The politics of heroes through the prism of popular heroism

This is the author accepted manuscript. The final version is available from Palgrave Macmillan via the DOI in this record.In modern day Britain, the discourse of national heroification is routinely utilised by politicians, educationalists and cultural industry professionals, whilst also being a popular concept to describe deserving ‘do-gooders’ who contribute to British society in a myriad of ways. We argue that although this heroification discourse is enacted as a discursive device of encouraging politically and morally desirable behaviour, it is dissociated from the largely under-explored facets of contemporary popular heroism. To compensate for this gap, this paper explores public preferences for heroes using survey data representative of British adults. This analysis demonstrates a conceptual stretching in the understanding of heroism, and allows identifying age- and gender-linked dynamics which effect public choices of heroes. In particular, we demonstrate that age above all determines the preference for having a hero, but does not explain preferences for specific hero-types. The focus on gender illustrates that the landscape of popular heroism reproduces a male-dominated bias which exists in the wider political and cultural heroification discourse. Simultaneously, our study shows that if national heroification discourse in Britain remains male-centric, the landscape of popular heroism is characterised by a gendered trend towards privatisation of heroes being particularly prominent amongst women. In the conclusion, this paper argues for a conceptual revision and re-gendering of the national heroification discourse as a step towards both empirically grounded, and age- and gender-sensitive politics of heroes and heroines.AHR

Elena Rozhdestvenskaya, Victoria Semenova, Irina Tartakovskaya and Krzysztof Kosela, Collective Memories in War

Elena Rozhdestvenskaya and her co-editors conclude an introduction to their edited volume with an instructive observation on the primary function of social memory. They describe this function with the premise "that the shared memory of certain events in the past is a necessary condition for the support of a general feeling of unity at the national level, without which consensus regarding the past is in danger: without which there is no 'us'" (p. 6). True to this premise, Collective Memories i..

Contemporary trends in war commemoration : the UK and Russia

In many countries governments, the military and the public are annually engaged in the commemoration of fallen soldiers of the World Wars and of recent conflicts. This study compares changes in the commemoration of fallen soldiers in a democratic and an authoritarian society (the UK and Russia). It considers this process in terms of a social contract between the military and society, and discusses its broader political and societal implications. The research is focused on the period from the late 1980s onwards. This time-frame is chosen to investigate contemporary changes in national styles of commemoration. Throughout the thesis, the analysis uncovers general trends in this process and explores in detail the commemoration of British soldiers who died in the Falklands War (1982), Gulf War (1990- 1991), Iraq (2003-2009) and Afghanistan (2001-present) and the commemoration of Russian soldiers killed in the Soviet Afghan War (1979-1989) and in the First and Second campaigns in Chechnya (1994- 1996, 1999-2009). In both cases, the thesis examines three sites of memory that mediate discourses and practices of the commemoration (i.e. media coverage of military campaigns, new war memorials, and national ceremonies of remembrance). The original contribution of the thesis lies in two areas: the conceptualisation of contemporary commemoration from the perspective of civil-military relations, and a systematic empirical comparison of this process in two countries. The findings of this research reveal a shift across both societies from war- to a service-orientated commemoration which comes into being with the increasing complexity and controversy of modem warfare. Also, the analysis demonstrates that the commemoration of fallen soldiers in both countries serves as an instrument of popularising national values and mobilising public support for the armed forces, and military operations. In Britain, this result is achieved through the discourse of a 'support for heroes' who fought in Afghanistan. In Russia, the public is mobilised through a broad call to be proud of victory in the Second World War and to give unconditional support for the government political course.EThOS - Electronic Theses Online ServiceGBUnited Kingdo

Elena Rozhdestvenskaya, Victoria Semenova, Irina Tartakovskaya and Krzysztof Kosela, Collective Memories in War

Elena Rozhdestvenskaya and her co-editors conclude an introduction to their edited volume with an instructive observation on the primary function of social memory. They describe this function with the premise "that the shared memory of certain events in the past is a necessary condition for the support of a general feeling of unity at the national level, without which consensus regarding the past is in danger: without which there is no 'us'" (p. 6). True to this premise, Collective Memories i..

The politics and pedagogy of war remembrance

Drawing on analysis of learning materials, interviews and ethnographic observations of Scottish education, we analyse how projects aimed at teaching children to remember wars instil war normalising logics through (a) substitution of self-reflective study of conflict with skill-based knowledge; (b) gendered and racial stereotyping via emphasis on soldier-centric (Scottish/British) nationalisms, localisation and depoliticisation of remembrance; (c) affective meaning-making and embodied performance of ‘Our War’. Utilising Ranciere-inspired critical pedagogy, we explore opportunities for critical engagement with the legacy of conflicts

Scottish soldier-heroes and patriotic war heroines: the gendered politics of World War I commemoration

This paper explores the (re)production of embodied gendered and racialised identities as part of commemorations devised by the Scottish government to mark the Centenary of WWI, 2014- 18. In particular, we demonstrate how the Centenary has re-established Scotland’s key contribution to British military power instead of providing a platform for a broader discussion of British wars and Scotland’s role therein. Our analysis posits that this reframing was achieved through the (re)production of a gendered polarisation between white ‘dead’ soldier-heroes, ‘local lads’ and bearers of a ‘proud Scottish military tradition’; and women as embodiments of patriotic motherhood. We further explore the deployment of specific discursive and performative means to transform Dr Elsie Inglis, the only woman whose contribution was singled out by WW100 Scotland, into a patriotic war heroine. This was achieved by the militarisation of her work; the obscuring of identity, class- and race-based hierarchies within women’s war-work; and, finally, through the subversion of feminist ideas and practices in Inglis’ work for the Scottish Women’s Hospitals. Lastly, we reflect on the gendered legacy of the Centenary, emphasising the necessity for critical engagement with Britain’s wars and Scotland’s role therein

“To those who choose to follow in our footsteps”: making women/LGBT+ soldiers (in)visible through feminist “her-story” theater

Building on Judith Butler’s understanding of visibility as “the object of continuous regulation and contestation,” art/aesthetics studies in international relations, and feminist theater studies, we identify feminist “her story” theater as a unique site where Western “gender-/sexuality-inclusive” soldiering is visibilized, contested, and subverted. Drawing on ethnographic observations of two award-winning dramas, interviews with artists and military hosts, and findings from a wider research project on contemporary British military culture, we reveal the key role of heteronormative and patriarchal cultural discourses in reproducing the ambivalent positionalities of women/LGBT+ soldiers. We argue that the very visibility of women/LGBT+ soldiers on the stage paradoxically operates to make the complexities of – and struggles against – masculinized heteronormative military cultures invisible. Furthermore, despite artists’ attempts to dissociate empowerment through soldiering from the problematic context of modern conflicts, “her story” theater ultimately entrenches gendered/racialized hierarchies that normalize Western military interventions. We conclude that only through sustained feminist reflection on the contours of “imagined” futures of female/ LGBT+ soldiering can this persistently problematic (in)visibility be productively disrupted. </p

Draft Genome Sequence of Kytococcus schroeteri Strain H01, Isolated from Human Skin

International audienc

MSC Secretome as a Promising Tool for Neuroprotection and Neuroregeneration in a Model of Intracerebral Hemorrhage

Multipotent mesenchymal stromal cells (MSCs) are considered to be critical contributors to injured tissue repair and regeneration, and MSC-based therapeutic approaches have been applied to many peripheral and central neurologic disorders. It has been demonstrated that the beneficial effects of MSC are mainly mediated by the components of their secretome. In the current study, we have explored the neuroprotective potential of the MSC secretome in a rat model of intracerebral hemorrhage and shown that a 10-fold concentrated secretome of human MSC and its combination with the brain-derived neurotrophic factor (BDNF) provided a better survival and neurological outcome of rats within 14 days of intracerebral hemorrhage compared to the negative (non-treated) and positive (BDNF) control groups. We found that it was due to the ability of MSC secretome to stimulate neuron survival under conditions of glutamate-induced neurotoxicity. However, the lesion volume did not shrink in these rats, and this also correlated with prominent microglia activation. We hypothesize that this could be caused by the species-specificity of the used MSC secretome and provide evidence to confirm this. Thus, we have found that allogenic rat MSC secretome was more effective than xenogenic human MSC secretome in the rat intracerebral hemorrhage model: it reduced the volume of the lesion and promoted excellent survival and neurological outcome of the treated rats