Remembering Poland: The Ethics of Cultural Histories

Art Spiegelman\u27s Maus, Cynthia Ozick\u27s The Shawl, and Eva Hoffman\u27s Lost in Translation and Exit into History are recent American texts that draw upon cultural histories of Poland to launch their narratives. Each text confronts and reconstructs fragments of twentieth-century Poland at the interactive sites of collective culture and personal memory. By focusing on the contested relationship between Poles and Jews before, during, and after World War II, these texts dredge up the ghosts of centuries-long ethnic animosities. In the post-Cold War era, wherein Eastern Europe struggles to redefine itself, such texts have a formative influence in re-mapping the future of national identities

Историческая память как фактор формирования социетальной культуры

HISTORICAL MEMORY AS A FACTOR OF THE FORMATION OF SOCIETAL CULTURE O. HUKИсследуются актуальные проблемы в современных условиях в Украине и глобализованном мире. Подробно проанализированы основные понятия памяти и забвения, а также основные концепции западных ученых по проблемам памяти, в частности, М. Хальбвакса, Я. Ассманна, П. Норы, П. Коннертона и др. Большинство из них использует термин «коллективная память», который был введен в научный оборот М. Хальбваксом. Значительное внимание уделяется структурному и функциональному анализу коллективной памяти как социального явления, различающего разные типы памяти, которые в определенной степени влияют на формирование социальной культуры. Выделены две основные тенденции для решения вопросов национальной политики памяти в украинском обществе: чрезмерные и недостаточные. В контексте второй тенденции рассматривается конкретная «память жертв» как своего рода коллективный механизм, что приводит к забыванию прошлых событий, которые общество переживает как травматические. Подчеркивается необходимость обсуждения этих вопросов в публичном дискурсе и работы над формированием социальной культуры, способствующей консолидации нации.= The article is dedicated to research of relevant problems in the modern conditions in Ukraine and in the globalized world. The scientific research based on the phenomenological, hermeneutic methodology, as well as elements of psychoanalysis. The author analyzes the concept of memory and oblivion in detail. The comparison based on the basic concepts of Western scholars regarding memory problems, particularly: M. Halbwachs, J. Assmann, P. Nora, P. Konnerton and others. Most of them use the term “collective memory”, which was introduced into scientific circulation by M. Halbwachs. At the same time, significant attention is paid to structural and functional analysis of collective memory as a social phenomenon, distinguishing different types of memory, which, to some extent, influence the formation of societal culture. The author identifies two main trends to address issues of national memory policy in Ukrainian society: excessive and insufficient. In the context of the second trend the author analyzes specific “victim memory” as a kind of collective mechanism which leads to forgetting the past events that are experienced by society as traumatic. But modern society should be sure to discuss these issues in the public discourse. So now it is very important to work on the elaboration of a societal culture, which can consolidate nation

Culture and the remembering of trauma

This research investigated the influence of culture and posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD) on global autobiographical remembering (Study 1a) and on the phenomenological properties (Study 1b) and memory-content variables (Study 1c) of trauma-specific autobiographical remembering. Australian, British, and Iranian trauma survivors with and without PTSD completed the Autobiographical Memory Test, Self-Defining Memory Task, and Autobiographical Memory Questionnaire and provided trauma- and negative-memory narratives. We found that there were pan-cultural deficits and distortions in the global autobiographical remembering of participants with PTSD (Study 1a). In addition, the presence of PTSD moderated the usual effect of culture on the phenomenological properties of the trauma memory (Study 1b). Finally, participants with PTSD, regardless of cultural background, had significantly fewer expressions of autonomy and self-determination in their autobiographical remembering than did those without PTSD (Study 1c). The findings suggest that pan-culturally, individuals with PTSD have similar disruptions and distortions in their autobiographical remembering

Review of \u3cem\u3eThe Loyal West: Civil War and Reunion in Middle America\u3c/em\u3e by Matthew E. Stanley

Interest in Civil War memory and post–Civil War sectional reconciliation has expanded greatly in recent years, as two 2016 historiographical essays attest.1 Matthew E. Stanley\u27s new book, The Loyal West: Civil War and Reunion in Middle America is thus well timed to make an important contribution to our evolving understanding of the process of sectional reconciliation in the decades following the Civil War. With his focus on Kentucky\u27s northern neighbors in the lower portions of Illinois, Indiana, and Ohio, the editorial staff of the Register of the Kentucky Historical Society believe Stanley\u27s book will help historians better understand the role Kentucky played in the events of the late nineteenth and early twentieth century, which saw a white supremacist version of Civil War memory eclipse an emancipationist version nationally. We have asked four nineteenth-century historians to consider Stanley\u27s book from varying perspectives. M. Keith Harris teaches history at a private high school in Los Angeles, California. He is the author of Across the Bloody Chasm: The Culture of Commemoration among Civil War Veterans (2014) and is currently writing a book on D. W. Griffith\u27s controversial 1915 silent film, The Birth of a Nation. Anne E. Marshall is an associate professor of history at Mississippi State University and the author of Creating a Confederate Kentucky: The Lost Cause and Civil War Memory in a Border State (2012). James Marten is professor and chair of the history department at Marquette University. His most recent books are Sing Not War: The Lives of Union and Confederate Veterans in Gilded Age America (2011) and America\u27s Corporal: James Tanner in War and Peace (2014). Kristopher Maulden is a visiting assistant professor of history at Columbia College in Missouri. He is completing a book manuscript on the influence of Federalist politics and federal policy in the Ohio River Valley, and he is engaged in a study of nineteenth-century Ohio newspaper editor Charles Hammond. Finally, the author of The Loyal West, Matthew E. Stanley, assistant professor of history at Albany State University, will respond to the reviews

Memory programmes: the industrial retention of collective life

This is a postprint of an article published in Cultural Geographies © 2015 copyright SAGE Publications. Cultural Geographies is available online at: http://cgj.sagepub.com/This article argues that in software, we have created quasi-autonomous systems of memory that influence how we think about and experience life as such. The role of mediated memory in collective life is addressed as a geographical concern through the lens of ‘programmes’. Programming can mean ordering, and thus making discrete, and scheduling, making actions routine. This article addresses how programming mediates the experience of memory via networked technologies. Materially recording knowledge, even as electronic data, renders thought mentally and spatially discrete and demands systems to order it. Recorded knowledge also enables the ordering of spatiotemporal experience both as forms of history, thus the sharing of culture, and as the means of imagining futures. We increasingly retain information about ourselves and others using digital media. We volunteer further information recorded by electronic service providers, search engines and social media. Many aspects of our collective lives are now gathered in cities (via closed-circuit television, cellphone networks and so on) and retained in databases, constituting a growing system of memory of parts of life otherwise forgotten or unthought. Using examples, this article argues that in software, we have created industrialised systems of memory that influence how we think about living together

Linking unlearning with innovation through organizational memory and technology

While the information technologies provide organizational members with explicit concepts, such as writing instruction manuals, the ‘organizational memory’ provides individuals with tacit knowledge, such as systematic sets, routines and shared visions. This means that individuals within an organization learn by using both the organizational memory and the information technologies. They interact to reduce organizational information needs contributing to improve organizational innovativeness. However, the utilization of the organization memory or the technology infrastructure does not guarantee that appropriate information is used in appropriate circumstances or that information is appropriately updated. In other words, previous memories reflect a world that is only partially understood and assimilated, which might lead individuals to doing the wrong things right or the right things wrong. This paper examines the relative importance and significance of the existence of unlearning to the presence and nature of ‘organizational memory and technology’. We further examine the effect of the existence of organizational memory and information technology on conditions that promote organizational innovativeness. These relationships are examined through an empirical investigation of 291 large Spanish companies. Our analysis found that if the organization considers the establishment of an unlearning culture as a prior step in the utilization of organization memory or the technology infrastructure through organizational innovativeness, then organization memory and technology have a positive influence on the conditions that stimulate organizational innovativeness

Конструкт національної пам’яті та його вплив на формування української культурної ідентичності (The construct of national memory and its influence on the formation of Ukrainian cultural identity)

У статті проаналізовано проблему конструювання національної пам’яті та формування нової української культурної ідентичності в сучасних умовах. Автор розкриває сутність цієї проблеми через порівняльний аналіз основних понять: колективна, історична, культурна, комунікативна та віктимна пам’яті, використовуючи концептуальні підходи М. Гальбвакса, Я. Ассмана, П. Коннертона. (The article is dedicated to the research of the relevant problems in modern conditions in Ukraine. The author justifies the necessity of development of the new construct of national memory, the formation of a new unified cultural identity and a young Ukrainian political nation. The scientific research is based on the phenomenological and hermeneutic methodology, as well as on the elements of psychoanalysis. By means of comparative analysis the author analyzes the basic concepts of Western scholars regarding memory problems, particularly, M. Halbwachs, J. Assmann, P. Nora, P. Konnerton and others. Most of them use the term ‘collective memory’, which was introduced into scientific circulation by M. Halbwachs. At the same time, major attention is paid to structural and functional analysis of collective memory as to a social phenomenon, and to distinguishing different types of memory, which, to some extent, influence the formation of cultural identity. The author identifies two main tendencies to sovle issues of national memory policy in Ukrainian society: excessive and insufficient. In the context of the second tendency, which lies in insufficient attention of the state and society to the national memory policy, the author analyzes specific ‘victim memory’ as a kind of peculiar collective mechanism which leads to forgetting the past events that are experienced by society as traumatic. Sociological researches argue that the history of the Ukrainian people in the twentieth century is full of traumatic events, the memory of which separates the current Ukrainian society. But Ukrainian society needs to discuss these issues in the public discourse. The events of the last three years, on the contrary, can consolidate the Ukrainian nation. So now it is very important to work on the elaboration of – common culture and societal values.

Emigration in Estonian Literature: “Self” and “Other” in the Context of European Literature

The experience of emigration generated a new paradigm in Estonian culture and literature. After World War II Sweden became a new homeland for many people. Estonian culture and literature suddenly became divided into two parts. The political terror imposed restrictions on literature in homeland and the national ideology limited literature in the initial years of exile. Both were closed communities and were monolingual systems in a cultural sense because these systems avoided dialogue and the influence of other signs. It was a traumatic experience for nation and culture where the totalitarian political power and trauma have allied. The normal cultural communication was destroyed. But the most important thing at this time was memory, not just memory but entangled memory, which emigrants carried with them to the new homeland and which influenced people in Estonia. The act of remembering becomes crucial in the exile cultures.Estonian literature in exile and in the homeland presents the fundamental images of opening or closing, escaping or staying, and of flight or fight. Surrealism as well as fantasy and science fiction as the literary styles reveal what is hidden in the unconscious of a poet or a person or even in the collective memory of a nation. Surrealism has played a certain role in our literature, but it has been different from French surrealism, it is a uniquely Estonian surrealism. At the same time Estonia was already a new homeland for many refugees from Russia who had escaped during the Revolution of 1917 and World War I. August Gailit and Oskar Luts wrote about that issue in different literary works. Luts entangled different memories in his novel Tagahoovis (In the Backyard, 1933): the memories of Estonians and the memories of Russian emigrants. He also entangled historical narratives about World War I, the Russian revolution and the young Estonian state in the 1920s. Luts wrote about common people who interpret historical narratives. The novel was also published in exile in 1969 in Toronto

Cultural differences in complex addition: efficient Chinese versus adaptive Belgians and Canadians

In the present study, the authors tested the effects of working-memory load on math problem solving in 3 different cultures: Flemish-speaking Belgians, English-speaking Canadians, and Chinese-speaking Chinese currently living in Canada. Participants solved complex addition problems (e.g., 58 + 76) in no-load and working-memory load conditions, in which either the central executive or the phonological loop was loaded. The authors used the choice/no-choice method to obtain unbiased measures of strategy selection and strategy efficiency. The Chinese participants were faster than the Belgians, who were faster and more accurate than the Canadians. The Chinese also required fewer working-memory resources than did the Belgians and Canadians. However, the Chinese chose less adaptively from the available strategies than did the Belgians and Canadians. These cultural differences in math problem solving are likely the result of different instructional approaches during elementary school (practice and training in Asian countries vs. exploration and flexibility in non-Asian countries), differences in the number language, and informal cultural norms and standards. The relevance of being adaptive is discussed as well as the implications of the results in regards to the strategy choice and discovery simulation model of strategy selection (J. Shrager & R. S. Siegler, 1998)

Reunion and reconciliation, reviewed and reconsidered

At the close of the Civil War in 1865, many Americans began talking about “reunion” and “reunification,” even “healing” and “reconciliation,” although the precise meaning of those words would remain elusive. From 1865 down to the present day, these sentiments have reverberated in American culture and American politics, and they sounded at gatherings of Union and Confederate veterans and then of their descendants, in the pages of newspapers and magazines in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, in the speeches of presidents and politicians, and in countless films and theatrical productions that imagined northern and southern men joining hands in unity and fraternal love. Two years after the surrender at Appomattox, the former abolitionist Gerrit Smith told of his longing “for a heart-union between the North and the South.” Seventy-one years later, in a final gathering of ancient soldiers on the once-blood-soaked fields of Gettysburg, Franklin D. Roosevelt dedicated an Eternal Light Peace Memorial and honored the “joint and precious heritage” that Gettysburg had come to symbolize. Speaking in July 1938 to the “men who wore the blue and men who wore the gray,” fdr praised all the soldiers, “not asking under which flag they fought then—thankful that they stand together under one flag now.” Roosevelt’s tribute to a peace-loving and unified America, coming at this moment when the world was poised on the brink of an even more catastrophic war, may have offered its own small measure of comfort to anxious Americans.Accepted manuscrip