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This book is about the ways in which the Holocaust has been rendered and represented as History. From court-rooms to history books, efforts to grapple with and award meaning to the genocide of the Jews, in historical terms, have been a consistent feature of post-war intellectual culture and it is these representations that are the subject of the book. The book confronts the first attempts to form historical narratives of the murder of the European Jews per se. It finds a discourse that is as much concerned with the moral politics of judgement in the post-war world as it is with the Shoah. The book also breaks the narrative of the development of the history of the perpetrators. It argues that once it had been created by historians, others began to ask how institutions and individuals external to Nazi-occupied Europe had responded to the Holocaust. Again a divided historiography is uncovered, and again the divisions are as much concerned with what does and does not constitute legitimate historical enquiry as with the issues of responses to the Holocaust themselves. The book further deals with the victims and survivors - who were often excluded from more general Holocaust narratives. An analysis of work on the testimonies of surviving victims finds that debates about how best to use this material are in essence a discourse concerned with the moral possibilities of history-writing.
Strategy of 2017 proposes that ‘the American way of life cannot be imposed upon others, nor is it the inevitable culmination of progress’ ( White House, 2017: 4 ). Renouncing progressive historical narratives, the Trump administration signals the end of the ‘American century’ and discards the particular universalism that has sustained liberal order. Posing direct, if distinct, challenges to US power, China and Russia do not seek to create an alternative to the multilateral system. On the contrary, they now become defenders of the institutions
photographs are projected onto the giant sculpture of a foot, used here for an aesthetic effect that generates its own kind of a ‘pornography of pain’ ( Halttunen, 1995 ). In terms of historical narrative, the emphasis on immersive scenography creates the problem that the new exhibit now draws less focused attention to history as such. One learns much on the usual key dates of the movement, but gets comparatively little historical information on Red Cross campaigns and actions
approach knowledge production by recognising knowledge systems traditionally not valued within the boundaries of conventional social science research. At their best, participatory approaches to arts-based research also aim to confer greater ownership over historical narratives and dominant discourses to those directly affected by the events or phenomena in focus. This article explores some of the challenges, learnings, reflections and opportunities involved in collaborating with
historical narratives of humanitarians may indeed be beneficial in helping the sector to critically reflect on its past as a way of underscoring its vital ethical foundations. As I say at the end of the preface, ‘[r]ecovering and activating the past compels humanitarians and others to address the colonial legacies, racial hierarchies and corporate complicities that are manifest in today’s aid industry’. I would want everyone who feels deeply invested in the humanitarian sector to play a role in that. Notes 1 The Humanitarian and Conflict Response Institute is
historical narratives, fictions and reports, these forms of expression shape the common sensibilities ( Boltanski, 2007 ). These references to these historical facts add a touch of veracity, to validate the facts stated, despite the weakness of the evidence on which they are based. In this way, these memories of cohorts of starving and dead replace the images of numbers necessary to understand the predicted famine, which was missing from the argument at work. The
The development of the European Union as a community-based project of integration with decision-making powers outside the constitutional architecture of the nation-state is the most significant innovation in twentieth-century political organisation. It raises fundamental questions about our understanding of the state, sovereignty, citizenship, democracy, and the relationship between political power and economic forces. Despite its achievements, events at the start of the twenty-first century – including the political, economic, and financial crisis of the Eurozone, as well as Brexit and the rise of populism – pose an existential threat to the EU.
Memory and the future of Europe addresses the crisis of the EU by treating integration as a response to the rupture created by the continent’s experience of total war. It traces Europe’s existing pathologies to the project’s loss of its moral foundations rooted in collective memories of total war. As the generations with personal memories of the two world wars pass away, economic gain has become the EU’s sole raison d’être. If it is to survive its future challenges, the EU will have to create a new historical imaginary that relies not only on the lessons of the past, but also builds on Europe’s ability to protect its citizens by serving as a counterweight against the forces of globalisation. By framing its argument through the critical theory of the Frankfurt School, Memory and the future of Europe will attract readers interested in political and social philosophy, collective memory studies, European studies, international relations, and contemporary politics.
on prescriptive rather than descriptive treatments of history, using the neoclassical ideal of formal historical narrative as a foil for genres like satire and secret history. One of the dangers of this sort of approach is that prescription can begin to appear like description – and thus history proper can seem monolithic and unchanging in comparison with more variegated or
interpretation of Zanzibar’s past and present, was envisaged as a crucial tool for achieving this. The historical narrative presented at the Wembley exhibition was also a key component of the new educational movement in Zanzibar. It formed the basis of the displays in Zanzibar’s new Peace Memorial Museum, opened in 1925, and was repeated in the first School History of Zanzibar , also published in 1925, and
representations emerging within the broad categories of Self–Other and historical narrative produce a particular political communication that reinforces the ‘rightness’ of foreign policy decisions. I have divided the chapter into two main sections. Firstly, I explore the links between representation and foreign policy through the categories of Self–Other, 2 East and West, 3 and postcolonial discourse. Secondly, I examine historical narratives and the use of metaphor and analogy in reinforcing representational schemas. Self