Milieu De Research Articles

The Death of Clark Glacier

Arguably, the biggest challenge of the 21st century is human-induced climate change. This article proposes the cultural memory of the Anthropocene as the dominant reason for our inadequate climate mitigation, whilst simultaneously arguing for the process of hoping-mourning as a possible solution. As such, this article analyzes the Anthropocene as a cultural memory, arguing for a restructuring of its milieu de mémoire to include other-than-human entities. The article finds that the hyper-separational framework of the Anthropocene limits our conceptual space on several spatiotemporal dimensions, limiting, and simplifying, our perception of time and space, excluding other-than-human entities. Furthermore, it is found that by sustaining corporeal vulnerability, mourning, and mourning rituals broaden the cultural domain, permitting other-than-human entities into our milieu de mémoire, which, through its transformative capabilities, offer new and much needed ways of imagining different futures and thus, essentially, different strategies of mitigation and adaptation.

THE LEFTISM IDEOLOGY OR NOSTALGIA FOR THE SOCIALIST PAST? SEARCHING FOR LIEUX DE MÉMOIRE IN THE POST-SOVIET CULTURAL SPACES

The concept lieu de mémoire (site of memory) was developed by the French historian Pierre Nora in the 1970–90s, who suggests to use the term to refer to “any significant entity, whether material or non-material in nature, which by dint of human will or the work of time has become a symbolic element of the memorial heritage of any community” [Nora, Kritzman 1996:18]. Lieux de mémoire function as an array of mnemonic techniques, which are necessary when the real memory (milieux de mémoire) fades. Lieux de mémoire are repeatedly employed in referring back to the past, thus sustaining the actual identity of a community and laying a solid foundation for developing the existing identity or re-shaping it. In the Post-Soviet cultural space of Latvia lieux de mémoire, which are associated with the Soviet past, can be encountered everywhere, from the “The Government Inspector”, staged by Alvis Hermanis and performed during the 2010s, to the nostalgic interior objects in cafés, the hullabaloo stirred by the contest New Wave, the popularity of Karosta Prison in Liepāja, and social media users’ commentaries on the Internet about the topical events in contemporary society. The article discusses the potential links of these phenomena to contemporary socio-political events and attempts to establish if they hide any efforts to restore collective and individual memory, which were split alongside the so-called rewriting of history that took place as a result of the collapse of the Soviet Union, or indications of flaws in Western neoliberalism and neoconservativism while seeking opportunities for renewal of society by way of indirect leftist ideological implications.

Milieux de mémoire in Late Modernity: Local Communities, Religion, and Historical Politics

Milieux de mémoire in Late Modernity: Local Communities, Religion, and Historical Politics

More mobile, less common? The transit sociality of Rabat’s Central train station

ABSTRACT Over the past few years, Rabat has been undergoing a double-process of modernisation and transformation into a heritage site. Its central railway station, which is currently being transformed into a large interchange hub, reflects the city’s aspiration to become a global metropolis. Previously, this place functioned as an urban magnet where people also came to stroll and socialise. The article explores how the refurbishment is affecting its functional and symbolic uses. Official sources promise that the renewed infrastructure will be a great new ‘milieu de vie’, a notion that summons up a vision of togetherness and an aspiration to metropolitan high life. But will the future project still welcome everyone and every type of sociality? Structured as a before-and-after comparison, the article describes ethnographic observations conducted at the station’s successive entrances. It shows that the new entrance layout may make the infrastructure more functional, but that it offers less opportunity for social activities. Causal interpretations concerning the role of design in facilitating or preventing social practices are proposed. The article concludes that the capacity of transit infrastructures to become a ‘common’ place depends on the connection between physical features and cultural skills. Since Rabat Central Station has become an arena of conflict between tradition and modernity, the paper’s contribution aims to reposition the controversy within a broader perspective, which connects the architectural and social dimensions of a local culture of transit (im)mobility.

Knotted Histories

In the 1960s, my grandfather Ormond Wilson devoted himself to restoring the site of the last fixed battle of the New Zealand wars, Te Pōrere, in the central North Island. As chair of the recently formed Historic Places Trust, Ormond was involved in the creation of what the French historian Pierre Nora has called “lieux de mémoire” or sites of memory. Nora argues that such sites are a modern phenomenon that demonstrate the rupture between traditional environments of memory (or “milieux de mémoire”) and historical research and consciousness in a modern sense. In this essay, I reflect on how Ormond’s work can be read differently, as revealing an entanglement or “knotted” historical practice as he worked at Te Pōrere, a place with which his family had a longer connection.

Reciting Performative Memories: Spectral Photography at the Ntaba kaNdoda Monument and Mountain

This article engages with the haunting experiences associated with the Ntaba kaNdoda monument, not as a re-enactment to recreate past events, but as an exercise in critical visual arts intervention. It further unpacks notions of memory and performative memorialisation in the former Ciskei. Ntaba kaNdoda is associated with Dr Lennox L. W. Sebe, former president of the Ciskei, who remains a figure in post-apartheid South Africa. This article is also a response to this majestic monument—its visual representation and its materiality—which enabled a particular performativity throughout my work. As part of my practice I recite performative memories at an abandoned monument, retracing and recalling overlaid memories through commemorative re-enactment. Mechtild Widrich's conception of performative monuments, Lucy Lippard's sense of place, and Pierre Nora's lieux de mémoire and milieux de mémoire inform the theoretical rationale of this article, expanding my research interest in the Ntaba kaNdoda memorial. I urge for a visual art practice that looks at the past to make sense of the present. I emphasise the importance of understanding how one encounters a commemorative marker such as the Ntaba kaNdoda monument when considering future memorials, especially when we engage with post- colonial commemorative markers, places, and photographic material.

Book review: Milieux de mémoire in Late Modernity: Local Communities, Religion and Historical Politics

Book review: Milieux de mémoire in Late Modernity: Local Communities, Religion and Historical Politics

How Landscapes Remember

This paper considers the possibility that as subject or agent, the landscape might have the potential to contain, store or transmit memories of their past, which are engaged experientially as uncanny. In a simple sense it asks why there are some landscapes – or landscape features – that are regarded as spiritually animated by different social groups, at different times. The paper focuses on the Neolithic temple site of Borġ-in-Nadur, in Southern Malta, which as well as having been a site of prehistoric ritual activity has more recently been the site of a significant devotion to the Virgin Mary, who graced the site with regular apparitions, and a focus for national and transnational Goddess pilgrimage. The paper suggests that sites such as Borġ-in-Nadur can be seen as palimpsest landscapes, in which memory is layered such that experiential engagements with them draw the past in to the present, and forwards into the future. The paper examines the intertwining of prehistoric, Catholic and Neo-pagan engagements with Borġ-in-Nadur, extending Pierre Nora’s concept of lieux de memoire (sites of memory) to encompass the milieux de memoire, or memorial environments, which are themselves also context of, and for, the uncanny.

Tropical Fantasia: Towards a New Archivo-Museological Imaginary

We have observed ubiquitously, although not yet exhaustively, academics and practitioners alike catching archive fevers and chasing archival impulses down rabbit holes. We have borne witness to historiographical and archaeological turns in art and art history, in the chasing and longing for irretrievable pasts. We have found refuge in these milieux de mémoire. For what are archives but time-traveling machines; portals between unfinished pasts and reopened futures? What are archives but the mirrors of civilization, perpetually reflecting us as we are?[1] Cloistered away within Arctic mountains sits the Svalbard Global Seed Vault (fig. 1). The Judd-esque structure, also known as a doomsday vault, houses the globe’s largest seed archive, one that is perpetually protected and isolated from the threats and dangers of the outside world. It includes backups of seed samples extracted from crop collections all around the world, which endeavor “to stand the test of time and the challenge of natural and man-made disasters.”[2] It was conceived as an apparatus of survival against the promise of ominous futures of deserts, deforestation, and desolation, very much feeding into humanity’s cultic celebration of permanence and its fetish of continuation.

Pattern of corneal disorders in Ekiti: A tertiary eye center experience.

Purpose:The cornea is the most significant refractive medium in the eye. Pathologies affecting the cornea usually have a great impact on vision. The etiology of corneal disorder varies from one geographical location to another. The objective of this study was to determine the pattern of corneal disorders at Ekiti State University Teaching Hospital, Ado-Ekiti.Materials and Methods:A retrospective study of case records of patients with cornea disorders over a 5-year period was carried out. Demographic characteristics, presenting visual acuity, and risk factor for cornea disorders were retrieved. Data were entered into the Statistical Package for the Social Sciences version 20, and statistical significance was inferred at P < 0.05.Results:Corneal disorders accounted for 3.3% of the eye disorders seen during the period of study. The median age was 37 years. Males outnumbered females giving a ratio of 1.9:1 and the age range from 0.25 to 92 years. There were more females than males in the 11–20 years’ age group. Students (84, 25.4%) and artisans (62, 18.8%) were the two leading occupational groups. Infectious cases constituted 27.2% of the cases. Visual acuity at presentation was <3/60 in 131 (39.7%) cases. Foreign body entry was the leading etiologic agent in 101 (30.6%) cases.Conclusion:Half of the patients were blind at presentation, and many of them presented after more than 1 week of the onset of symptoms. Corneal foreign body, trauma, and vernal keratoconjunctivitis were the leading known predisposing factors. There will be need to emphasize more on the role of protective eye devices among our people, especially those who engage in outdoor activities.

New Discoveries: The Marriage Certificate of Eugene O'Neill and Carlotta Monterey (July 22, 1929) / Sean O'Casey, Letter to Eugene O'Neill (November 25, 1936)

New Discoveries: The Marriage Certificate of Eugene O'Neill and Carlotta Monterey (July 22, 1929) / Sean O'Casey, Letter to Eugene O'Neill (November 25, 1936)

Doing Memory. Parisian Hotels’ Portraits with Old Migrants

Parisian hôtels meublés are traditionally short-term accommodation where migrants, first from French provinces, then from abroad – especially Maghreb, and more specifically Algeria – where living in poor conditions. From the ‘golden age’ in the interwar period where they housed around 11% of the Parisian population until current times, the sector has decreased, and become more and more stigmatised. Nevertheless, they can be considered as post-colonial ‘milieu de mémoireʼ of migrations belonging to different generations, contexts and origins. Thanks to a composite approach, ethnographic (observation and interviews) and literary (study of a large corpus of novels related to hotels meublés), the chapter shows that those places are emblematic of specific regimes of memories, both dominated and unconventional, suffering and creative. The first part is dedicated to describing the hotels as ambiguous and complex places, where the subtle hierarchy of spaces makes the co-habitation possible, and can be considered as support for memories. The second part deals more precisely with ‘doing memoryʼ: Both oral histories and literary works are embraced as interpretative constructions reformulating experiences. The last part shows categories and assignments at work in the hotels, where narratives are calling for both a right to the city and a certain acknowledgment of the subalterns beyond disruptions, displacements and silences.

Tourism to a realm of memory: the case of a Thai royal craft

ABSTRACTModernisation brings the decline of traditional crafts and practices and thereby of their old, linked communities. Memories of these communities might survive though only for a time. A public policy dilemma presents – whether to conserve communities and their crafts as ‘living museums’ (akin to a milieu de mémoire in Pierre Nora’s terms) for tourist titillation; alternatively to merely retain the traces of that culture, as a museum more conventionally understood (lieux de mémoire); or, alternatively again, to accept the ephemerality of culture and its metamorphosis? And, if the last, then how is that to be presented to the discerning tourist? The paper mostly uses the case of the ancient goldsmith community of Wat Koh in Phetchaburi city, Thailand, to reflect on this dilemma. At stake academically are two sets of dialectic opposites: history against memory, and memory against nostalgia – also the contingent dichotomy of tourism and memory.

Performative Environments of Polish Memory: The Grodzka Gate – NN Theater Center’s Approach to Lublin’s Jewish Pasts

ABSTRACTThis article examines an under-researched artistic practice of Holocaust memorialization, which, emerging in Poland in the early 1990s, combines elements of theater, performance art, and religious ritual and invites a high degree of civic participation. I argue that these artistic practices are similar to traditional practices of lived and embodied transmissions of memory referred to by French historian Pierre Nora as milieux de mémoire. This article will challenge Nora's view that milieux de mémoire have been permanently replaced with lieux de mémoire (sites of memory). To counter this claim, I invoke the memorialization activities of the grassroots and Lublin-based cultural institution the Grodzka Gate – NN Theater Center. Through the series of artistic actions called Mystery of Memory (2000–2011) and Letters to (2005–present), this institution is actively involved in creating and sustaining Polish milieux de mémoire dedicated to the memory of the Holocaust. The ensuing milieux de mémoire have a practical, civic and social function to establish a sense of shared community among younger generations of Poles. Therefore, these actions look toward the future, rather than solely remembering the difficult past, and encourage participants to acknowledge and celebrate difference and multiculturalism, rather than singly confronting unsavory moments of Polish–Jewish relations.

Les bonheurs caducs par Élyse-Andrée Héroux

Héroux, Élyse-Andrée. Les bonheurs caducs. Montréal: Québec Amérique, 2015. ISBN 978-2-7644-2845-0. Pp. 382. $25 Can. This book offers a tenderly funny portrait of Rosemarie, a young woman dealing with life’s ups and downs, which recently has had more downs than ups. Rosemarie had been blissfully content working for a small publishing firm. Her boss, Jacques Bossé, had originally offered the company, Les éditions Laine d’Acier, as a present to his wife Hélène for their twentieth anniversary. Unfortunately, after just one enchanting year of directing the company in a small appartment building with a discrete sign in the north of Montreal, Hélène was hit by a car as she was crossing the street after having had her hair done. She died instantly. In her honor and memory, Jacques took over the reins of the company. He relocated the company to be closer to Repos Saint François d’Assise, the cemetery where Hélène was buried. This move was a risk as the company’s new location was far from downtown Montreal and not easily accessible either by public transportation or personal vehicle. But the newly christened company Dassier paid well and took extremely good care of its employees and authors:“Jacques Bossé se dévouait jour et nuit à sa boîte comme on laisse tout tomber pour prendre soin d’un enfant triste. Fidéliser son monde, il était bon là-dedans”(37). Unfortunately, at age sixty-six and after twenty years of devotion to the company, Jacques’s heart gave out. Taking over his place was his son Bruno, an abusive man who enjoyed wielding his power and who intended to shut down the company. After one year, he changed his mind, but not without making significant changes, such as firing Yolande, the “fidèle adjointe de son père” (39) and replacing her with the young Anaïs, the editor who “venue du milieu de la pub, beauté racée, intelligente comme un singe, pas la langue dans sa poche même que des jours on en venait à rêver de la lui passer à la déchiqueteuse”(39). It is thus that Rosemarie’s life takes a dramatic turn for the worse as she navigates the waters of a work environment that each day becomes increasingly hostile, combined with her need to move in with her good-for-nothing brother after a break-up with the man she thought was the “ideal” boyfriend, while the safety net of her girlfriends disintegrates. Yet even though everything in Rosemarie’s life has changed except for Rosemarie herself and that there is no escaping it, she gradually matures into a woman who is able to go with the flow and begins to appreciate what good she has in her life. Whereas previously she would have focused on the negative, her newly acquired maturity allows her to be open to new possibilities:“Il ne lui coûterait rien de s’y rendre, de s’y gaver de bonnes choses, ni un sou ni un effort, peut-être même qu’elle aurait du plaisir, qui sait” (252). Canisius College (NY) Eileen M. Angelini 266 FRENCH REVIEW 89.3 ...

Place, Silence, and Local Memory in Todo e� silencio by Manuel Rivas

This article addresses issues of local memory in Manuel Rivas’s novel Todo e silencio ( 2010 ) and takes as its starting point Pierre Nora’s twin notions of lieu de memoire and milieu de memoire. By focusing on a specific site portrayed in the novel —the escola de indianos, a building that once housed a progressive school— we analyze the ways in which the author deploys the building not merely as a setting, but also as aestheticization of the interstices between history, memory, and forgetting.

Response of primary vectors and related diseases to impoundment by the Three Gorges Dam

To investigate the impact of the Three Gorges Dam on the local ecological environment. We conducted a 3-year cross-sectional survey of natural focus infectious diseases in the area before and after the water level rose to 156 m to evaluate the dam's health impacts. Direct and indirect immunofluorescence methods were applied to detect rat antigen and antibody of haemorrhagic fever with renal syndrome (HFRS). Fresh rat kidneys were inoculated in Korth's culture medium to detect Leptospira. A group of captured crabs were ground to observe the metacercariae of Paragonimus. Serum samples were collected from healthy local individuals. ELISA kits were used to detect human antibody against HFRS and paragonimiasis. Human Leptospira infections were detected by a microscopic agglutination test. Upstream rodent density increased significantly with Rattus flavipectus and Apodemus agrarius as the major pathophoric genera. The infection rate of human HFRS and Leptospira in the upstream human population samples was significantly higher than in the downstream samples and correlated with the increase in rodent density. Paragonimus infection rates remained at a low level during the study. Culex pipiens fatigan and Armigeres obturbans were the dominant species of mosquito. The creation of the Three Gorges Dam changed the proliferation of intermediary agents of diseases, but not notably. However, the ecological effects on the environment may require a prolonged period of time to manifest themselves; thus, long-term and effective surveillance of vectors and related diseases needs to be established.

Reclaiming Spaces: Politics of Place, Locality and Identity of Lepcha Community in the Eastern Himalayas

Places, constructed spatially, have multiple meanings for their inhabitants. It is normally said that one has to be fixed in space and in time if she desires to ‘belong’. Yet, space is not simply a geometric ‘thing out there’. The sites of memory are the points where space and time meet memory. Piere Nora has tried to define a difference between milieu de mémoire and lieu de mémoire. The sites of memory are the ‘milieux’, the real environments of memory; but today, with our lack of memory, we have to be content with lieux de mémoire, places which remind us of the past, of a (broken) memory. Space fuses place, property and heritage, and creates identity. Memory is spatial, and is created from places and images. A place (locus) is easily memorised –a construction, a characteristic location. Images are ‘forms, marks or simulacra of what we wish to remember’. The identity among people, heritage and territory is also brought about by the use of varied metaphors, the effective expressions of narratives of nations. Loss of territory erases history, jeopardises historical and cultural self-consciousness and renders identities invisible. This study, while interrogating the methods and motives of remembering the past and in revising how histories are recovered, explores as to how the Lepchas have endeavoured to reclaim memories, rewrite history, recreate, reframe and perform a collective identity for their nation, amidst threats of active construction of ignorance of their history and territory on the one hand, and of the threats of assimilation by dominant identity-based movements in the region, on the other.

Jewish Poland revisited: heritage tourism in unquiet places

Prologue: Scene of Arrival Introduction: Poles and Jews: Significant Others 1. Making Sense of Place: History, Mythology, Authenticity 2. The Mission: Mass Jewish Holocaust Pilgrimage 3. The Quest: Scratching the Heart 4. Shabbos Goyim: Polish Stewards of Jewish Spaces 5. Traveling Tschotschkes and Post-Jewish Culture 6. Jewish like an Adjective: Expanding the Collective Self Conclusion: Towards a Polish-Jewish milieu de memoire

États de mal épileptiques non convulsifs de l’adulte : quelles nouveautés ?

Les états de mal non convulsifs (EMNC) de l’adulte sont séparés en deux formes, l’état d’absence (EA) et l’état de mal partiel complexe (EMPC). Le diagnostic nécessite la réalisation d’un électroencéphalogramme (EEG) d’urgence. L’EA est la forme la plus fréquente. Il est caractérisé par une confusion fluctuante, d’intensité variable, souvent associée à des myoclonies palpébrales. L’EEG montre des décharges critiques généralisées qui cèdent sous benzodiazépines (BZ) alors que la conscience se normalise. Les EA peuvent survenir dans le cadre d’une épilepsie généralisée ou être inauguraux, par exemple chez le sujet âgé, sous l’influence de facteurs métaboliques, toxiques ou médicamenteux. Le pronostic est favorable. Les EMPC sont caractérisés par une confusion d’intensité variable, fluctuante, associée sur l’EEG à des décharges critiques focales. Ils nécessitent un traitement énergique en raison du risque de résistance et de la possibilité de séquelles cognitives. Les formes frontales et temporales sont les plus fréquentes. Le pronostic dépend des comorbidités. La plupart des encéphalopathies survenant en milieu de réanimation ne relèvent pas d’un EMNC, malgré certains aspects EEG trompeurs. De même, les encéphalopathies métaboliques ou toxiques et la maladie de Creutzfeldt-Jakob peuvent poser des problèmes de diagnostic électroclinique, au mieux résolus par l’injection IV de BZ et le suivi évolutif. Status epilepticus (SE) may be classified into convulsive SE, which must be rapidly stopped to prevent death or neurologic sequelae and nonconvulsive status epilepticus (NCSE), which is usually characterized by some degree of clouding of consciousness. This latter condition constitutes a diagnosis challenge, because it often goes unrecognized or is mistaken for behavioral or psychiatric disturbances. Emergency EEG is the key feature for diagnosis. NCSE are classically divided on the basis of the ictal EEG into absence status (AS), with predominantly symmetrical synchronous ictal discharges and complex partial status epilepticus (CPSE), with continuous or rapidly recurring complex partial seizures that may involve temporal and/or extratemporal regions. Typical AS occurs as part of an idiopathic generalized epilepsy (IGE) most often characterized by absences. The EEG correlates with repetitive absence seizures and shows symmetric and bilaterally synchronous spike-waves. The immediate prognosis is excellent. Atypical AS occurs in patients with symptomatic or cryptogenic epilepsies, or in patients with IGE and inappropriate medication. It is characterized by a fluctuating confusional state with more prominent tonic and/or myoclonic and/or lateralized ictal manifestations. Episodes tend to recur and to be resistant to medication. “De novo” absence status of late onset is characterized by toxic or metabolic precipitating factors leading to seizures in middle-aged or elderly subjects with no previous history of seizures. Patients often have a history of psychiatric illness with multiple psychotropic drug intake. AS with focal features occurs in subjects with a pre-existing or newly developing localization-related epilepsy, most often of extratemporal origin. The EEG shows bilateral but often asymmetric ictal discharges. CPSE is “a prolonged epileptic episode in which fluctuating or frequently recurring focal electrographic epileptic discharges, arising in temporal or extratemporal regions, result in a confusional state with variable clinical symptoms” (Shorvon, 1994). Various subtypes and precipitating factors are identified. Frontal and temporal localizations are most frequent in clinical practice. Limbic, non paraneoplastic encephalitis with VGKC autoantibodies has a characteristic clinical, MRI and immunological profile. In the recent years, many studies tend to lump together NCSE, “subtle” SE, AS, CPSE, myoclonic SE in coma, and EEG patterns suggestive of SE in comatose patients. In this group, the overall prognosis is poor, with a low response to antiepileptic drugs, but it may be particularly difficult to separate comorbidity to consequent morbidity. Post-hypoxic-ischemic encephalopathy, a life threatening condition that can express itself in the form of coma, EEG changes and myoclonus illustrates such methodological problems. NCSE should obviously be rapidly treated because of the attendant morbidity including physical injury, and because it may evolve on to generalized convulsions. Another argument is that long-term permanent neurologic damage from CPSE has been now documented, especially in the context of limbic encephalitis. IV benzodiazepines (BZ) must be performed first, with a rapid and complete recovery together with a normalization of EEG features. If BZ injection fails, IV fosphenytoin may be the drug of choice, especially in the context of symptomatic CPSE.