THE SCANDINAVIAN 1968 IN A EUROPEAN PERSPECTIVE

The article compares the events of 1968 in Scandinavia, pointing to the differences and similarities between the Scandinavian countries as well as comparing Scandinavia to the rest of Europe. Within Scandinavia, Norway and Sweden present a Scandinavian model with focus on conflicts between centre and periphery, Maoism and a low level of conflict. In Denmark, the student movement and theoretical Marxism dominated the scene. However, the political context of the three countries and the interplay between mainstream politics and 1968 were rather similar. In Finland, both the political context as well as the movement developed quite differently. The article concludes that the high level of integration of the protest movements makes Scandinavia stand out compared to continental Europe.     

FROM FLOWERS TO STEEL

This article introduces the ideological themes and the Leninist outcome of the year 1968 in Finland. Rebellion against authorities enjoyed relative success towards the end of the 1960s, gaining even some presidential support. An unpredicted and sudden consequence of the success of the antiauthoritarian rebellion was, however, a sectarian Marxist–Leninist movement. This highly authoritarian heir of the 1960s adopted official Soviet ideology to a detail. The latter part of the article discusses the reasons behind the drastic turn that often involved a deep and sudden change in the ideological orientation of individual persons. The statistics show that socio‐economic background alone cannot explain the ideological choices of the actors. The conclusion of the article is that Leninism provided a mental haven for those whose identities were most threatened in the process of rapid liberalization of the society.     

FROM SEPARATION TO INTERACTION: CORDED WARE IN THE EASTERN GULF OF FINLAND

Up until recent years, Corded Ware has remained poorly studied in the eastern part of the Gulf of Finland, located in north‐eastern Europe. Traditionally, this region has been considered marginal in terms of Corded Ware, but new research has started to change this view. This paper presents the Corded Ware material known up to the current date (2016) from the eastern area of the Gulf of Finland, i.e. the Karelian Isthmus and Ingria (western Leningrad oblast, Russia); currently ca. 30 sites and ca. 60 stray finds are known in the research area. Based on this and previously published data from the adjoining regions, features related to the material culture, the contact networks, and the chronology of Corded Ware are discussed. Even though focusing the research may skew the picture, there are good grounds to propose, that there was a distinctive Corded Ware sphere of interaction in the eastern area of the Gulf of Finland, also including areas in north‐eastern Estonia and south‐eastern Finland. Due to its particular cultural background, local preferences, and consequently, development trajectories, the area had a clear regional character. Further, populations inhabiting it also maintained active contacts with other Corded Ware groups in the sphere of Baltic Sea and further to the east, as well as with non‐Corded Ware settlers of north‐eastern Europe.     

1968: THE AMERICAN AND SCANDINAVIAN EXPERIENCES

This article compares and contrasts 1968 and many of the themes and events the late 1960s in the United States with those in Scandinavia. Along the way it examines similarities and differences in motivations, culture, ideology and politics that resulted in some similar and many different forms of social activism.     

VISUALIZING FINLAND: POSTAGE STAMPS AS POLITICAL MESSENGERS

ABSTRACT. Postage stamps are a very political, territorially grounded and yet overlooked part of visual culture. We argue that the mundane omnipresence of stamps gives them considerable nation-building power and makes them exemplary tools of what Michael Billig calls 'banal nationalism.' By focusing on the socially constructed visual qualities of stamps, we argue that their 'reading' as political, socioculturally and territorially specific texts offers valuable insights into the evolution and outlook of the issuing state and the 'imagined community' within its boundaries. Our examination of 1 457 stamps issued in continental Finland between 1917 and 2000 shows how the desired visual representation of the Finnish state, nation and society has evolved over time, along with the changing outlook of the national elite, its relationship with ordinary citizens and the country's geopolitical context. The stamps illustrate how the state's focus shifted from war to peace, Finland's economy diversified and specialized, and the Finns reached a relatively high level of social welfare and equality. The myth of Finland's cultural homogeneity remained strikingly strong despite dramatic changes in Finland's cultural make-up, suggesting that not only presence but also absence of a narrative from a visual scene can be strongly meaningful. Over the course of the twentieth century, Finnish nationalism grew increasingly 'banal' and inclusive in character, but the stamps maintained their central role in citizenship education. Our findings promote the use of postage stamps in the teaching and research of political geography and identity-political iconographies.     

RECONCEIVING THE PRACTICE OF HISTORY: FROM REPRESENTATION TO TRANSLATION

Arguing that history is not the application of a rigorous method to sources bequeathed to us from the past but rather a practice of coding that constructs “the past” in particular ways, this article seeks to delineate the key elements of this coding. Modern history treats past objects and texts as the objectified remains of humans who endowed their world with meaning and purpose while constrained by the social circumstances characterizing their times. This time of theirs is dead, and it can only be represented, not resurrected; the past is only ever the human past, and it does not include ghosts, gods, spirits, or nature. If, as argued here, “the past” does not exist independently of the means by which it is known and represented, then the many different modes of historicity that human beings developed and deployed before the modern form of history became dominant cannot be measured against “the” past in an effort to compare their accuracy or adequacy in representing it. The concluding section of this article asks what we are doing when we write the history of those who did not share the presumptions of the modern discipline but who had their own mode(s) of historicity. What, it asks, is the character and status of the knowledge produced when we write histories of premodern and non-Western pasts?     

THE “THEORETICAL REVOLUTION” IN INTELLECTUAL HISTORY: FROM THE HISTORY OF POLITICAL IDEAS TO THE HISTORY OF POLITICAL LANGUAGES

This article intends to clarify what distinguishes the so‐called new “politico‐intellectual history” from the old “history of political ideas.” What differentiates the two has not been fully perceived even by some of the authors who initiated this transformation. One fundamental reason for this is that the transformation has not been a consistent process deriving from one single source, but is rather the result of converging developments emanating from three different sources (the Cambridge School, the German school of conceptual history or Begriffsgeschichte, and French politico‐conceptual history). This article proposes that the development of a new theoretical horizon that effectively leads us beyond the frameworks of the old history of political ideas demands that we overcome the insularity of these traditions and combine their respective contributions. The result of this combination is an approach to politico‐intellectual history that is not completely coincident with any of the three schools. What I will call a history of political languages entails a specific perspective on the temporality of discourses; this involves a view of why the meaning of concepts changes over time, and is the source of the contingency that stains political languages.     

FROM HISTORICAL STRUCTURES TO TEMPORAL LAYERS: HANS FREYER AND CONCEPTUAL HISTORY

This article assesses, for the first time, the significance for German conceptual history of the sociologist, philosopher, and conservative political theorist Hans Freyer. Freyer theorized historical structures as products of political activity, emphasized the presence of several historical layers in each moment, and underscored the need to read concepts with regard to accumulated structures. He thus significantly influenced not only German structural history but also conceptual history emerging from it in the work of Otto Brunner, Werner Conze, and, most notably, Reinhart Koselleck, whose theories of temporal layers in history and concepts reworked the Freyerian starting points. Underscoring the openness and plurality of history, criticizing its false “plannability,” and reading world history as European history writ large, Freyer shaped the politically oriented theory of history behind Koselleckian Begriffsgeschichte. Further, Freyer theorized the eighteenth- and nineteenth-century transition to industrial society as a historical rupture or “epochal threshold,” which bears close, and by no means coincidental, similarity to Koselleck's saddle-time thesis (Sattelzeit). Freyer's theory of history sheds light on the interrelations of many Koselleckian key ideas, including temporal layers, the contemporaneity of the noncontemporaneous, the plannability of history, and the Sattelzeit.     

THE ART OF NEOLIBERALIZING PARK MANAGEMENT: COMMODIFICATION,POLITICS AND HOTEL CONSTRUCTION IN PALLASYLLÄSTUNTURI NATIONAL PARK,FINLAND

Following the growth of nature‐based tourism, national parks and other protected areas have become important tourist attractions. This article examines the legislative process of revising the Act on Pallas‐Yllästunturi National Park, located in northern Finland, to enable the renovation and enlargement of the old hotel. The first draft of the government bill published in 2008 led to widespread public opposition, and thus, construction rights were reduced substantially before the new Act was passed in 2010. The main question of this article is why the Finnish government changed its policy on national park governance that had existed for decades. We assess the extent to which the changes in park governance can be interpreted as part of the worldwide neoliberalization of nature, as well as what kind of forces and values work against neoliberal management ideologies. We examine how the process of revising the Act proceeded in the Parliament and analyse on what grounds the hotel construction was defended and opposed in the discussions. Finally we ponder how the political disagreements are explained by neoliberal frames. We conclude that the neoliberal element was one part of the process, but it intertwined with local political reality creating results hardly resembling textbook definitions of neoliberal or classic liberal ideals. Mixed ideological principles, contextual economic conditions, and complex dependencies between individual actors create cases which must be analysed carefully to find out if neoliberal elements really exist and how they are transformed. Close relations between economic and political actors and creation of economic monopolies should raise doubts if vocabulary of liberalization is just a disguise of actions supporting hidden political and economic interests.     

FROM NIETZSCHE'S PHILOSOPHY OF HISTORY TO KANT'S—AND BACK

Reflecting on Anthony Jensen's Nietzsche's Philosophy of History, this essay describes Jensen's account of the three‐stage development of Nietzsche's historiographical practices and metahistorical positions: from his early philological writings, through The Birth of Tragedy, and into the mature philosophy of history that Jensen uncovers in Toward the Genealogy of Morality and Ecce Homo, which, so Jensen argues, consists in ontological realism combined with representational anti‐realism. While Jensen notes the importance of a like‐minded readership for the success of Nietzsche's historiographical projects, the essay asks whether Nietzsche did in fact have such a readership and further emphasizes that the Genealogy and Ecce Homo are structured in such a way that they seek to create one. A similar structure is identified in Kant's “Idea for a Universal History from a Cosmopolitan Perspective.” The essay concludes by reflecting on the significance of this similarity in light of the doctrines of eternal recurrence that are expressed in both Nietzsche's late writings and Kant's youthful cosmology.     

ENTANGLED MEMORY: TOWARD A THIRD WAVE IN MEMORY STUDIES

This essay takes up the call for a “third phase” in memory studies and makes theoretical and methodological suggestions for its further development. Starting from an understanding of memory that centers on memory's temporality, its relation to language, and its quality as a social action, the essay puts forward the concept of “entangled memory.” On a theoretical level, it brings to the fore the entangledness of acts of remembering. In a synchronic perspective, memory's entangledness is presented as twofold. Every act of remembering inscribes an individual in multiple social frames. This polyphony entails the simultaneous existence of concurrent interpretations of the past. In a diachronic perspective, memory is entangled in the dynamic relation between single acts of remembering and changing mnemonic patterns. Memory scholars therefore uncover boundless cross‐referential configurations. Wishing to enhance the dialogue between the theoretical and the empirical parts of memory studies, we propose four devices that serve as a heuristic in the study of memory's entanglement: chronology against time, conflict, generations, and self‐reflexivity. Current debates on European memory permit us to explore the possible benefits that the concept of entangled memory carries for memory studies.     

FROM VAGUE SYMBOLS TO CONTESTED CONCEPTS: PEIRCE,W. B. GALLIE,AND HISTORY

This article explores Walter Bryce Gallie's notion of “essentially contested concepts” from a viewpoint that has hitherto been neglected, namely its relation to the philosophy of Charles S. Peirce. As a matter of fact, Gallie was an authoritative reader of the American philosopher. All areas of his work are influenced by his attempt to take up and further articulate a major insight of Peirce's semiotics, namely the idea that symbols are inherently vague, and that their meaning is in a state of perpetual growth. At the same time, Gallie rejected another crucial tenet of Peirce's philosophy, that is, the idea that the growth of signs is regulated by the possibility of a final agreement among sign‐users. Examining this ambivalent relation between the two authors will help us shed light on a question that was of crucial importance for Gallie: to what extent should we let our appreciation of concepts or beliefs depend on a historical examination of their meaning?     

1968 and its other worlds: Global events and (anti-)state dynamics in France,Mozambique and Vanuatu

ABSTRACT

This article de-centres the moment, event and impact of 1968 and expands it temporally and spatially. Taking a longue durée approach charting a trajectory from the 1960s into the 1980s, we analyse statist and anti-statist dynamics through a comparison of the May 1968 Paris riots with the Nagriamel movement in Vanuatu and the phenomenon of Naparama in Mozambique. Such a horizontal triangulation and spatio-temporal expansion is undertaken to contribute to a more global understanding of what we term ‘the 1968 event’ entails. However, this comparative analysis also underlines how its impact should be measured as, first, an experimentation with and attack on political reality, second, how the intricate connections between Euro-American and other worlds were integral to its articulation and, third, how paradoxically 1968 and its response spawned the rise of an authoritarian form of nation-state – eclipsing the openings in the firmament of the political, social and the real afforded by the original event.     

EXPERIENCE AND HISTORY: THE REACH AND LIMITS OF PHENOMENOLOGICAL APPROACHES TO HISTORY

Experience and History: Phenomenological Perspectives on the Historical World presents the summa of David Carr's phenomenological approach to history. I acknowledge the value of this perspective, but I find it doubtful that a phenomenological account can replace the paradigms of memory and representation against which Carr pits it. The concept of historicity is, rather, complementary in that it alerts us to the prethematic presence of history. Phenomenologically, Carr's attempt to tie history closely to experience runs into problems as it is based on a questionable use of Husserl's notion of retention and risks blurring the distinct temporality of history. At the same time, the central concepts of Carr's approach, both experience and narrative, could be deployed in further ways. As literary scholars have come to emphasize, narrative triggers experiences in its readers. Thus, even if it is impossible to recreate the experiences of historical protagonists, narrative lends itself to giving readers a sense of the experiential dimension of the past. In this sense, narrative is not only a medium of representation, but also a means of presence.     

THE OPEN LETTERS OF SERGEI BORISOV: FROM THE HISTORY OF PHOTOGRAPHY IN THE ALTAI

The present study focuses on the biography and artistic heritage of S.I. Borisov, one of Barnaul's most successful photographers of the early 20th century. Borisov's archive is kept at the Altai State Museum of Local Studies and includes materials from his photographical expeditions to the Altai in 1907–1914. The analysis of the photographs given here creates an image of this multiethnic region as it was at that time in all its diversity of culture and tradition.     

POTENTIAL HISTORY: READING ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE FROM INDIGENOUS KNOWLEDGES*

Until the beginning of the twentieth century, history, as a core concept of the political project of modernity, was highly concerned with the future. The many crimes, genocides, and wars perpetuated in the name of historical progress eventually caused unavoidable fractures in the way Western philosophies of history have understood change over time, leading to a depoliticization of the future and a greater emphasis on matters of the present. However, the main claim of the “Historical Futures” project is that the future has not completely disappeared from the focus of historical thinking, and some modalities of the future that have been brought to the attention of historical thought relate to a more-than-human reality. This article aims to confront the prospects of a technological singularity through the eyes of peoples who already live in a world of more-than-human agency. The aim of this confrontation is to create not just an alternative way to think about the future but a stance from which we can explore ways to inhabit and therefore repoliticize historical futures. This article contains a comparative study that has been designed to challenge our technologized imaginations of the future and, at the same time, to infuse the theoretical experiment with contingent historical experiences. Could we consider artificial intelligence as a new historical subject? What about as an agent in a “more-than-human” history? To what extent can we read this new condition through ancient Amerindian notions of time? Traditionally, the relationship between Western anthropocentrism and Amerindian anthropomorphism has been framed in terms of an opposition. We intend to prefigure a less hierarchical and more horizontal relation between systems of thought, one devoid of a fixed center or parameter of reference. Granting the same degree of intellectual dignity to the works of Google engineers and the views of Amazonian shamans, we nevertheless foster an intercultural dialogue (between these two “traditions of reasoning”) about a future in which history can become more-than-human. We introduce potential history as the framework not only to conceptualize Amerindian experiences of time but also to start building an intercultural dialogue that is designed to discuss AI as a historical subject.