Memory Discourse Research Articles

“Excluded from Memory”: The Question of Passing Down National History

This article considers the (partial) “exclusion” or “self-exclusion” of the “complex heritage” descendants from the “inheritance” of the official narratives of national history. As a rule, such discourses rely on antagonistic logic. In the article, the idea of “complex heritage” descendants denotes people whose family history includes both representatives of mutually exclusive groups (from the point of view of different public discourses of memory). When any single discourse is dominant in the public space or in a competition between antagonistic discourses of national history, descendants of “complex heritage” must independently cope with the emerging internal tension and discomfort (if they arise). In this article, in the context of common European trends, the author shows and analyses different options for such reactions with reference to competing discourses of national history in Russia, i. e., “Triumph” (Victory in the Great Patriotic War) and “Tragedy” (the era of political repression), as well as the most massive public practice of memory dedicated to the Great Patriotic War heroes: the civil event known as the “Immortal Regiment”. The analysis refers to forty indepth interviews conducted by the author in 2021–2023 with descendants of the repressed from the third, fourth, and further generations (as well as those who fought and showed themselves differently in the past). The author relies on the concept of antagonistic memory, supplemented by the ideas of Ts. Todorov on the principles of working with the “difficult past”, the theory of post-memory by M. Hirsch and others. As a result of the research, the author draws the following conclusions: first, the experience of “exclusion” from national history due to the lack of blood ancestors that give the right for “inclusion” into the “fundamental myth of the nation” really exists; second, in the conditions of (even unequal) competition of antagonistic discourses, the descendants of the “complex heritage” find themselves constrained between the narrow limits of each of them. At the same time, the need to meet externally set criteria and the impossibility of doing this lead to resistance to the imposed public antagonistic models of understanding the past; finally, those “excluded” from national history in one or different interpretations thereof, the descendants collect, preserve, and transmit their family histories as “heritage” in the full diversity and inconsistency, as life itself, and the circumstances in which their ancestors were placed.

The communicative functions of epitaphs in the linguistic landscape of Libingan ng mga Bayani (Heroes’ Cemetery), Philippines

ABSTRACT The study of Philippine cemeteries has been traditionally placed within the purview of archaeology, which, broadly speaking, places importance in its material cultures. To further broaden our knowledge about these sites, this paper explores how Philippine cemeteries, particularly Libingan ng mga Bayani (LNMB), generate meaning through their linguistic landscape (LL). Using place semiotics approach and indexicality, this study identifies seven communicative functions used in LNMB epitaphs: (1) affective, (2) associative, (3) celebrative, (4) memorative, (6) desiderative, and (7) summative. In doing so, this study not only treats public signs as communicative ‘actors’ which convey meaning and pragmatic function but it also analyzes the act of ‘engaging’ with epitaphs as a highly contextualised speech event. Finally, this study argues that epitaphs signify discourses of memory, remembrance, and patriotism and index sociocultural and political realities, all of which contribute to the creation of LNMB not only as a cemetery per se but also as a place of experience and embodiment.

Memory discourses in visitor books of travelling exhibits in Southern Chile

The Museum of Memory and Human Rights in Chile hosts regular travelling exhibits about the country’s recent traumatic past of 1973–1990. In this article, I study the visitor books (VBs) that accompanied travelling exhibits to the cities of Valdivia and Puerto Montt to examine their effect on the audience. The entries reflected a variety of writers, from younger generations to survivors and witnesses. The analysis shows that the VBs are used to exercise the right to memory, to confirm their ‘duty to remember’ manifested in the presence of transitional justice discourses, and to express emotions that seem to reflect a positive and healing effect. Moreover, it was proven that the nature of the visitor’s memory (direct or postmemory) would showcase different reactions to the exhibit experience.

Reflections on Memory in the Works by Oksana Zabuzhko and Dubravka Ugrešić

The article is dedicated to a comparative study of reflections on memory in the works by O. Zabuzhko and D. Ugrešić. The purpose of the article is to highlight the differences and similarities in the writers’ interpretations of the post-communist turn in collective memory. The scientific novelty of the article is defined by the fact that it is the first attempt of comparative study of reflections on memory in the works by O. Zabuzhko and D. Ugrešić in Ukrainian literary studies. The novels “The Museum of Abandoned Secrets” by O. Zabuzhko and “The Museum of Unconditional Surrender” serve as the material for the study. The context of the analysis is expanded by looking at the writers' publicist work, namely the collections of essays “Culture of Lies. Antipolitical Essays” by D. Ugrešić and “Chronicles of Fortinbras” by O. Zabuzhko. The main research methods used in the article are the comparative and the cultural historical. Conclusions. The common features of the interpretation of memory issues in the works of the selected authors are their interest in changing the discourse of memory as a result of the fall of communism, their attention to ideological manipulations with collective memory, and a clear opposition between "official history" and private memories. The main differences in the writers' reflections are defined by the fact that D. Ugrešić's criticism is directed primarily against nationalist narratives of the past, while O. Zabuzhko reflects on the tragic consequences of imperial influence on the collective memory and identity of Ukrainians.

THE IMAGES OF “RUSSIAN VOTER” AND “PEOPLE’S DEPUTIES” IN THE DISCURSIVE PRACTICES OF THE EARLY TWENTIETH CENTURY

Trends in modern historiography are largely determined by the influence of the linguistic turn in the methodology of study of Russian history, including the development of discursive analysis of textual sources which reflect the worldview of contemporaries. The historical community has realized the methodological inadequacy of both the use of the Western scientific language and the search for universal historical concepts suitable for the study of the history of any country, regardless of its socio-cultural uniqueness. Currently, the principle of contextuality is brought to the forefront, that is, the study of historical phenomena within the socio-cultural environment that gave rise to this phenomenon, which actualizes the treatment of the political history of the Russian Empire with the use of new optics, i.e., the methodology of discursive analysis of the texts of contemporaries. Cognitive possibilities of the named approach can be demonstrated on the example of the analysis of the language of the texts representing the content of public and memorial discourses about the elections to the State Duma of the Russian Empire, voters and people’s deputies. The author focuses on the concepts used by contemporaries, which reflected the historical and cultural national specificity of the perception of “Russian voter” and “people’s representatives” as actors in the historical process, who were called to “participate in the destiny of their country”. Thus, the disclosure of the meaning of the most frequently used concept “Russian” in the discourse of contemporaries includes its understanding as a representation of the guardian of the tradition of national political culture, and as a centripetal force, uniting Russians in their awareness of their ethno-cultural identity. This specificity is recorded in contemporaries’ explanation of the significance of the project of the representation of people, “granted by the tsar’s will”, which represents a form of “inherently Russian autocracy”. The Russian voter’s awareness of civic identity in the public and memorial discourses of his contemporaries is represented by the perception of “elected ones from the population” as “their own” in contrast to the government officials who act as “aliens”. Revealing an authentic meaning of the notions, used by the contemporaries, it is possible to understand the world of values, rules of social communication during the decisive historical period of reforms and revolutions in Russia at the beginning of the 20th century.

Contemporary Ukrainian writers as an ‘avant-garde’ of exile in the German literary field? Katja Petrowskaja and Kateryna Mishchenko

In a recent podcast Kateryna Mishchenko asked whether she, as a Ukrainian author, has the right to participate in German discourses, and whether she can do so through the German language. This refers both to the public debate on the ‘Krieg in Europa’, following Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, and, inextricably linked to it, memory discourses on the Holocaust and World War II. This article discusses Mishchenko’s perspective on the war in Europe in literary and non-literary texts in comparison to that of Katja Petrowskaja. Petrowskaja moved to Berlin in 1999 and made a name for herself with her family history Vielleicht Esther (2014). Both authors can be regarded as prominent voices within a post-Soviet exile community in Berlin. The article asks how contemporary authors from Ukraine who find themselves exiled in Germany are contributing to a politicization of the German literary field, and what role their contribution to a transnational memory of the Holocaust and World War II plays within this process, drawing on Hannah Arendt’s understanding of refugees as a transnational avant-garde in her essay of 1943.

Prince and King Danylo Romanovych in the ukrainian intellectual discourse of Galicia in the second half of the 19th century

The article is devoted to the study of the history of the image of Prince and King Danylo Romanovych in the Ukrainian cultural memory of the second half of the 19th century. The choice of the suggested segment of memory studies in Ukrainian history was chosen due to the ideological and, to some extent, the political context of the creation and subsequent construction of the image of Danylo Romanovych as «Prince Danylo Halytskyi» was not investigated in historiographical tradition.An important role is devoted to understanding the basic terms of memory discourse, which became the core of the implementation of the ideas of the author in the article. Also, some of the features of the creation of historical myths surrounding the biography of the ruler Danylo Romanovych should be discovered around the ruler’s biography in the process of forming a national identity. Due to the large number of anti-scientific names, the Medieval Ruler is deprived of a real source background. This led to the formation of a limited perspective of historical research, which reduces the cultural influence of his figure to a single Western Ukrainian region and does not allow to reconstruct fully the period of transformation of the Galicia-Volyn state into the Kingdom of Rus.The article also deals with the designing of the image of Danylo Romanovych in the historical representations of the Galician Russophiles, who managed to create a stable image of «Danylo Halytskyi» in the consciousness of the Ukrainian society. The author highlighted the peculiarities of the intellectual history of the representatives of the Ukrainian national movement in Galicia, especially Oleksandr Barvinskyi. The scientist tried to borrow the Russophile image of «Danylo Halytskyi» for his historical narrative of the Ukrainian past, by using the figure of the medieval Ruler as an element of the historical unity of the past of Galicia and Naddnipryanshchyna.

Where the Sun Rises in the East: (Post-)Communist Remembrance in Germany’s Right-Wing Counter-Public Sphere

This article uses qualitative discourse analysis to examine how the (post-)communist past is remembered in right-wing counter-publics. If memory serves the historical legitimation of the political order, its challengers would be expected to use this part of history to prove the legitimacy of an alternative order. The memory discourse of the German Democratic Republic (GDR) and German unity in the newspaper Junge Freiheit and the magazine Compact serves as a case study. Both publications consider themselves mouthpieces of a far-right readership in Germany and represent positions close to that of the Alternative für Deutschland (AfD). The results show that hegemonic narratives can be found in both publications but that the East and its history are discursively valorised. Against the backdrop of the failure to develop an all-German post-communist memory culture, this article provides clues as to which “historical” arguments fall on fertile ground in right-wing counter-publics and help grow right-wing politics.

Understanding transnational decontextualization-recontextualization through Shingeki no Kyojin: The perils and possibilities surrounding Japanese manga and anime

ABSTRACT Japanese anime has continued to gain recognition as one of the strongest cultural influences in a globalized world. We examine how the transnational process of decontextualization-recontextualization can shift the messages of popular culture texts as situated in differing collective memories. To highlight this process, we analyze Shingeki no Kyojin (known to English-speaking audiences as Attack on Titan). Shingeki no Kyojin provides insightful grounds for analysis given its tremendous popularity in both Japan and beyond, its message of resistance against U.S. militarism, and its recontextualized uptake by the American alt-right, even including an Arizona congressman. Our analysis reveals the importance of understanding popular culture alongside context and the impact of decontextualized-recontextualized transformations of meaning on transnational processes of collective memory discourse.

Actual Time: Duration, Creation and Disfiguration


 
 
 
 This article proposes definitions of sense time and actual time as dimensions that affect our perception of the filmic image. We believe sense time to be a succession of changes to perceivable phenomena. Meanwhile, actual time is the time that needs only itself in order to manifest, transcending the object and sense as mediators and measurements. The article embarks on an historical-aesthetic journey that examines various examples of structural and avant-garde cinema in an attempt to explore these temporalities. Likewise, the article introduces the idea of filmic matter as an independent creator of discourse and technical support of memory.
 
 
 

Эволюция дискурсов о покорении Сибири в локальной исторической памяти

Research objectives: Systematization and factor analysis of evolving ideas about the conquest of Siberia in the local historical memory of the Perm region from the end of the 16th century to the present. Research materials: The research draws upon archival materials, materials from local historians, journalists, historians, teachers, and intellectuals, folklore materials, media materials from different eras, local history works, and local teaching aids from the Perm region. Novelty of the research: Based on the introduction of previously unpublished local history and personal materials, the study examines local historical memory about the annexation of Siberia, which has been perceived as an insignificant topic in historical science. The regional dimension of the “collective memory” of the “Conquest of Siberia” explored in this research can be applied to other regions significant for this process. Results of the research: Although the Perm region served as a “springboard” for the conquest of Siberia and is a symbolic border between the “Russian World” and the “Trans-Urals,” the research does not confirm the hypothesis about the system-forming significance of the myth of the “Siberian capture” for the construction of local identity. The study identifies several interdependent discourses in the local historical memory of the Perm region regarding the annexation of Siberia. The first discourse is the glorification of Yermak, initially influenced by the government’s struggle with the “Cossack freemen,” but by the beginning of the 20th century, Yermak was endowed with the features of a local folk hero, and his campaign was a common cause of local residents. The second discourse is the role of the Stroganovs, which was developed in the 1830s by F.A. Volegov, survived the Soviet ideologization, and experienced a slight surge in the 1990s, but is not dominant overall. The third discourse emerged in the late 19th century and is a representation of the conquest of Siberia in the works of the local intelligentsia. They note Moscow’s insignificant attention to the role of the Perm region in the conquest of Siberia, which can be considered a typical colonial discourse, but they themselves do not regard the “Siberian conquest” as a significant factor in regional history. In general, the discourses of the local historical memory of the Perm region about the conquest of Siberia shift the focus of attention from events to specific heroes, and the retrospective interpretation of their exploits is more of a “folk” rather than a statist character.

GERMAN COLONIALISM IN EAST AFRICA AND ITS AFTERMATH IN ABDULRAZAK GURNAH'S NOVELS PARADISE AND AFTERLIVES AND IN CONTEMPORARY GERMAN LITERATURE

ABSTRACTBritish author and literary scholar Abdulrazak Gurnah, born in Zanzibar in 1948 and awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature in 2021, makes significant contributions to the memory and critique of German colonialism in East Africa and its aftermath both in Tanzania and in Germany. This study examines Gurnah's novels Paradise (1994) and Afterlives (2020) for their representation of German imperial rule and its impact on Swahili society and culture and its place in the Indian Ocean universe, World War I in East Africa, the fate of askari soldiers in Weimar and Nazi Germany, and the memory and postmemory of German colonialism through to the 1960s. Gurnah's literary modelling of African experiences and memories of German colonialism is discussed in Anglo‐German comparative perspective with reference to postcolonial memory discourses in contemporary German literature, including Afro‐German life‐writing.

David Livingstone and Heritage Diplomacy in Malawi–Scotland Relations

This article engages with discourses of public memory and heritage as constituted by the biography of David Livingstone to understand how the past is instrumentalised in present-day Malawi and Scotland. It discusses how in Malawi and Scotland, Livingstone’s memory has influenced, and continues to influence, the making of bilateral relations between these two nations. Drawing on archival and documentary sources, interviews and exhibition analysis the article argues that the memory and mythology of David Livingstone have been preserved and reconstructed to enhance international co-operation between the two nations in what could be understood as ‘heritage diplomacy’. This heritage diplomacy makes claims to a mutual relationship that spans from Livingstone’s arrival on Malawian territory through the colonial period and into the post-colonial present. Moreover, this heritage diplomacy functions to create and strengthen strategic bilateral economic, cultural and political ties. At the same time, it promotes and solidifies Scotland’s national identity and its aspirations to sovereignty, autonomy and to the status of a global player. Commemorations, memorials, museum exhibitions, state institutions and civil organisations have become the main sites through which Livingstone’s memory is invoked or reconstructed as a shared heritage to facilitate international co-operation. The article contributes to our understanding of how heritage diplomacy is mobilised by nations to reinforce relations and promote their interests.

Creating memory of COVID-19: The actions of museums and archives in Spain

The COVID-19 pandemic is an historic event that has affected the entire world, but since it has been experienced differently in each country, locality and family, it will also be remembered in different ways. This article provides an analysis of the ways in which museums and archives have sought to document the pandemic in Spain to create memory discourses for the future. This includes an account of the subjects that have been documented, the exhibitions held, the online and in situ initiatives undertaken, and the nature of physical and virtual items collected. The museums and archival institutions have collected many documents, images and physical objects that will play an important role in the creation of memories about COVID-19 in the future.

Language Practices of ethno-cultural discourse in memory of early Stalin stage in the context of Soviet federalism. Late 1920s – early 1930s

The article highlights the resources of ethno-cultural discourse of memory: languages and their speakers as mechanisms of socialization and acculturation of the picture of the world, its frames, actors, ressentiment, traumas, frontiers. This important cognitive category exists in the memory of a person, reflects his interaction with the world filled with different circumstances. The most active was the language sphere, political practices were in dire need of using its resources. The early Soviet experience of their application is considered.

Карл Ясперс и Поль Рикёр: работа памяти как работа самосознания

The paper presents a comparative analysis of the problem of memory in the philosophy of Karl Jaspers and Paul Ricœur. The author’s thesis is the existen­tial philosophy of Jaspers was of decisive importance for the formation of Ricœur’s memory discourse. The paper discusses the main dimensions of the problem of memory and guilt in Jaspers’ philosophy, its central concepts in con­nection with the theme of guilt and self-consciousness, the early works of Ricœur, which directly refer to the existential project of the German philo­sopher, while attention is paid to the communicative history of philosophy and the doctrine of truth. Based on the results of a comparative study, it is con­cluded that an important metaphor for Ricœur’s philosophy (as well as for Jaspers) is the metaphor of constant movement and path in communication, which turns into a discourse of memory as an emphasis on the need to under­standing work with the past, without which impossible the philosophical con­sciousness. Ricœur’s memory discourse studies focus on the dialectic of memory and self-consciousness in situations of guilt and forgiveness. It is noted that Ricœur problematizes guilt in relation to the past in an existential sense as a borderline situation. For him, this is the problem of a person’s treatment of himself, the constitution of his identity, his living as a person who can and wants something. The work of memory as the work of self-consciousness and the overcoming of guilt becomes the path to a moral society, as for Jaspers, it acts as the basis for communication and life in truth, communication of “care” for oneself and others.

In the theoretical discourse of memory, codes, and practices of modernism

In the theoretical discourse of memory, codes, and practices of modernism

TURIZAM I KOMERCIJALIZACIJA LIKA GAVRILA PRINCIPA I SARAJEVSKOG ATENTATA

This article deals with the question of how the Sarajevo assassination and its protagonists are remembered, used, and marketed in current tourist offers. The objects of investigation are: 1) the current commemorative symbolic marking of the assassination site; 2) The ‘Sarajevo 1878- 1918’ Museum; 3) a thematic city tour on the assassination; 4) the souvenir offer in Sarajevo’s city centre, and 5) the newly constructed ‘Andrićgrad’. The memories conveyed and constructed therein reveal tales strongly competing discourses of remembrance: All the objects examined here are – by their nature – a part of the tourism-motivated discourse of memory. This discourse relies on a sensationalist exploitation of the events, which makes the narrative susceptible to an idealized or demonized interpretation of the assassination and its protagonists. Similarly, nei- ther the distorted image of Princip as a Serbian freedom fighter nor the glorified view of the Austro-Hungarian monarchy allows for a critical engagement with the past.

БЛОКАДА И КОМПЬЮТЕР: «ЦИФРОВОЕ ВООБРАЖЕНИЕ» В ПАМЯТИ О ВЕЛИКОЙ ОТЕЧЕСТВЕННОЙ ВОЙНЕ В 1980-Е ГГ.?

The article raises the problem of “digital imagination” in the cultural memory of the Great Patriotic War and the blockade of Leningrad in the 1980s. Using the example of the unfilmed screenplay of the documentary film Blockade and Computer (1983) by L. Magrachev and E. Taluntis (perhaps the earliest example of digital memory of the Siege) the author shows how the traditional discourse about the heroism and suffering of siege survivors, the “Western falsification of history” and the “rational enemy” is refracted into the screenwriters’ fantastic hypothesis of a supercomputer with which “imperialist strategists” seek to code the “Leningrad heights of the human spirit” to scientifically understand and defeat the Soviet man. The author concludes about the paradox of the “digital imagination” of the memory of the war, in which a “smart machine” acting as an analytical tool of the enemy is at the same time an effective tool to confirm the “historical truth” about the Siege of Leningrad and to analyze its “absolute archive”. At the same time, the author argues that, for all the strangeness of such an “imaginary film”, it cannot be considered an anomaly, and in the early 1980s “digital imagination” penetrated even the Party discourse of memory about the war.

In the Theoretical Discourse of Memory, Codes, and Practices of Modernism Memory and Cultural Codes in Ukrainian Modernist Novels (Volodymyr Kashka, Yuriy Gudz, Yevhen Pashkovsky, Oksana Zabuzhko, Kost Moskalets)

In the Theoretical Discourse of Memory, Codes, and Practices of Modernism Memory and Cultural Codes in Ukrainian Modernist Novels (Volodymyr Kashka, Yuriy Gudz, Yevhen Pashkovsky, Oksana Zabuzhko, Kost Moskalets)