desaparecidos still want entombment. Notions of the nation are also therefore challenged. The paper thus demonstrates how a “fixed” mnemonic signifier, such as a cemetery exemplifying patriotism, can be modified through “memory entrepreneurs.” Understanding memory-as-process, and not only memory-as-site, allows us to discern the hegemonic meaning-making in memory politics by revealing the means and not only the ends. This perspective questions the malleability of space and takes us towards the horizon of what Ricœur calls a “just allotment of memory.”

Staying Human: Forty Years of Black Studies Practical-Critical Activity in the Spirit of (Aunt) Jemima

In this African-centred autoethnography, the author self-reflexively narrates and critically interprets 40 years of selected examples of her teaching and activist social inquiry as Black Studies “practical-critical” activity: resisting white supremacy racism and alienation in the spirit of (Aunt) Jemima. As a site of memory, authentic blackness and Black Studies theoretical critique that rejects the denigration of Black womanhood, this lieu de mémoire (site of memory) focuses analytical practice-to-theory attention on resisting dispossession and alienation and supporting community-minded social action in university and community contexts in the United States, Africa, and diaspora locations. Using Pan-African-centred womanist epistemology and spirituality, this article explores questions about the transformation of identity and consciousness in seeking to answer the question: “Social science research for whom?” The author reflects upon the key task of resisting anti-blackness and harmonising the conception of humanness in social inquiry.

Un bonheur d’Orly: the airport, modernity and nostalgia for a lost future

ABSTRACT This article explores the meanings and affects associated with the Orly-Sud airport terminal opened in 1961. The new terminal functioned as a dual symbol of technological modernity and consumerism; strikingly innovative in its architecture and engineering, it also incorporated multiple retail outlets, a hotel and a cinema, thus operating as a prototype shopping mall. The novelist Georges Perec ironically described the pleasures of consumerism as ‘un bonheur d’Orly’, while Gilbert Bécaud sang of the airport as a means of escape from the same suffocating materialism (‘Dimanche à Orly’). Both assumed the airport to be an empty site of transit or ‘non-lieu’ (Augé), but thirty years later, this ‘non-place’ paradoxically became an object of nostalgia for a range of writers effectively installing Orly-Sud as a ‘lieu de mémoire’ (Nora) within late twentieth- and early twenty-first-century French culture. The nostalgia is motivated by three factors: the fate of Orly as a transport hub overtaken by another airport, the built-in obsolescence of airport design, and the erosion of the Gaullist ideology of technological modernity. The affect currently associated with Orly is neither beatific consumerism nor technological optimism but rather melancholy informed by nostalgia for a lost future.

Фльоринка – лемківскє місце памяти

Florynka: A Lemko Realm of MemoryThe article refers to the concept of realm of memory (les lieu de mémoire) developed and popularized by Pierre Nora. The notion of realm of memory is presented and then utilized for symptomatic reading and interpretation of the workings of memory as it develops around a topographical location. The author shows the essentialization and sacralization of names and concepts referring to the political activity of the Lemkos, such as Florynka, the Rusyn National Republic of the Lemkos and the national council. It is demonstrated that similar processes of memory are affecting names and personal traces located in the Florynka realm of memory. Furthermore, following Jan Assmann, the article distinguishes between two manners in which memory is preserved: either by means of ritual coherence, characteristic of oral tradition, or by means of textual coherence, implemented in written form. Finally, a question is posed about the goals and needs of a community built on memory, in this case of the Lemko community, namely to whom memory belongs to and whom it serves. A tentative answer to these questions indicates identity-related goals, which would be a direct and indirect continuation of certain currents of thought and action that were being developed in the years 1918‑ 1921. The entire article emphasizes the activist form of collective memory, which negotiates with established stereotypes and at the same time contributes to preserve them.

The Great Fire of London as a Memory Site (Lieu de Mémoire)

The author approaches the Great Fire of London of 1666 as a memory site, using Pierre Nora’s concept to analyse various forms and acts of remembrance of this historic event. Special attention is paid to John Dryden’s poem Annus Mirabilis, fragments of Samuel Pepys’s Diary, the architectural Monument of the Great Fire in the City of London, and the celebrations of the 350th anniversary with its spectacular London’s Burning festival. Nora’s idea of lieu de mémoire, when used as a conceptual tool, makes it possible to link collective memory and identity, not through a linear historic narration of a society’s past but through specific individual events and their symbolic impact. As a social construct, collective memory is an important constitutive element of national identity. The memory of the Great Fire – in its material, symbolic and functional aspects – fosters cultural identity of the British and the feeling of belonging.

Sweet Spots: In-Between Spaces in New Orleans ed. by Teresa A. Toulouse and Barbara C. Ewell

Reviewed by: Sweet Spots: In-Between Spaces in New Orleans ed. by Teresa A. Toulouse and Barbara C. Ewell Nathan Cardon Sweet Spots: In-Between Spaces in New Orleans. Edited by Teresa A. Toulouse and Barbara C. Ewell. ( Jackson: University Press of Mississippi, 2018. Pp. xx, 299. Paper, $30.00, ISBN 978-1-4968-1857-7; cloth, $90.00, ISBN 978-1-4968-1702-0.) To outside observers, many American cities look devoid of history. Their glass towers and suburban landscapes erase the past in favor of a never arriving future. Only the odd surviving building reminds the visitor of a longer history. This situation, however, is not the case for New Orleans, where history weighs heavily. Part of the reason for New Orleans's sense of history, as argued by Richard Campanella in one of the stand-out essays of this edited collection, is the city's intense structural social memory that reflects a historical mixture of peoples. New Orleans, unlike any other American city, looks as much to the past as to the future. Sweet Spots: In-Between Spaces in New Orleans emerged from an interdisciplinary course taught by Teresa A. Toulouse, a literary critic, and the late Mac Heard, an architect, at Tulane University (many of the fourteen contributors are affiliated with the university). The intellectual inspiration for the collection comes from Heard's work on the energy and tension within the spatial relations of New Orleans. Each of the essays takes on, in one form or another, the concept of "sweet spots," loosely defined as in-between or interstitial spaces both real and imagined. Throughout the collection, sweet spot is a nebulous term that, as pointed out in the final essay by the philosopher John P. Clark, only really works as a phonetic metaphor: the point of maximum vibration. The book is divided into six "interspaces," with essays conceived and written in a variety of styles, from traditional book chapters, to photo essays, to manifestos. The glossy pages are accompanied by illustrations, maps, and photos. For the most part, the essays work well together and reflect a truly multidisciplinary group of scholars who share a passion for the city. Chapters on Edgar Degas's A Cotton Office in New Orleans (1873) and John Galsworthy's essay "That Old-Time Place" (1912) work well to develop an interstitial analytic that brings to light tensions between public and private, memory and forgetting, nostalgia and history. The strongest work is contained in the section titled "Constituting and Contesting the Interstitial." Here, cultural geographer Campanella looks at how New Orleans's historical cityscape, what he calls its "high urban granularity," created a layering of acceptability for salacious activity that manifests itself on Bourbon Street (p. 130). At the same time, visitors to the city feel the absence of Storyville, while the almost complete disappearance of slave pens and auction blocks creates a different kind of emotional and structural forgetting. Campanella's belief, however, that "[o]ut of sight, out of mind—and conversely, in sight, in mind," cuts against the premise of the collection, that unseen interstitial space can influence the built and social environment of a city (p. 132). Sociologist Beth Willinger's look at how white and black middle-class women forged an in-between space in the public and private spheres as they addressed the space of prostitution in Storyville and the plight of single women represents the most realized use of the interstitial analytic in the collection. Women reformers created new spaces that remained in-between. "More than housewives and mothers, yet neither [End Page 756] politically nor historically notable, they tackled important issues that were invisible or considered unimportant to male city leaders," notes Willinger (p. 166). Lastly, sociologist Angel Adams Parham traces the history of Congo Square as a "lieu de souvenir," a place of remembrance, in which the shifting sands of race and the city's historic black diversity may be traced (p. 174). Sweet Spots makes a compelling case for an interstitial analytic through a variety of styles. Joel Dinerstein's cultural analysis accompanied by Pableaux Johnson's photo essay makes a convincing argument that "the second line is the most significant...

In The Thick of It: ‘high politics’ and the Holocaust in millennial Britain

ABSTRACTOver the past twenty years, state-sponsored activities related to the Holocaust have been numerous in Britain. Beginning with the creation of Holocaust Memorial Day at the turn of the millennium, successive governments have followed a policy trajectory that has brought forth a slew of new initiatives and projects related to the Holocaust and its memory. Most recently, this has included the creation of a new national memorial and learning centre, to be housed adjacent to the Palace of Westminster. With cross-party support and the pledge of £50 million of public funds, this lieu de memoire is due to open in January 2020. Conceiving of these activities as exercises in ‘high’ Holocaust politics, Pearce’s article examines the various memory-projects of recent decades and argues they reveal much about millennial Britain and its Holocaust culture. He contends that the nature of these and other initiatives means high Holocaust politics must be subject to continued scrutiny and interrogation.