Myth Of War Research Articles

МІФИ ВІЙНИ ТА МІФИ НАВКОЛО ВІЙНИ: СПРОБА АНАЛІЗУ

The article is devoted to actual theoretical and practical issues related to the Russian-Ukrainian war. The author of the article aims to study the phenomenon that can be characterized as myths of war. The first of these myths (more precisely, a group of myths) consists in the identification of all Ukrainians with the Soviet population, which in its majority is incapable of self-directed actions and is used to relying on the government, its instructions and ideas in everything. The next group of myths, which lives both in foreign and partly in Ukrainian public opinion, consists in denying the belonging of rashism, its instructions and practice, to one of the varieties of fascism. Rashism is terrible, but it is not fascism. But this myth is based on a misunderstanding at the best. This myth is connected to a myth that denies the totalitarian nature of both the Russian state and a number of its allies (Belarus, Iran, North Korea, etc.). These states are called either authoritarian or "totally not free" states, in the latter case ignoring the fundamental difference between them and, for example, Haiti. However, a totalitarian state is distinguished by the fact that, with rare exceptions, it cannot be changed by overthrowing the ruling regime. It can only be destroyed in one way or another. The next myth consists in laying the main blame for the failure of the 2023 counteroffensive on the Ukrainian command, on its wrong plans and actions. The author of the article proves that in the absence of the necessary support from those Western partners who were most afraid of "intensification of escalation", the counteroffensive was a priori doomed to failure. The correct thing to do under these circumstances would be to switch to strategic defence, and this myth is spread by those who are actually directly involved in the failure of the offensive. Finally, another myth of the current war is related to the use by the Rashists of thousands of so-called "refugees" and "migrants" from Asian and African countries for a "hybrid war" against the European Union in order to distract its attention and weaken support for Ukraine.

The Soviet Myth of World War II: Patriotic Memory and the Russian Question in the USSR by Jonathan Brunstedt (review)

The Soviet Myth of World War II: Patriotic Memory and the Russian Question in the USSR by Jonathan Brunstedt (review)

The Soviet Myth of World War II: Patriotic Memory and the Russian Question in the USSR, written by Jonathan Brunstedt

The Soviet Myth of World War II: Patriotic Memory and the Russian Question in the USSR, written by Jonathan Brunstedt

British Borders and/in East Africa: World War II and Multidirectional Memory in Nadifa Mohamed’s Black Mamba Boy

Abstract The British myth of World War II has long been successfully mobilised to police the ideological borders of the UK. The article considers narratives about the war as a key site for the negotiation of British identity and the UK’s relation to its imperial past. It, first, seeks to unpack some of the contradictions of the dominant British view on the war to then consider the 2010 novel Black Mamba Boy by Somali-British writer Nadifa Mohamed. It is argued that the novel effectively opposes ideas of an ethnically homogenous nation. Drawing on Michael Rothberg’s notion of multidirectional memory, the article shows how the novel interweaves different traumatic histories and thus presents memories of the war as an opportunity, not to consolidate national borders, but to forge new solidarities.

양동마을 慶州孫氏 家門의 家風과 계승

家風은 대대로 이어져 내려오는 가문의 고유한 생활양식을 말한다. 조선시대 가문은 가풍의 확고히 정립을 통해서 세대가 교체되어도 그들만의 고유한 생활양식을 유지 발전시켰다. 특히 家風은 家學을 통해 전승되었다. 家學은 학문의 전수를 중심으로 하는 것이지만 가풍은 학문전수와 함께 취미와 경세론, 행동거지 등 생활 양식까지도 포함하는 것으로 구별된다. 경주 양동마을 경주손씨는 淸德과 忠節을 가풍으로 계승 발전시켜왔다. 淸德은 德으로 淸白을 실천하는 것이다. 양동마을 경주손씨 가문의 德에 바탕을 둔 淸白의 가풍은 손사성에 의해 시작되었다. 여러 淸要職을 역임하면서 청백을 몸소 실천하여 관료사회의 모범이 되었다. 그의 맑고 덕스러운 삶의 자세는 ‘淸名’으로서 당대의 호평을 받았으며, 가풍으로서 확립되어 후손들에게 계승되었다. 淸德의 家風은 아들 손소가 지방관으로 재직하면서 가문의 전통인 청덕을 계승하여 실천하였다. 손중돈은 지방관으로 근무하면서 청렴한 자세로 참된 牧民의 道를 실천하였다. 특히 상주목사에 임명되었을 때는 상주 고을의 백성들은 선정비를 건립하고, 丹密縣에 生祠堂을 건립하였으며, 마침내 청백리의 명부에 등재되었다. 그리고 손덕승이 지방관으로 녹봉과 창고의 곡식을 풀어 빈민을 구휼하고 민생의 고통을 덜어주니 백성들이 그의 공덕을 찬양하여 송덕비를 세워 주었다. 忠節은 나라에 충성하고 국왕에게 절개를 지키는 것이다. 충절이 양동마을 경주손씨의 家風이 된 것은 孫昭가 공신으로 책봉되면서부터이다. 손소의 공신책봉으로 양동마을의 이름이 楊左洞에서 良佐洞으로 바뀌면서 손소 이후 국가에 대한 忠節은 양동마을 경주손씨의 家風으로 자리하게 되었다. 양동마을 경주손씨의 忠節 家風은 국가의 위기에 발휘되었다. 임진왜란과 병자 호란이 일어나자 경주손씨 가문은 의병활동을 전개하였다. 임진왜란에는 손소의 玄孫인 孫曄, 孫時, 孫魯, 孫宗賀, 孫魯香 등이 떨쳐 일어나 대대적인 의병활동에 나섰다. 그리고 병자호란이 일어나자 손중돈의 현손 孫宗老가 의병으로 참여하여 전쟁터에서 장렬하게 전사하였다. 양동마을에는 그의 충절을 기리는 旌忠閣이 건립되어 있다. 일제의 침략으로 국권이 흔들리게 되자 양동마을 경주손씨의 가풍은 독립운동으로 승화하였다. 성리학적인 학문을 계승하면서 국가가 일제에 의해 위기에 봉착하자 국난극복을 위해 孫晉衡, 孫厚翼 등은 독립운동에 적극적으로 참여하여 忠節의 家風을 계승하였다.

The aesthetics of justice: recognition and the Holocaust in Soviet films of the Thaw

ABSTRACT The mediatisation of war crimes trials in the USSR during the Thaw led to the emergence of a sub-genre of the Soviet war film: melodramas focused on the unmasking of Nazi collaborators through narrative recognition. Built on the trope of anagnorisis, the films hold an aesthetic mirror to the juridical process of investigating, sentencing and punishing enemies of the state, resolving the disruption of collaboration to the Soviet myth of war. But by drawing upon the authority and effect of witness to trauma, the films also generate an indexical reference to the time and place of experience, undermining the narrative logic of the genre. The Lithuanian television film, Balys Bratkauskas’ Two in a Small Town (1965), marks a significant departure from the genre, testifying to the Holocaust by conveying the intimacy of violence in the western periphery of the USSR.

The dream of the Great War

ABSTRACT This article explores the idea that what Samuel Hynes has described as ‘The Myth of the (Great) War can be analysed both as a trauma narrative and as a cultural dream. The argument draws upon Lacan’s proposition in Seminar XVII that the Oedipus complex is ‘Freud’s dream’, an idea which Lacan develops within the context of his theory of the four discourses. Just as Lacan argues in the Seminar that ‘Freud’s dream’ is an attempt to ‘save the father’ from symbolic castration, the argument put forward in this paper is that the Myth of the Great War is an attempt to ‘save’ the upper and upper-middle class culture of late Victorian and early Edwardian England from its own form of symbolic castration. As a trauma narrative it can be seen as an attempt to give meaning to a meaningless experience, but as a dream it becomes possible to identify, within its ‘manifest content’, what Freud called the ‘navel of the dream’, the point where interpretation reaches its limit and which in Lacanian terms can be defined as the Real of the dream. This is illustrated through the analysis of a famous Great War poem by Wilfred Owen.

Memory production, vandalism, violence: Civil society and lessons from a short life of a monument to Stalin

Memory production, vandalism, violence: Civil society and lessons from a short life of a monument to Stalin

The myth of the War of the Seven and Pausanias' educational topography

The myth of the War of the Seven and Pausanias' educational topography

Theban Myth in Virgil's Aeneid: The Brothers at War

This article offers a thorough study of Virgil's interaction with the myth of Eteocles and Polynices' war for the throne of Thebes, as represented especially in Athenian tragedy. It demonstrates that allusions to the Theban myth are crucial to the Aeneid's construction of a set of tensions and oppositions that play an important role in Virgil's reflection on the historical experience of Rome, especially in connection with the transition from Republic to Empire. In particular, interaction with Theban stories allows Virgil to explore: (1) the dichotomy between similarity and foreignness in the depiction of Rome's enemies; (2) the tension in differing attitudes towards the state as reflected in antithetical character types—namely, the selfless youth who sacrifices himself for the community and the would-be tyrant prepared to go to any lengths to achieve sole power; and, finally, (3) the dichotomy between opposing notions of time defined by teleology, on the one hand, and circularity and repetition on the other, the two representing the differing temporalities of epic and tragedy, respectively.

Рецензия на статью Р. аль-Хамдани и Х. Лэкнер «Война и обломки: политические размежевания в Южном Йемене» (январь 2020 г.)

A 30-page article written by Raiman al-Hamdani and Helen Lackner titled “War and Pieces: Political Divides in Southern Yemen” appeared among publications of the influential think-tank — European Council on Foreign Relations in January, 2020. It is certainly a noticeable pivlication in the research studies of the five-year old war in Yemen. R. al-Hamdani is a researcher and consultant focusing on issues of security and development in the Middle East and North Africa. Dr. Helen Lackner is an expert of the European Council for Foreign Relations and research associate at SOAS University of London. She is the editor of the Journal of the British-Yemeni Society and a regular contributor to Open Democracy, Arab Digest, and Oxford Analytica. Her most recent book is ‘Yemen in Crisis: Autocracy, Neo-Liberalism and the Disintegration of a State’ (published by Saqi Books in 2017; by Verso in 2019; and in Arabic in 2020). The reviewed article reveal the hidden sides of the conflict by offering different angle of approach — the southern part of Yemen completely lacking the “houthi factor”, which used to monopolize the bulk of attention in writings on this topic since the war began in March, 2015. The military clashes within Arab coalition between its Saudi and Emirati wings in the South in August, 2019 brought to surface the deep antagonism among coalition’s Yemeni ‘friends’, represented by the Internationally Recognized Government of President A. M. Hadi (IRG) from the one side, and Southern Transitional Council (STC) supported by UAE, from the other. The resulted withdrawal of IRG structures from the temporary capital Aden turned the regime to the merely “exile government” located in Riyadh. The blow put the whole concept of KSA-led military intervention in Yemen in a rather fragile position. It’s dedication to the myth of civil war between IRG and houthi rebels representing the shi`a minority of the country was seriously compromised. The profound knowledge of the real country’s complicity and authors’ great professional experience helped them to reach the very roots of southern separatism and factualism, the core of “southern question” which they actually see as the real focal point of the crises and conflict in Yemen. The same phenomena laid the foundation for the further geopolitical moves of KSA and UAE towards South disintegration. Recent Saudi attempt to cure the devastating result of the August rivalry between IRG and STC by signing the Riyadh agreement on November 5th, 2019 is considered by the authors as nearly void. Therefore the article calls EU states and international community to change policies and enforce proactive role in both narrowing warfare and launching the carefully designed state and nation building programs aiming to keep Yemen united. The review attempts to evaluate the main arguments of this important article in a critical way while sharing the overall direction and goals to reach soonest solution to that largest manmade hotbed of humanitarian catastrophe on the planet.

Концепт «народ» в манифестах А. С. Шишкова в контексте дискурса об Отечественной войне 1812 года

The Patriotic War of 1812 is an event that influenced the formation of the Russian na­tional consciousness. At that time, imperial and class identities coexisted. With the de fac­to ban on discussing the idea of a civil nation, Russian intellectuals focused on the cultural and linguistic components of nationalism. The aim of this study was to identify the content of the concept of ‘people’ in the manifestoes by Shishkov. These texts expressed the official posi­tion of the supreme authority on national unity. The method of discourse analysis employed by the author, made it possible to place Shishkov’s texts in a broader historical context, trac­ing their origins in the discussions on the language of the beginning of the 19th century and determining their impact on the subsequent process of nation-building. Being a supporter of the creation of the Russian literary language on the basis of the folk and Church-Slavonic Russian, Shishkov embodied these views in the texts of manifestoes during the War of 1812. Although there is a certain contradiction between the ideas of class society and national unity, the style and images used made it possible for representatives of all classes to perceive the texts. Later on, “people” as a synonym of “nation” was widely used in the formation of the myth of war as a national affair, forming the foundation for the formation of the Russian na­tional consciousness.

Portret młodego pisarza oraz nawiązania do twórczości Antona Czechowa w Dzikiej gruszy Nuriego Bilge Ceylana

Domalewski Adam, Portret młodego pisarza oraz nawiązania do twórczości Antona Czechowa w Dzikiej gruszy Nuriego Bilge Ceylana [Portrait of a Young Writer and References to European Literature in Nuri Bilge Ceylan’s The Wild Pear Tree]. „Przestrzenie Teorii” 32. Poznań 2019, Adam Mickiewicz University Press, pp. 343–355. ISSN 1644-6763. DOI 10.14746/pt.2019.32.18.
 The article focuses on topics related to literature, especially to the works of Anton Chekhov, in the latest film by Nuri Bilge Ceylan The Wild Pear Tree. Its main character, Sinan, is a young writer, while the film is set in the province of Çanakkale, where ancient Troy was located. The analysis of the picture shows that the director refers to the historicity of the myth of the Trojan War with distrust. Instead, Ceylan portrays a local community immersed in intellectual stagnation and creates his hero as an extremely unlikeable misanthropist, to whom literature cannot bring fulfillment. The character of his father, Idris, introduces another ancient motif to the film – the figure of Sisyphus. The relationship between father and son, which deepens in the finale, brings an unexpected note of optimism to the picture, which in its dramaturgy resembles Anton Chekhov’s literary worlds.

The First World War and the Myth of the Young Man's War in Western Europe

During and after the First World War, authors in several of the main belligerent nations presented the war as a young man's war. The young man's war proved to be a powerful trope, and a myth emerged about the typical trench soldier as handsome, white, and eighteen. In this article, I examine literature about the Great War across several nations – primarily Germany, Great Britain, and France – to demonstrate how and why youth became embedded in the collective memory and representation of the war. I argue, in part, that notions of youth in the early twentieth century allowed participating nations to emphasise innocence and tragedy, claiming the moral high ground in the process. As a result, it is now difficult to accurately depict the First World War soldiers as fathers as well as sons, husbands as well as fiancés, men with careers as well as boys fresh from school. The generation of 1914 must be conceived more broadly, which would disallow easy teleologies to later tragic events in the 1930s.

Exceptionalism, metaphor and hybrid warfare

ABSTRACTI argue that, in American public discourse after the attacks of 9/11, the myth of World War II has become the dominant justificatory metaphor for the United States’ (already metaphorical) War on Terror, as broad-brushed analogies between the ‘Good War’ and recent US military adventures in Africa and the Middle East implicitly transfer the ethical values associated in national memory with America’s iconic just war onto our contemporary conflicts and counterinsurgencies. My examination of recent political and strategic discourses and practices suggests, specifically, that the ideological entrenchment the World War II metaphor has helped to shape a language of national security that rests on an unacknowledged logical and ethical contradiction: a tendency, on the one hand, to tout the humanitarianism of current asymmetrical military actions relative to the degenerate total-war engagements of the past yet, on the other hand, to figure the aims and strategies of today’s low-intensity operations in terms that are more appropriate to total warfare, for which the ‘Good War’ serves as moral alibi. By collapsing historical time and erasing, along with it, crucial distinctions between the conflicts that it brings together, this anachronistic cross-mapping of ethically and strategically incompatible structures of violence serves to naturalise what I call a hybrid culture of warfare, a fetishistic conception and practice of war that regressively mimics features of the total-war ethos while also testing the laws of war in unprecedented ways, through the use and the abuse of new weapons technologies.

Artistic features of the novel «Banner-bearers» by O. Honchar

Purpose of the study. The article is dedicated to the peculiarities of the embodiment of the phenomenon of lyricism and the social myth in the novel-trilogy "The Standard-bearers" by O. Gonchar. Research methods. The article used descriptive-analytical, cultural-historical, myth-critical methods. Scientific novelty. It is proved that O. Gonchar created the novel “Standard-bearers”, guided by the attitudes of social realism and taking into account the need to create the official myth of war from time to time. It has been established that an important component for the reconstruction of the writer's ideological and aesthetic idea in the novel “Bearers” is lyricism, associated primarily with the indepth disclosure of the inner world of the individual. Findings. O. Gonchar gives an artistic vision of the war in the novel “Znommannosetsy” almost without departing from the socialist realistic canon, but the peculiarity of lyricism lends the work aesthetic value.

The Myth of the Cold War: Is 1991 Really a Turning Point for the Neutrality of International Law Regarding Democratic Governance?

This paper submits that the end of the Cold War does not constitute a pivotal moment regarding international law’s neutrality towards governmental change. It challenges the historical narrative whereby the fall of the Berlin Wall and the demise of the Soviet Union created a sea change in the neutrality of international law concerning forms of government. Proponents of a right to democratic governance have long argued that following the Cold War, international law is no longer agnostic in regard to the way in which a government comes into being. Against this backdrop, the paper sheds light on the limits of the mainstream Cold War narrative of democratic governance theory as advanced by Franck and Fox. It suggests that there has always been continuity in State practice that was not disrupted by 1991 and, therefore, the Cold War and post-Cold War dichotomy relies on a false ground. First, the paper questions the reasons for the common use of this simplistic dichotomy. Then, it explores pre-1991 practice and examines cases where unconstitutional changes of government have been subject to debate. Finally, it analyses post-Cold War practices and focuses on military coups. Since a blind condemnation of military coups seems to be a remote possibility due to the diversity of States’ political interests in the present-day context, this paper argues that trying to anchor the emergence of democratic governance in international law to the end of the Cold War is a pragmatic and artificial construction to explain the notion of neutrality in international law.

Senses of an Ending

It is possible to read Peter Carey’s short story, Concerning the Greek Tyrant, as an adaptation of one of the first grand achievements of the occidental storytelling tradition: The Iliad. When creating one of his “what–if” 1 stories from the raw material of the various myths of the Trojan War, Carey turns the Homeric story on its head, simultaneously challenging concepts central to the latest theories of narrative fiction, such as the question of narrative sequence, shifts in the narrative perspective, the representation of temporal experience, and the technique of metanarrative. When uprooting the myth of the Trojan war from the “lost order of time” and making it a story of “the here and now”, 2 Carey joins an almost three-thousand-year-long tradition while breaking away from it simultaneously. The paper aims to examine a manifest duality of the textual actions 3 in Concerning the Greek Tyrant. Its historical plot 4 appears to be a realistic adaptation of a few of the closing events of the war as reconstructed from a variety of sources on the one hand, and a narrative of how Homer suffers from writer’s block on the other. On the linguistic level of narration, however, the text is permeated by irony, a mastertrope (Burke 1945) whose dialectic nature further enhances the aforementioned duality, and helps the various dimensions of the text reflect and comment on each other.

The Myth of the Optional War: Why States Are Required to Wage the Wars They Are Permitted to Wage

Philosophy & Public AffairsVolume 43, Issue 4 p. 255-286 Original Article The Myth of the Optional War: Why States Are Required to Wage the Wars They Are Permitted to Wage KIERAN OBERMAN, KIERAN OBERMANSearch for more papers by this author KIERAN OBERMAN, KIERAN OBERMANSearch for more papers by this author First published: 10 December 2015 https://doi.org/10.1111/papa.12063Citations: 8 I presented this article to Edinburgh University's Political Theory Research Group and received helpful feedback. I am also grateful to Alfred Archer, Daniel Butt, Philip Cook, Elizabeth Cripps, Christina Dineen, Holly Lawford-Smith, Alan Oberman, David Rodin, and Victor Tadros for their suggestions on various drafts. The insightful comments of the two reviewers transformed the article for the better. Particular thanks are owed to Jonathan Parry, James Stazicker, and Patrick Tomlin for multiple conversations and invaluable advice. Read the full textAboutPDF ToolsRequest permissionExport citationAdd to favoritesTrack citation ShareShare Give accessShare full text accessShare full-text accessPlease review our Terms and Conditions of Use and check box below to share full-text version of article.I have read and accept the Wiley Online Library Terms and Conditions of UseShareable LinkUse the link below to share a full-text version of this article with your friends and colleagues. Learn more.Copy URL Share a linkShare onFacebookTwitterLinkedInRedditWechat Citing Literature Volume43, Issue4Fall 2015Pages 255-286 RelatedInformation

Rupert Brooke’s Neo-Paganism

Rupert Brooke (1887-1915) embodies the myth of the Great War but after his sudden death his war poems tended to be disapproved of. His pre war Georgian lines are also dismissed on account of their effete pestoralism and alleged escapism. It seemed as if both the critics and the audience simply failed to understand the subtext of his poems that reveals a magnificent spiritual pilgrimage undertaken by a poet in the age of anxiety. In search of the calm point of his tumultuous universe Brook varies different symbolic patterns and groups of symbols thus disclosing the lasting change of his poetic sensibility that range from purely pagan denial of urban values and the unrestrained blasphemy up to the true Christian piety. Our analysis affirms him the true modernist poet, a cosmopolitan mind, always apt to accumulate new experiences and it is certain that his work will be seen in quite a new light in the decades to come.