The two Jameses: a Joycean politics of criticism as commemoration

This article considers how, and to what extent, James Connolly is represented in the works of James Joyce and evaluates the place of Connolly in Joyce through an exposition of Andrew Gibson and Len Platt’s characterisation of a “London method” and “Irish method” of Joyce criticism. Examining the relative absence of Connolly from Joycean representation in comparison to overt commemorations such as those of Yeats et al., I claim that historical criticism on Joyce displays a will-to-connection between Connolly and Joyce that makes present the absence of the former. Where Connolly appears in Joyce, I suggest it is as a ghost called into presence through suggestive absence and a drive to commemoration in critical readings, inscribed not only in a Joycean politics but also in a politics of Joyce criticism. At a critical historical juncture for a reappraisal of Connolly and in the light of recent movements for self-determination such as in Scotland, this article examines how it is Joycean criticism that forges a narrative of connection to Connolly, outlining a genealogy of Joycean criticism centring on politics and nation and drawing on examples from across the Joycean canon to posit a politics of criticism that is illuminating of both the historical method and historical moment

World War Commemoration and the Politics of the Union in the British Isles, 1994-2016

The commemoration of the World Wars has frequently attracted controversy and widespread debate, revealing tensions and divergence between politicians, academics and other commentators with regards to the thematic justification, tone and narratives of commemorative events. Within the United Kingdom these debates have been complicated by the multi-national nature of the state. Here, commemoration can simultaneously draw on shared experiences of past conflicts involving all nations within the state as well as highlight divergent sub-state national forms of remembrance. In the UK, war commemoration has predominantly been based on widespread political and popular subscription to mutually inclusive narratives, rituals and symbols of remembrance involving all the nations of the UK. This, however, obscures the presence of multi-national asymmetries in ‘national’ forms of history, memory and identity. It also overlooks the existence of distinctive experiences and legacies of war that inform commemoration in England, Scotland, Wales and the island of Ireland. Additionally, since 1994 the UK has undergone a series of socio-economic, cultural and political changes, which have created different dynamics for the politics of national remembering. The advent of devolution in Scotland and Wales in 1998, the Northern Ireland Peace Process and resultant Good Friday Agreement, the election of the SNP in Scotland and subsequent referendum on Scottish independence, for example, all contributed to the creation of a new political climate in which the representation and commemoration of the World Wars took place. Through the adoption of a ‘Four Nations’ framework, then, this thesis seeks to contextualise changing patterns of remembrance. It considers how far this shifting political climate impacted upon the tone and focus of World War commemoration from 1994 to June 2016, prior to the ‘Brexit’ vote. In this, it not only highlights the complexities arising from the multi-national nature of the state, but also adds a new dimension to our knowledge of official commemorative practices across the UK and its links to and interactions with the politics of the Union. This thesis is formed of two parts, consisting of five chapters in total. Part One focuses on ‘state’ approaches to and involvement in commemoration with Chapters One and Two analysing the Westminster Government and institution of the monarchy respectively. Following that, Part Two explores the approaches to commemoration adopted by the Northern Irish, Scottish and Welsh devolved governments in turn. It will also analyse World War commemoration in the Republic of Ireland where it relates to the UK. This is due, in no small part, to the intertwined nature of the history and politics of these two states

Commemorating Connolly: contexts, comparisons and Celtic connections

No abstract available

The First World War Centenary in the UK: ‘A Truly National Commemoration’?

Prime Minister David Cameron has called for ‘a truly national commemoration of the First World War’. This article shows this to be problematic, politicised and contested. This is in part due to the elision of English and British histories. Scottish, Welsh and Irish responses are noted, and the role and commemorations of ‘our friends in the Commonwealth’. There are tensions around interpretations of empire and race. There has been a failure to appreciate that the debates about the legacies of the First World War are deeply entangled with those of colonialism

A Short History of Irish Memory in the Long Twentieth Century

The Cambridge History of Ireland, vol. IV: 1800 to Present, edited by Thomas Bartlett (Cambridge University Press, 2018), 708-725: A survey of changing obsessions in Ireland with remembrance of various episodes in the past, identifies moments of heightened commemoration and charts the development of modern memorial practices over the twentieth century. Growing awareness to the multifaceted and multilayered expressions of memory in Irish culture ultimately reveals the necessity to rewrite the history of the twentieth century

Woe from stones: commemoration, identity politics and Estonia's 'War of Monuments'

No abstract available

What\u27s in a Name? The Politics of Commemoration from the un-naming of the Alexander Graham Bell dorm at RIT to the Samuel Schmucker controversy at WCU

Professor Brent Ruswick, History - What\u27s in a Name? The Politics of Commemoration from the un-naming of the Alexander Graham Bell dorm at RIT to the Samuel Schmucker controversy at WC

‘Forebears’, ‘saints’ and ‘martyrs’: the politics of commemoration in Bulgaria in the 1880s and 1890s

Book description: The relationship between states, societies, and individuals in Central and Eastern Europe has been characterised by periods of change and redefinition. The current political, economic, social and cultural climate necessitates a discussion of these issues, both past and present. It is this theme which the proposed publication intends to discuss using a selection of papers given at the 5 th Annual Postgraduate Conference on Central and Eastern Europe held at the UCL School of Slavonic and East European Studies (SSEES) in 2003. The papers represent work from young international scholars from Europe and North America writing on Central and Eastern Europe. The book consists of seven papers and develops an interdisciplinary framework reflecting the range of topics discussed during the conference. It embraces the regional breadth of Central and Eastern Europe containing analyses of Russia, the former Soviet Republics, Central Europe and South Eastern Europe. The papers chosen cover a variety of fields and adopt a corresponding range of approaches with a view to assessing from a multidisciplinary perspective the relationship between state, society and individuals. The papers in the book have been ordered chronologically. The volume starts with an analysis by Julia Mannherz of social conflict in late imperial Russia and moves on to Sergei Zhuk’s discussion of the Stundist movement in Ukraine. The third paper from Stefan Detchev is a discussion of the late-nineteenth-century politics of commemoration surrounding the Bulgarian war of independence. The theme of the politics of commemoration is also present in Andrzej Michalczyk’s analysis of the commemoration of the plebiscite in Silesia by Germans and Poles during the interwar period. Michalczyk examines how a shared event is commemorated and interpreted differently by the two national groups. The idea of common and shared histories is further developed by Rüdiger Ritter in his study of the history and the historiography of post-Communist Poland, Belarus and Lithuania. The move into the contemporary period is completed in the final two papers. The use of historical imagery for political purposes is explored in Markus Wien’s study of the King Simeon II Party in Bulgaria as well as the way in which the historical image of the monarchy has been changed for political purposes during the transition from communism to democracy. The final paper by Maria Aluchna continues the discussion of the process of transition by examining the economic transformation from a communist command economic system to a modern capitalist economy

Empty spaces and the value of symbols: Estonia's 'war of monuments' from another angle

Taking as its point of departure the recent heightened discussion surrounding publicly sited monuments in Estonia, this article investigates the issue from the perspective of the country's eastern border city of Narva, focusing especially upon the restoration in 2000 of a 'Swedish Lion' monument to mark the 300th anniversary of Sweden's victory over Russia at the first Battle of Narva. This commemoration is characterised here as a successful local negotiation of a potentially divisive past, as are subsequent commemorations of the Russian conquest of Narva in 1704. A recent proposal to erect a statue of Peter the Great in the city, however, briefly threatened to open a new front in Estonia's ongoing 'war of monuments'. Through a discussion of these episodes, the article seeks to link the Narva case to broader conceptual issues of identity politics, nationalism and post-communist transition

Working with Memory in the Archaeology of Modern Conflict

The aim of this article is to situate archaeological approaches to modern conflicts within a framework of conflict memory and commemoration. A critical appreciation of historical archaeology as a commemorative practice requires a firm grounding in memory theory, specifically the formation and contestation of memory narratives. This article offers a detailed analysis of the relevant theories and demonstrates their applicability in the contested archaeology of the Nazi era in Berlin. On the basis of this critique I argue that archaeological work on contested sites offers a unique and powerful forum for socially engaged interdisciplinary research