Showing papers in "Rethinking History in 2012"
TL;DR: In this paper, a praxeological perspective is proposed for analysing emotions and affects that simultaneously pays attention to artefacts and to space, and integrates all of these as basic components of sociality and avoids the pitfall of their complete culturalisation and that of their total naturalisation.
Abstract: Classical social and cultural theory disregards the spatial and affective dimensions of social phenomena because of its anti-technological and anti-aesthetic bias. The first part of my paper digs into the reasons for this ignorance. Against this background, the second part outlines an alternative conceptual proposal, which I label a praxeological perspective. This approach offers a framework for analysing emotions and affects that simultaneously pays attention to artefacts and to space. It integrates all of these as basic components of sociality and, by doing so, avoids both the pitfall of their complete culturalisation and that of their total naturalisation. The aim is to achieve a basic ‘aesthetisation’ and ‘materialisation’ of cultural theory, instead. The third part, finally, illuminates the interconnection between emotions and space and argues that in order to explain the cultural change of affective structures in history, the analysis of the emergence of new artefact-space complexes is indispensable.
220 citations
TL;DR: Rethinking History as mentioned in this paper explores the history of emotions and examines community-based or spatially defined emotional styles that were simultaneously performed within larger socio-cultural contexts, such as colonial South Asia around 1900 and diverging modes of thinking about, handling, generating and expressing emotions that prevail in work-, leisure, or consumption spaces within contemporary Berlin.
Abstract: This themed issue intends to open up new vistas on the history of emotions. It does so with articles that examine community-based or spatially defined emotional styles that were simultaneously performed within larger socio-cultural contexts. Following this approach one might – for example – discern ‘Muslim’, ‘Hindu’, ‘British’ and ‘Anglo-Indian’ emotional styles within colonial South Asia around 1900 as well as diverging modes of thinking about, handling, generating and expressing emotions that prevail in work-, leisure- or consumption-spaces within contemporary Berlin. As the contributors to this issue demonstrate, capturing these multiplicities of co-existing styles and analysing their interactions enhances our understanding of the diachronic variability and synchronic diversity of emotional patterns and practices. Put differently, this issue of Rethinking History seeks to expand the scope of previous approaches that were informed by rather monolithic understandings of emotionality.1 Pursuing this agend...
106 citations
TL;DR: This article explored how material culture directly influences the interpretation of sport and history, with an emphasis on various ways the sporting body expresses values, beliefs, ideals, and attitudes in the past.
Abstract: This themed issue explores how material culture directly influences the interpretation of sport and history, with an emphasis on various ways the sporting body expresses values, beliefs, ideals and attitudes in the past. Artifacts, the built environment and cultural spaces in sport form a significant element in the approaches to understanding historical experiences in the scholarly essays in this volume. Material culture, the human imprint on the environment, cultural landscapes and waterscapes illuminate sport history over time and in diverse contexts. The importance of artifacts, cultural spaces and the body, as depicted in these essays, show that material culture matters in interpreting the sporting past.
28 citations
TL;DR: The authors explored the visibility of movement aesthetics in Britain during the 1930s through the activities of the League of Health and Beauty and its mother-daughter leaders, Mary Bagot Stack and Prunella Stack.
Abstract: Techniques of the body, claimed Marcel Mauss in 1935, were the vehicle societies employed to express their values. Arguing that politics goes nowhere without movement, this paper explores the visibility of movement aesthetics in Britain during the 1930s through the activities of the League of Health and Beauty and its mother–daughter leaders, Mary Bagot Stack and Prunella Stack. It argues that Mary Bagot Stack's introduction of yoga to the League's keep fit activities encouraged an element of female agency and embodied freedom that was diminished as Prunella's concerns were drawn increasingly toward national imperatives of fitness regimentation modeled upon fascist physical training schemes in Europe.
25 citations
TL;DR: A revealing moment in Italian history, during which a court of law in Rome became a complex arena of emotions, was investigated in this article, where divergent communities' styles were adjudicated as part of an attempt to establish more uniform emotional standards for a relatively new polity.
Abstract: This article investigates a revealing moment in Italian history, during which a court of law in Rome became a complex arena of emotions. Building on Barbara Rosenwein's concept of ‘emotional communities', the analysis presents the trial as an episode in which divergent communities' styles were adjudicated as part of an attempt to establish more uniform emotional standards for a relatively new polity. The murder victim, a circumspect official based in the capital, and his assassin, an exuberant circus acrobat from the distant provinces, represented different communities within the national fabric, and embodied opposite ends of the emotional spectrum. The court exalted the victim's self-control and condemned the murderer's unmediated emotional exploits. Yet, the trial was not a simple object lesson in restraint vanquishing emotion. Instead, the analysis focuses on the way the state, eager to garner the legitimacy deriving from keen public participation in its processes, trod a fine line between the sober de...
23 citations
TL;DR: The authors argued that thanks to the influence on him of the Hollywood studio environment that had come into operation in California in the 1920s, Walt Disney's animation experiments were intimately linked with his increasing efforts to fashion an emotional environment that would transfer the emotions associated with animation and motion pictures to 3D reality, providing both childre...
Abstract: Walt Disney is arguably the most influential figure in the twentieth-century affair with animation. Although he is known for his innovations in personality animation and the full-length animation film, he is no less famous as the creator of the first theme park, Disneyland. Less well-known are his forays into the creation of educational institutions and urban landscapes. This paper argues that the notion of ‘emotional environments’, culled from contemporary research in the growing field of the history of emotions, might prove the most effective tool for interpreting the overall character of Disney's work or oeuvre. The paper argues that thanks to the influence on him of the Hollywood studio environment that had come into operation in California in the 1920s, Disney's animation experiments were intimately linked with his increasing efforts to fashion an emotional environment that would transfer the emotions associated with animation and motion pictures to three-dimensional realities, providing both childre...
21 citations
TL;DR: In this paper, the authors compare and analyze the theories of Frank Ankersmit and Eelco Runia and highlight their most important resemblances and differences with respect to the character of this past and the role representation plays in making it present.
Abstract: This paper consists of two parts. In the first part, I give an in-depth comparison and analysis of the theories of Frank Ankersmit and Eelco Runia, in which I highlight their most important resemblances and differences. What both have in common is their notion of the presence of the past as a ‘presence in absence’. They differ, however, with respect to the character of this past and the role representation plays in making it present. Second, I also argue that for both Ankersmit and Runia, the presence of the past is always the present of our past, which excludes the experience of the otherness of the past, and which opens both theories to the criticisms of being self-centered and nationalistic.
21 citations
TL;DR: In this paper, a necro-cultural study explores the way in which such tombstones expressed sporting meaning and emphasises the importance of context, and uses iconology and iconography to deconstruct the tombstones' images and their interactions with accompanying inscriptions.
Abstract: Following the death of a sportsperson, his or her tombstone sometimes became a highly significant material form, publicly summarising and commemorating past sporting life. This necro-cultural study explores the way in which such tombstones expressed sporting meaning. It emphasises the importance of context, and uses iconology and iconography to deconstruct the tombstones’ images and their interactions with accompanying inscriptions. It examines the problems associated with determining their commissioning and production, and the ways they shed light on themes such as class, gender, religious faith and sporting fame. Cemeteries provide a context for the examination of key questions about the changing reception of such memorials over time. The paper concludes by arguing that such material sources and locations can usefully engage with sports’ history and cultural commemoration, and can stimulate a more critical appreciation of its historical impact.
18 citations
TL;DR: The authors argue that the increasing turn to emotions potentially confronts us with our exposure to what they call "unproductively circumscribe our understanding of self, thereby constraining the possibilities for our 'becoming otherwise' (Butler 2004, 173).
Abstract: Focusing upon emotion entails a potential challenge, both to hegemonic notions of the human subject and to social inquiry. That challenge consists in the opportunity afforded by research on emotion to radicalize the decentering of the subject that is at the heart of poststructuralist theorizing. An opportunity in virtue of which certain biases that continue to be instantiated in contemporary theorizations of the subject – poststructuralist ones included – could be overcome: namely, biases towards the cognitive as well as the active, as against the passive-receptive, dimensions of being alive. These biases, I argue, unproductively circumscribe our understanding of self, thereby constraining the possibilities for our ‘becoming otherwise’ (Butler 2004, 173); an endeavor I would define as being at the heart of poststructuralism qua transformative ethical project. In particular, I address several writings by Butler to argue that the increasing turn to emotions potentially confronts us with our exposure to what...
17 citations
TL;DR: A history of the common law in verse can be found in this paper, where the authors present a history of common law poetry in verse, including the following sentences:...
Abstract: Excerpts from a history of the common law in verse.
17 citations
TL;DR: In this paper, the authors discuss authoring as a practice in which historians with their political, ideological and ethical dispositions and beliefs mobilize and translate evidence from the past and create narratives, that is, constitute the past as history.
Abstract: ‘History’, Alun Munslow (2010, 148) reminds us, ‘is primarily an authoring activity’. In this article I discuss authoring as a practice in which historians with their political, ideological and ethical dispositions and beliefs mobilize and translate evidence from the past and create narratives, that is, constitute the past as history. My particular interest in authoring concerns the choices historians make around epistemology, content, context, argument, politics and ethics. As the title reveals, I use surfing as a subject matter to illustrate the practice of authoring. The article comprises seven stories: ‘Indicators’, ‘Angourie’, ‘Llandudno’, ‘Beach break’, ‘Jeffreys Bay’, ‘Cazane’ and ‘Burleigh Heads’. (The titles are renowned surf breaks, waterscapes, where material and affective bodies interact with the surf and each other, and sites of experiences which drive the stories.) In ‘Indicators’, I introduce myself as an author and surfer; I mediate the remaining stories, which were told by other surfers. ...
TL;DR: This paper developed an innovative methodology by which a film's contribution to historical discourse can be examined at several points in its theatrical and non-theatrical life cycle by combining an analysis of unpublished draft scripts (1984-86), promotion and reception materials from the time of the film's original 1986 release and special features included on its latest DVD incarnation, Platoon: 20th Anniversary Edition.
Abstract: In recent years, historians and film scholars such as Robert Rosenstone, Robert Burgoyne, Natalie Zemon Davis and J.E. Smyth have developed valuable new approaches to the analysis of historical films. While their methods and conclusions differ, all provide nuanced accounts of the ways that certain films and filmmakers can, in Rosenstone's words, ‘intersect with, comment upon, and add something to the larger discourse of history out of which they grow and to which they speak’ (Rosenstone 2006, 39). This essay builds upon such works, and develops an innovative methodology by which a film's contribution to historical discourse can be examined at several points in its theatrical and non-theatrical life cycle. I focus on Oliver Stone's much-discussed Vietnam drama, Platoon. Combining an analysis of unpublished draft scripts (1984–86), promotion and reception materials from the time of the film's original 1986 release and special features included on its latest DVD incarnation, Platoon: 20th Anniversary Edition...
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TL;DR: Time and history together were reflected in calls to acknowledge the multiple species of time (Castoriadis 1991), the ‘different historical temporalities living the same historical time' (Althusser Rethinking History Vol. 16, No. 2, June 2012, 303-317 as mentioned in this paper ).
Abstract: To begin with the claim that time has recently become a central topic of academic interest is to immediately confront the counterclaim: when has time not been on the agenda? Putting aside venerable religious and philosophical reflections on the meaning of time, it seems safe to say that an intensification of thinking about time usually accompanies changing experiences of time. For example, it has long been commonplace that the proliferation of railways and railway timetables, the institution of World Standard Time, and the invention of the wireless telegraph, cinema, automobile and modern forms of warfare have all led to a profound reflection on the meaning of time in the period from 1880 to WWI (Kern [1983] 2003; Deeds Ermarth 1992). One need only list a few of the most obvious luminaries of the period – Proust, Picasso, Bergson, Heisenberg, Einstein, Durkheim – to realize the extent to which narratives of modernity are also narratives about the modernization of time. Similarly, the period 1950–1970 corresponds both to a high point in the temporal synchronization of society and to a renewed scrutiny on the function of time on the part of a number of thinkers (Glennie and Thrift 1996, 258). If the generation of high modernists reacted to the increasing objectification of time in everyday life, the post WWII generation responded to what was simultaneously an increasing globalization of time and a fragmentation of Western narratives of modernity, in which the movements of decolonization played no small part. This attempt to consider time and history together was reflected in calls to acknowledge the ‘multiple species of time’ (Castoriadis 1991), the ‘different historical temporalities living the same historical time’ (Althusser Rethinking History Vol. 16, No. 2, June 2012, 303–317
TL;DR: In this paper, the intersection of space, culture and the moving body in Tel Aviv during the British Mandate of Palestine is investigated, through analysis of a variety of developments in the physical culture arena, uncovering how the burgeoning metropolis both drew from and shaped the physical environment.
Abstract: This article investigates the intersection of space, culture and the moving body in Tel Aviv during the British Mandate of Palestine. Established in 1909 as a garden suburb of Jaffa, by the 1920s Tel Aviv had become the dynamic cultural and economic center of the Jewish community in Palestine. The culture of Tel Aviv was highly influenced by its natural setting but, as the ‘first Hebrew city’, it was also impacted by the processes of urbanization. Through analysis of a variety of developments in the physical culture arena, this article uncovers how the burgeoning metropolis both drew from and shaped the physical environment.
TL;DR: The authors make a case for considering the college crush as an example of a distinctively modern emotional style, produced within the specific emotional communities of single-sex educational institutions rather than as evidence of lesbian identity or of a phase on a developmental path to normative heterosexuality.
Abstract: This article explores the difference that a focus on emotion makes to the writing of history. Using as a case study the widespread phenomenon of the ‘College crush’, it makes a case for considering the crush as an example of a distinctively modern emotional style, produced within the specific emotional communities of single-sex educational institutions rather than as ‘evidence’ of lesbian identity or of a phase on a developmental path to normative heterosexuality. The shift to considering the ontology of the ‘crush’ is enabled by the more flexible framework of the history of emotions. This contrasts with research on sexuality, which is underpinned by teleological notions of identity, biography and history.
TL;DR: The Ties That Bind as discussed by the authors is an example of such a work, where a mother questions her mother's spoken memories, and commenting on them, forcing a rupture in the evidence of history and establishing a place in which to "speak" herself.
Abstract: This article argues that Su Friedrich's 1984 film The Ties That Bind employs what were at the time atypical forms and techniques to push the limits of the traditional historical documentary. Its aesthetic experimentation helps to redefine the idea of historical representation in film, and does so mainly by treating evidence as both partial (in both senses of the word) and contingent, offering a radical challenge to normative history and destabilizing the notion of history as authority. Unlike conventional documentaries, the film marks its own limitations: its inability to provide stable answers or eternal certainties. Questioning her mother's spoken memories, and commenting on them, Friedrich forces a rupture in the ‘evidence' of history and establishes a place in which to ‘speak’ herself. By including the past that her mother is talking about on the sound track, as well as the present on the image track (such as images of her mother's life in the early 1980s, images of intertitles etched into the film em...
TL;DR: The Historian Mark II as mentioned in this paper is a time machine with a number of important restrictions, the most important of which is that the experiment must be defined in such a way as to uphold the ontological distinction between past and present.
Abstract: In this essay, I present a thought experiment involving what I've called the Historian Mark II, roughly a time machine, but with a number of important restrictions. The most important of these restrictions is that the experiment must be defined in such a way as to uphold the ontological distinction between past and present. This permits a re-examination of the consequences of the past being past and in so doing also hopefully assists in clarifying various mystifications in recent discussions relating to the accessibility of the past. Although underscoring the past's pastness necessarily leads to some tautological arguments, it seems necessary to take this route as these issues have been repeatedly overlooked. The central contribution of the experiment is to redirect attention to the concepts of lived experience and experientiality as well as to the quite different functions and deployment of agency in these.
TL;DR: In this article, Deller's work encompasses social memory, folk art, re-enactment, situationist polemic and a dedicated interest in art as a social form of political engagement.
Abstract: Jeremy Deller is one of the most important – and influential – British artists working today. His work encompasses social memory, folk art, re-enactment, situationist polemic and a dedicated interest in art as a social form of political engagement. This interview introduces his work and explores some of his key ideas. He is particularly interesting to those working in the field of history for his continuing engagement with memory, re-enactment, the nature of the artefact, and the ways in which the past is produced (and reproduced) in popular culture. Images and video from all of Deller's work are available here: http://www.jeremydeller.org
TL;DR: The drive south to the border between the province of Quebec and the state of Maine is lonely as mentioned in this paper, as the houses fall away and there's nothing on the road but a few log trucks, hauling fallen trees.
Abstract: The drive south to the border between the province of Quebec and the state of Maine is lonely. Gradually the houses fall away and there's nothing on the road but a few log trucks, hauling fallen tr...
TL;DR: Maninbo (10,000 Lives) as discussed by the authors is a 30-volume series of poems published between 1986 and 2010, which represents a meeting point between history and literature and can be seen either as historical writing in the form of poetry or as a literary narrative with historical content.
Abstract: Maninbo (10,000 Lives), Ko Un's 30-volume series of poems published between 1986 and 2010, represents a meeting point between history and literature. It can be seen either as historical writing in the form of poetry or as a literary narrative with historical content. The poet reconstructs the entire scheme of Korean history through the life-stories of numerous individuals, thus transforming their lived experiences into narrated history. Maninbo bears some characteristics of social biography, which is one way of writing history. However, it differs from other styles of social biography in its poetic sketches of thousands of individuals, which ultimately comprise a grand mosaic of Korean history. As a social biography, Maninbo reveals the ideals underlying modern Korean society: national independence, democracy, desire for reunification, and, most of all, humanism.
TL;DR: In this article, the authors set in coincidence two historical junctures: medieval and contemporary: the medieval moment occurs in the thirteenth-century reign of Alfonso X of Castile-Leon, while the contemporary moment is set in Spain during the recent war in Iraq; both are suffused with colonial/neo-colonial violence and tension.
Abstract: This essay sets in coincidence two historical junctures – medieval and contemporary. The medieval moment occurs in the thirteenth-century reign of Alfonso X of Castile-Leon, while the contemporary moment is set in Spain during the recent war in Iraq; both are suffused with colonial/neo-colonial violence and tension. The two are brought together by a historian's search for Maria Perez, a figure who appears as a courtesan in the satirical lyrics of the cantigas d'escarnho e mal dizer [songs of mockery and slander]. The conjuncture of these moments is framed within a brief, half-hour train journey from Alcala de Henares to Atocha, the southern train terminus in Madrid: the same route chosen by the terrorists responsible for the 2004 commuter rail bombings.
TL;DR: In this article, the authors put forward several counterfactual situations based on the sex and health of Henry's male and female children that could have had profound implications for English policy and the monarchy.
Abstract: The frustrations of Henry VIII in his search for a male heir are well documented in historical research and in popular culture, with everything from soap operas to mnemonics tracing his destructive relationships with his six wives (The Tudors and the ever-unsettling ‘divorced, beheaded, died; divorced, beheaded, survived’). Such attention is justified, as Henry's decision to break away from the Roman Catholic Church in his quest for his first divorce was the catalyst for decades of religious and political strife, domestically and internationally. But what if his first son had lived? What if one of his daughters had been a boy instead? This essay puts forward several counterfactual situations based on the sex and health of Henry's male and female children that could have had profound implications for English policy and the monarchy, and explores a facet of counterfactual research – biological chance – that has previously been underrepresented. An earlier version of this essay was handwritten and presented...
TL;DR: Paul's book on the work of Hayden White draws out the interpretations Paul makes of White's seminal work, Metahistory as discussed by the authors, and applauds Paul's endeavor to provide a systematic context for White's overall oeuvre.
Abstract: This essay-review of H. Paul's book on the work of Hayden White draws out the interpretations Paul makes of White's seminal work, Metahistory. This essay-review applauds Paul's endeavor to provide a systematic context for White's overall oeuvre. The second section focuses on the politics of professional historiography, or the frequent confusion between politics and profession in matters historical and historiographical.
TL;DR: In this article, Bettina Bildhauer's rigorously argued and researched book proposes that "Filming the Middle Ages" can be viewed as a kind of "film-making".
Abstract: Filming the Middle Ages, by Bettina Bildhauer, London, Reaktion Books, 2011, 264 pp., £25.00 (hardback), ISBN 9781861898081. Bettina Bildhauer's rigorously argued and researched book proposes that ...
TL;DR: In the British colony of Singapore, a Siamese man, Manit, shot his beloved British wife, Maude, and allegedly attempted suicide as discussed by the authors, and the court ultimately acquitted him of any wrongdoing.
Abstract: In 1900, in the British colony of Singapore, a Siamese man, Manit, shot his beloved British wife, Maude, and allegedly attempted suicide. Several competing interpretations of the incident exist. In one, Manit is considered a deranged and treacherous fraud; in another, he is a pitiable cuckold; in the third, he is a respectable gentleman suffering from unrequited love. Surprisingly, given the racialized context of high imperialism in Southeast Asia, the British in Singapore came to empathize with the Asian Manit as a lovelorn gentleman and to disavow their own countrywoman. The court ultimately acquitted him of any wrongdoing. This article considers the competing interpretations and explains why a seemingly race-blind one prevailed. It reviews genealogical records, personal letters, newspaper accounts of court proceedings, and internal Thai government internal records, which provide unusually rich documentation of a romance that crossed national, cultural, and racial boundaries and created surprising trans...
TL;DR: In 2006, the Jewish community of Cairo, Egypt buried one of its own in the ancient cemetery of Bassatine, and the resulting funeral mirrored both the life and death of the community itself as discussed by the authors.
Abstract: In August of 2006, the Jewish community of Cairo, Egypt buried one of its own in the ancient cemetery of Bassatine. Without enough Jews still alive to perform the prescribed rites, the resulting funeral mirrored both the life and death of the Jewish community itself. In thinking about the interplay between historical research and personal experience, this essay details the death and funeral service, paying special attention to the performance of ritual within a community that is itself dying out. It then contemplates the complexity of individual Egyptian Jewish lives and the subsequent important role of death in connecting, organizing, and categorizing the living.
TL;DR: In this article, a group of women from the Michoacan village of Ario Santa Monica who invaded the local church and danced in a post-revolutionary Mexican world where women, long denied equality before the law, were suddenly courted by church and state.
Abstract: Inviting readers to enter the post-revolutionary Mexican world where women, long denied equality before the law, were suddenly courted by church and state, this article focuses on a group of women from the Michoacan village of Ario Santa Monica who invaded the local church and danced. Informed by oral history interviews and explorations of sensibility and embodiment, multiple versions of that dance emerge. They include the dance devised by the women's critics, that of the timid woman reminding us through her dance that history is at times made by the reticent, and that of the dancer hounded from the village. Finally, using a form suited to inner experience, the dance emerges again in the accompanying poem, ‘The Most Languid, Untold Pleasure'.
TL;DR: Beck as discussed by the authors argues that the emergence of public history has improved society's historical literacy, in the sense that all these presenters aim to entertain, and entertainment is the first step to developing other kinds of engagement with the past.
Abstract: genre. The two remaining subjects sit rather less comfortably with Beck’s theme. Joan Scott, for all her engagement with the women’s movement, is not a populariser, and to treat her as a public historian stretches the category to breaking point. David Irving is an anomaly for quite different reasons. Beck offers a detailed analysis of his views and their refutation in the Lipstadt libel case. But Irving’s deliberate flouting of the basic principles of historical scholarship disqualifies him as a public historian. In a study of public history it would be more constructive to focus on the work that bona fide historians have done in keeping the memory of the Holocaust alive. Beck asks ‘has the emergence of public history improved society’s historical literacy?’ (p. 297). The answer is surely affirmative, in the sense that all these presenters aim to entertain, and entertainment is the first step to developing other kinds of engagement with the past. But to go further than this common denominator is not easy, given the very wide net which Beck casts. What this book primarily tells us is how presenters have achieved their impact and what compromises (if any) they have had to make with historical scholarship. But I suspect that a satisfying answer will not be given until we have a fuller understanding of why the public values history. Entertainment is only part of its appeal. Anchorage in a historically validated social identity is obviously another reason why history has a secure audience. Less often recognised (and barely mentioned by Beck) is that lay people are open to the critical perspective which historical scholarship can offer on public issues of the day. For now, though, we should be grateful to Peter Beck for a nuanced, thoughtful and superbly documented study of public history as currently practised in Britain.
TL;DR: Chazelle, Doubleday, Lifshitz, and Remensnyder as discussed by the authors have published Why the Middle Ages matter: medieval light on modern injustice, edited by C. Chazelle et al., 2011, Routledge, 2011, vii++ 208 pp., US$29.72 (paperback),...
Abstract: Why the Middle Ages matter: medieval light on modern injustice, edited by C. Chazelle, S. Doubleday, F. Lifshitz and A.G. Remensnyder, London, Routledge, 2011, vii + 208 pp., US$29.72 (paperback), ...