The Multidirectional Memory of Charlie Hebdo

This article will discuss notions and concepts of remembering in the aftermath of the Charlie Hebdo attacks. Much has been written about the immediate response to the attacks, both commending the collective spirit of unity that defined the ‘marche républicaine’ of 11 January 2015, and criticising the alleged hypocrisy and cynicism of, most notably, the political figures that took to the streets that day, hand in hand. I will consider a selection of the memory practices that have emerged since then, notably on the anniversary of the event. This demonstration of memory provides key insights into the form and manner of remembering within a particular cultural group, but also reflects how the present moment is integral to our understanding of memory. The purpose of this article is to consider how official and non-official remembering of Charlie Hebdo can intertwine as well as pull in separate directions. A focus on the politics, the language, the aesthetics and the geography of commemorative activities in this article will enable an appreciation of the multidirectional character of remembering Charlie Hebdo. </jats:p

N-Dimensional Principal Component Analysis

In this paper, we first briefly introduce the multidimensional Principal Component Analysis (PCA) techniques, and then amend our previous N-dimensional PCA (ND-PCA) scheme by introducing multidirectional decomposition into ND-PCA implementation. For the case of high dimensionality, PCA technique is usually extended to an arbitrary n-dimensional space by the Higher-Order Singular Value Decomposition (HO-SVD) technique. Due to the size of tensor, HO-SVD implementation usually leads to a huge matrix along some direction of tensor, which is always beyond the capacity of an ordinary PC. The novelty of this paper is to amend our previous ND-PCA scheme to deal with this challenge and further prove that the revised ND-PCA scheme can provide a near optimal linear solution under the given error bound. To evaluate the numerical property of the revised ND-PCA scheme, experiments are performed on a set of 3D volume datasets

How to use pen and paper tasks to aid tremor diagnosis in the clinic

When a patient presents with tremor, it can be useful to perform a few simple pen and paper tests. In this article, we explain how to maximise the value of handwriting and of drawing Archimedes spirals and straight lines as clinical assessments. These tasks take a matter of seconds to complete but provide a wealth of information that supplements the standard physical examination. They aid the diagnosis of a tremor disorder and can contribute to its longitudinal monitoring. Watching the patient’s upper limb while they write and draw may reveal abnormalities such as bradykinesia, dystonic posturing and distractibility. The finished script and drawings can then be evaluated for frequency, amplitude, direction and symmetry of oscillatory pen movements and for overall scale of penmanship. Essential, dystonic, functional and parkinsonian tremor each has a characteristic pattern of abnormality on these pen and paper tests

“Fairy rings” of participation: the invisible network influencing participation in online communities

Individuals participate in many different ways in online communities. There is an extensive body of research describing participation as a key metaphor in communities of practice and stressing that participatory mobility is influenced by underground multidirectional activities, directed away from the notion of periphery to the centre practices and taking the shape of expansive swarming and multidirectional pulsations. This article describes an ongoing observational study proposing a model that attempts to determine how users participate in online communities and what influences them to alter the way in which they participate. We performed daily observations on user participatory behaviour in 50 online communities using public domain – anonymous data available in the communities. The specific communities were selected because they are related to learning and support learning activities within their networks. The data observations collected were analysed using Compendium, a hypermedia knowledge mapping and sense-making tool, to represent and structure the data, make complex cross data queries, test hypotheses and build representation of real examples to support our claims. Initial findings indicate that users connect, participate, contribute and collaborate on a shared objective, transferring information and pooling knowledge within and between communities in four different modes. During their online journey, users switched between modes of participation or even remained in one specific mode, implying that the way in which users participate in an online community is not just related to the mode of participation and the level of engagement with the community but it is also due to hidden reasons or motivations, an invisible network of interactions of elements that affect the willingness of the user to participate. This layer is not immediately evident in the user actions but can be inferred by analysing user reactions. It is argued that user participation in online communities occurs in two layers; the “visible” layer of participation with the different modes; and the “invisible” layer of element interactions, similar to formations observed in nature when a radically spreading underground network of fungi activity results in a ring or arc formation of mushrooms, also known as a “fairy ring”. These underground multidirectional activities influence participation and participatory mobility. Following an open scientific inquiry approach and an open research paradigm we plan to share these observations with a wider audience of practitioners, researchers and theorists for all to test or contest our arguments, and to enrich, question, or support our model

Traumatic pasts, literary afterlives, and transcultural memory : new directions of literary and media memory studies

This article presents new directions of literary and media memory studies. It distinguishes between (1) the study of "traumatic pasts", i.e. representations of war and violence in literature and other media, (2) diachronic and intermedial approaches to "literary afterlives" and (3) recent insights into the inherent transculturality of memory and their consequences for literary and media studies. Keywords: cultural memory studies, literature and memory, media and memory, transcultural memor

Postcolonialism and the study of anti-semitism

In recent years Hannah Arendt’s The Origins of Totalitarianism (1951) has become a common point of reference for those within postcolonial studies—such as Paul Gilroy, Aamir Mufti, and Michael Rothberg—who wish to explore the historical intersections between racism, fascism, colonialism, and anti-Semitism. “Postcolonialism and the Study of Anti-Semitism” relates Arendt’s comparative thinking to other anticolonial theorists and camp survivors at the end of the Second World War—most prominently, Jean Améry, Aimé Césaire, Frantz Fanon, Albert Memmi, Primo Levi, and Jean-Paul Sartre—who all made connections between the history of genocide in Europe and European colonialism. The article then compares this strand of comparative thought with postcolonial theorists of the 1970s and 1980s who, contra Arendt, divide the histories of fascism and colonialism into separate spheres. It also contrasts postcolonial theory with postcolonial literature by exploring the intertwined histories in the fiction of V. S. Naipaul, Salman Rushdie, and Caryl Phillips. Said’s late turn to Jewish exilic thinkers such as Theodor Adorno, Erich Auerbach, and Sigmund Freud is also related to this Arendtian comparative project. The main aim of the article is to promote a more open-minded sense of historical connectedness with regard to the histories of racism, fascism, colonialism, and anti-Semitism

De colonizador a víctima: la memoria cultural de la Guerra en El Pacífico a través del Monumento a la Línea Ferroviaria Burma-Siam Pakan Baroe

In this article I will demonstrate how the Burma-Siam Pakan Baroe Railroad Monument embodies the development of the memory culture about the War in the Pacific in the Netherlands. I will explain why this was a contested war, and outline the ways in which it did gain a place in Dutch memory culture. Through a visual analysis I will also uncover who is being excluded from the monument’s commemoration and why.En este artículo demostraré como el monumento a la línea ferroviaria Burma-Siam Pakan Baroe da cuerpo al desarrollo de la memoria cultural sobre la Segunda Guerra Mundial en el Pacífico en el ámbito de los Países Bajos. Explicaré por qué se trató de una guerra cuestionada, así como trataré de esbozar las fórmulas mediante las que este monumento ha alcanzado su lugar en la memoria cultural de los Países Bajos. A través de un análisis visual, trataré igualmente de desentrañar quién queda excluido del ámbito de conmemoración del monumento y por qué ocurre esto

From Tell Ye Your Children to Dinner with Polpot: the challenges of globalizing Holocaust memories at Sweden’s Living History Forum

Established in 2003 as Europe’s first publically funded national educational authority on the Holocaust, tolerance, democracy and human rights, Sweden’s Living History Forum (LHF) lies at the intersection of global, national and local Holocaust remembrance cultures and their ‘universalisation’ into the wider study of global ‘Crimes against Humanity’. Beginning with LHF’s origins in 1997’s Living History Project, this paper will discuss major developments within the organization over the last ten years. It will address how LHF has effectively worked in the space between the national and the transnational as well as the controversies that LHF has stimulated, particularly as Conny Mithander has noted, in relation to the representation of communist crimes. This paper will also give an overview of an increasingly critical liberal historiography, which sees LHF as part of a progressively more ‘regularized’ Swedish remembrance culture. My paper will include interview material with Paul Levine and Stéphane Bruchfeld, authors of Tell Ye Your Children as well as information from a 2014 meeting with Marcel Rådström (Educator) and Johan Perwe (Press Officer) at LHF’s premises in Stockholm on 14 May 2014. My paper will also connect the case of LHF to some of the broader findings of my forthcoming book, Holocaust Remembrance Between the National and the Transnational: A Case Study of the Stockholm International Forum (2000) and the First Decade of the ITF