Search results
The texts of Henry V Is Henry V better understood as a ‘memory play’ than as a ‘history play’? The former category has helped to define the concerns of modern (and post-modern) drama; it may prove equally fertile for Renaissance theatre. 1 Perceiving Shakespeare’s play as ‘memorial’ would supplant
10 The construction of a socio-political memory Two thousand years of history Could not be wiped away so easily Two thousand years of history, black history Could not be wiped so easily. Bob Marley & the Wailers, “Zion train,” 1980 – But wait, nobody no left? – It’s only we Rasta. Steel Pulse, “Tribute to the martyrs,” 1979 Reggae music expresses a central will: the recognition of a history of struggle, against slavery, segregation, and colonization. This history starts with the slave trade and is in permanent and continuous construction; while it is logically
The shape of memory: Forced removals in Port Elizabeth Port Elizabeth, like all South African cities, has been indelibly shaped by forced removals, many of which long predate the infamous Group Areas Act of 1950. The earliest of these were the ‘location’ removals of the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries under British rule. Displacement was a regular feature of twentieth-century life in the city, under the auspices of ‘slum clearance’ and an ostensibly liberal housing policy for those streaming into the city in the face of rural displacement and
7 Men’s memories of the Home Guard Wartime political rhetoric proclaimed confidently that the Home Guard was formed in an upsurge of patriotic passion to defend Britain against invasion, and that within two years it had become an effective military force. As we have seen, political leaders depicted it as a symbol of national unity and a key component of the British war effort, expressive of the wartime ethos of being ‘all in it together’ and providing opportunities for civilian men to ‘do their bit’. Such representations were widely disseminated in wartime
2 Stowe’s sunny memories of Highland slavery Judie Newman [They], counting the natives as their slaves and their prey, disposed without scruple of them and all that they had, just as it suited their own interest or convenience, reckless of the wrongs and misery they inflicted on these simple, unresisting people . . . removed from their comfortable houses and farms in the interior.1 An almost sublime instance of the benevolent employment of superior wealth and power in shortening the struggles of advancing civilisation.2 Two descriptions of the same system: one
The revenge of memory has been slow … If the problem in Western Europe has been a shortage of memory, in the continent’s other half … there is too much memory. Tony Judt, ‘The Past is Another Country’ (1992) Questioning the classic narrative Transnationally shared collective memories of war and suffering – framed in terms of the rupture of 1945, which allowed for a re-evaluation of existing narratives and the creation of new ways of linking past and future to the present – have played an important role in ‘imagining Europe’ ever since it was first
2 • Early modern violence from memory to history: a historiographical essay ethan h. shagan The seventeenth century is alive in Ireland in ways like few other places in the modern world. People, places and events from that distant past – the Flight of the Earls, the 1641 massacres, Oliver and Drogheda, William and the Boyne – still have meaning in popular culture, still inform public debates and still elicit strong emotional responses. This unique configuration is both a blessing and a curse to the business of professional history. On the one hand, it gives
later I was in England and I went to see Freddy. This was in the Spring. There was a summer to go before things would begin at Sussex. I was to return to tie things up in Canada and then come back. That meeting is vivid in my memory. Freddy conveyed to me the excitement not just of scholarship but about being in a new department and pushing the boundaries of what social
10 Sweden, military intervention and the loss of memory Annika Bergman Rosamond and Christine Agius Introduction Since the 1990s, Sweden has gradually changed from a neutral country to one that is ‘militarily non-aligned.’ It has taken active part in international peace operations under the command of NATO and the EU, and contributed forces to operations in Kosovo, Afghanistan and Libya. In 2015 Sweden also set aside resources to train Kurdish troops in Northern Iraq in the fight against ISIS (Dagens Nyheter 2015). At the 2014 NATO Summit in Warsaw, Sweden
The dreams of the future move in the temporal dimension of past life, fed by memory … out of which all wishes and hopes are deduced. Reinhart Koselleck, Terror and Dream (2004) Critical theory and collective memory 1 Over the course of the second half of the twentieth century, collective memory has become a central concept in the humanities and the social sciences. 2 Its surge in scholarly importance coincides with a number of broader social movements, most notably the student revolts of 1968, when the first generation that came of age in the