‘My Body was Aflame with His Memory’: War,Gender and Colonial Ghosts in Hiroshima mon amour (1959)

This article argues that historicising the iconic 1959 French film Hiroshima mon amour reveals a different set of meanings that most scholars have overlooked. As France found itself embroiled in the brutal and bloody Algerian War of Independence, many started reflecting on the meaning and aftereffects of the Second World War. Despite its anti‐colonial universalist humanism, Hiroshima remains haunted by colonial ghosts and fantasies of post‐war ‘Asia’ where Asian female bodies are passive and Asian male bodies only echo other European male bodies. Ultimately, sexual and racial differences organise the film's narrative of war and canonises a Eurocentric version of ‘history’. The film's melodramatic love story renders invisible the ways gender and sexuality shape understandings of violence, wars, and violated bodies. Against Marguerite Duras's and Alain Resnais's intentions, the love story allows the remembering and forgetting of a (French) national history that only the female character embodies. Only the French woman stands in for subjectivity, memory and trauma, rendering everything else secondary. Once read as a historical text, the film illustrates the limits and ambivalences of post‐war anti‐colonial humanist political imagination.     

Violence and resistance: Joyce Lussu’s minority revolution in trans-lation

Abstract

This article explores the theme of violence in the autobiographical work of Joyce Salvadori Lussu, an Italian partisan, political activist, writer and translator, who experienced many wars and violent conflicts throughout her life: the Great War; the Second World War; the anti-imperialistic struggles; and the protests of 1968. As a premise, the author will reconsider the philosophical notions of violence and force in relation to the concept of resistance, by first situating all these categories within a physical sphere. Second, the author proposes a rethinking of the subject of violence from a female perspective, by studying Joyce Lussu’s theoretical discourse about women and war. Therefore, through the analysis of images of violence gathered from Lussu’s literary work, the author interprets the essential role of women as ‘resistants’ as well as bearers of pacifist values. Finally, the author uses the category of minority revolution, inspired by Deleuze and Guattari, to underline Lussu’s political commitment on the side of renegades through her activity as a translator of minor literature. The methodological perspective adopted aims at challenging the contemporary domination of the anti-humanist discourse, by endorsing the secular values of Humanism, reemerged and theorized in Italy between the 1930s and 1960s.     

Turning Points in the Greek Resistance

Abstract

Resistance to enemy occupation has stood rather apart from the general history of the Second World War. Historians have been doubtful whether to treat it as a part of military and strategic history or a part of political and diplomatic history. Some have thought the less said about it the better, in any context. In the history of particular countries which suffered enemy occupation, the treatment of resistance has varied widely according to the outcome of the war. In some countries it has occupied a major place in their war-time history: Denmark and Yugoslavia, for quite different reasons, are important examples. In other occupied countries very little has been written about the occupation by professional historians: Greece is an outstanding example. Although Britain played a leading role in promoting resistance everywhere, the subject has not attracted, many professional historians, other than those who had a personal engagement in it during the war.     

Renzo De Felice,the resistance and the historian' task

Abstract

The Cesare Barbieri Endowment for Italian Culture sponsored a two‐day conference in April 1998: ‘Behind enemy lines in World War II, the Resistance and the OSS in Italy’. On this occasion William Corvo of Middletown, Connecticut, donated the wartime papers of his father, Max Corvo. Max Corvo played a principal role in Organization of Strategic Services operations in Sicily and Italy during the war, linking the OSS and the Italian Resistance. Veterans of both the OSS and the Italian Resistance attended the symposium. We present here some of the papers that focused on the principal theme of the meeting: ‘The Resistance, war of liberation or civil war?’. Authors are: Borden Painter, Department of History at Trinity College; Vittorio Gozzer, partisan veteran and liaison for the conference with Italian partisan organizations; James Miller, historian at the State Department; Roy Domenico, Department of History at the University of Scranton; David Ward, Department of Italian at Wellesley College; Steven White, Department of History at Mount St Mary's College (Maryland); Spencer Di Scala, Department of History at the University of Massachusetts, Boston. Borden Painter and John Alcorn organized the conference for the Barbieri Endowment.     

About‐Face: Gender,Disfigurement and the Politics of French Reconstruction, 1918–24

This article examines the role of facially wounded soldiers and prosthetic masks in the post‐First World War reconstruction of a gendered French nation. In contextualising the work of Anna Coleman Ladd, who sculpted facial prosthetics to ‘re‐humanise’ disfigured French veterans, I aim to shed light on larger post‐war tensions between the accommodation and rejection of social and cultural change. By submitting to Ladd's efforts and donning her devices, the French mutilés who sought her help articulated, through their bodies, a conservative vision for the French nation – highlighting the resonance of the traditional masculine ideal in post‐war France and a desire to reconstruct an idealised past. The exposure of the ‘surreal’ face, conversely, signalled the futility of a return to the status quo ante and the creation of the Union des Blessés de la face et de la tête allowed veterans to renegotiate the bounds of acceptable masculinity. Collectively, the facially wounded suggest the ways in which the face serves as a site of gender work, a means by which to challenge or reify masculine norms of behaviour and appearance.     

Temporality,Dispossession and the Search for the Good: Interpreting the Book of Jeremiah with the Jesuit Refugee Service

ABSTRACT

This article explores potential connections between the experience of contemporary forced migrants subject to destitution and detention policies in the UK and readings of the biblical text, including the Book of Jeremiah. Drawing from fieldwork interviews conducted in London, it notes the significance of Jeremiah 29 to and its interpretation by interviewees. In dialogue with other articles in this volume and based on the insights of those interviewed for this project, the article considers the figure of Jeremiah as a critical figure in debate about forced migration and the Book of Jeremiah. It concludes with a proposal for connecting the narratives of contemporary forced migrants, readings of the text of Jeremiah, and the work of Simone Weil.     

‘Barbarity more suited to Savages’: British soldiers’ views of Spanish and Portuguese violence during the Peninsular War, 1808–1814

This article explores British soldiers’ reactions to the violence that Iberian soldiers, guerrillas and civilians perpetrated against wounded French soldiers and prisoners of war during the Peninsular War. Whilst they saw this violence as retaliatory, and sympathized with the suffering of the occupied, British soldiers were shocked, disturbed and outraged, often leading them to self-identify with their very enemy — the French. On one level, this violence was seen as a fundamental violation of customary rules of war. Yet further, in British minds it revealed a deeper Iberian culture of violence and way of war, which set the Iberian peoples apart from ‘civilized’ nations.     

Ordinary anti-Fascism? Italy and the fall of Fascism, 1943–1945

ABSTRACT

This article focuses on the immediate years after the fall of the Fascist regime from 1943 through the end of World War II. It asks: What did the Italians make of Fascism and its role in the country’s history as they witnessed the demise of the regime? How should we assess the nature of their anti-Fascist reactions at the time? Does the post-war conflation of Resistance and Liberation with anti-Fascism adequately represent their experience? Drawing on personal diaries written during 1943–1945, the article specifically examines three key temporal moments: the downfall of Mussolini on 25 July 1943, the armistice of 8 September 1943 and Italy’s proclamation of war against Germany on 13 October 1943. The article’s ultimate goal is to bring out the meanings that emerge out of the lifeworld of ordinary citizens in interaction with official narratives.     

“A German Bred Revolt”: the Manchester Guardian’s perceptions of the Irish Easter Rising, 1916

ABSTRACT

At the time of the Easter Rising of 1916 Britain had been engaged in the Great War against Germany for almost two years and on a scale and intensity previously unprecedented. This broader Great War backdrop is significant when analysing the 1916 Easter Rising, as it not only influenced the events which occurred in Dublin, but also the interpretation and presentation of the political violence. Despite the Easter Rising being well-documented in secondary literature, with a resurgence accounted for by its recent centenary, the British press and its portrayals of the events of 1916 has been one aspect which has not received as much scholarly attention. By analysing key stages in the uprising’s portrayal, it can be determined that the Manchester Guardian’s utilisation of the German connection had a two-fold implication. Utilising historical precedents of German-Irish “friendship”, such as the gun-running episodes of pre-War 1914, the newspaper justified its portrayal of Germany provoking violence in Ireland to disrupt British war efforts. Additionally, for the Manchester Guardian, the Irish rebels were depicted negatively in its articles as it attempted to halt the growth of republicanism, thereby ensuring the promotion of a more “moderate” form of nationalism.     

Memory in warfare: history as a destituent narrative

Abstract

To what extent may we consider historical writing a field of political tension? Could we make a plausible conceptual distinction between a constituent and a destituent narrative? According to Carlo Ginzburg – one of the proponents of ‘microhistory’ – historical sources are ‘distorting mirrors’, which let the truth shine through in an indirect way. Consequently, the good historian is the one who manages to grasp the ‘Freudian slips’ of history and fixes them in a coherent framework. Michel Foucault’s ‘political historicism’ seems to adopt the same historiographical approach: the most reliable witnesses of the past are the victims of the dominant power and the forgotten subjects of the constituent historical narrative. It seems to the author that Walter Benjamin and Simone Weil’s warfare writings share this destituent attitude towards historical representations. As far as Benjamin is concerned, the author’s hypothesis is that between the two world wars he radically redefines his notion of memory. With the apotheosis of the Nazi regime, he starts to conceive memory of the catastrophic past as the only possible input of an authentic revolutionary action. With a similar attention to collective memory, Weil goes through European history in order to deconstruct its principal political mythologies, from Rome to the Third Reich. Her purpose is to let the stories of the defeated re-emerge in order to show the history of violence that lies beyond the official representation of the past. In both cases, the main political aim is eventually to produce a destituent narrative of Europe that could serve as a guideline in the post-war period.     

New Women's Writing in France

Recent years have been marked by the deaths of a number of central figures of French women's writing: Marguerite Duras (1996), Christiane Rochefort (1998), Nathalie Sarraute (1999), Marie Cardinal (2001). It is too soon to know which of the newer writers currently attracting interest on the French literary scene and beyond will achieve similar canonical status. None the less, the passing of one generation of authors has coincided with the rise of a new generation of particularly exciting writers, many of whom first published work during the 1990s. Names such as Christine Angot, Marie Darrieussecq, Régine Detambel, Camille Laurens, Linda Lê, Marie Ndiaye, Amélie Nothomb are joining those of already established writers such as Hélène Cixous, Annie Ernaux, Sylvie Germain, Marie Redonnet and Leila Sebbar in what is a thriving and vibrant field of study, examined in this article.     

Françoise d’Eaubonne, éco-féminisme et anarchie

Abstract

Although Luc Ferry contrasted eco-feminism with the feminism of Simone de Beauvoir, the concept was coined by one of her close friends, Françoise d’Eaubonne, who, admittedly, is not well known. This is why the author presents an outline of her thinking and her early feminism and how the latter came to be combined with environmentalism to result in a theory which is as much eco-feminist as it is anarcha-feminist.     

Disciplined love: the Chinese Communist Party’s wartime restrictions on cadre love and marriage

ABSTRACT

During the Chinese War of Resistance against Japanese Aggression and the Civil War, the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) imposed restrictions on the marriage of its cadres, so as to maintain the Party’s effective control and combat cohesion. The Central Committee of the CCP did not issue uniform regulations on this topic; most decisions were made by the base areas, with the indirect support of the Central Committee. Marriage and love are personal matters, and the restrictions certainly caused emotional suffering for ordinary cadres affected. However, there were important reasons for the CCP’s implementation of these measures. Through punishment and guidance, these restrictions were carried out smoothly and did not cause great upheaval. As love and marriage became areas subject to the political power of the CCP, they unexpectedly became a focal point of the collision between individuality and Party spirit and between the individual and the group.     

Simone Weil's Political Theology

This article suggests that Simone Weil's political theology is characterized by the idea of labor and the event of laboring. I begin by arguing that her thinking is shaped by a materialist reading of Christianity that employs Marx's concepts — labor, capital and alienation — to examine the political implications of three theological ideas, fall, slavery and sin. Next, I suggest that although laboring should be understood as a creative endeavor, Weil argues that it is always conditioned and constrained by a force she terms social matter. This constraint produces what Marx called alienation and Weil will refer to as enslavement (and even sin). Finally, I contend that Weil's idea of labor — and its call for a minimization of constraint — provides a counter-force to social matter. I conclude by suggesting that Weil's labor provides a different way of conceptualizing not just the political subject, but political theology itself.     

Excavating Under Gunfire: Archaeologists in the Aegean During the First World War

Abstract

The Gallipoli campaign in 1915 revealed remains of the cemeteries of the Greek settlement of Elaious. French troops from the Corps expéditionnaire d'Orient were assigned to investigate the site, often under Turkish gunfire. This work was supervised by former students of the École française d'Athènes. Detailed plans were made, the finds catalogued, and a published report issued. During the subsequent campaign in Macedonia, the French team made a detailed study of the archaeological remains and objects discovered in the French sector. Ernest Gardner, the former director of the British School at Athens, had been posted to Salonica as a member of the Eastern Mediterranean Special Intelligence Bureau (EMSIB). He studied the finds from the British sector and created a museum for the finds in Salonica. Some other archaeological work continued in Greece during the war years, though not close to the front. Such dedicated archaeological work in a battlefield situation was the precursor to more specialized units that developed during the Second World War.     

Guerra civile: experience,memory and contrasting histories of the Resistance in Italy

This article examines the disagreement between two partisans turned historians, Nuto Revelli and Claudio Pavone, on the legitimacy of the term ‘civil war’ to describe the Italian Resistance of 1943–1945. ‘Civil war’ is a controversial term in Italian and European discussions of World War II. Accordingly, ‘civil war’ provokes a study of the intersection of ideology and ethics, experiential memory and history in postwar Europe. But why should Revelli and Pavone, two men who had been on the same side during the Resistance, see things so differently? This article demonstrates that each historian’s experience before and during World War II shaped their participation in the Resistance and their subsequent representation of it. Consequently, their divergent experiences offer an explanation as to why Pavone argues that the Resistance was a civil war and Revelli argues that it was not, without relativizing in political and ethical analysis.     

South African War (1899–1902) Memorials in Britain: A Case Study of Memorialization in London and Kent

Abstract

Mass public commemoration of war dead is often held to be a twentieth-century phenomenon, with its genesis in the Great War. This article argues for a pre-history occasioned by commemoration of the South African War (1899–1902) that built on shifts in the form and function of war memorials that had begun in the middle of the nineteenth century.     

Education of the Supreme Commander: The Theoretical Underpinnings of Eisenhower's Strategy in Europe, 1944–45

Abstract

Eisenhower's popular image as both senior officer and, subsequently, President of the United States tends to overplay his personal geniality and undervalues his intellect and clear professional mastery of the military art. This article argues for an Eisenhower who devoted himself to the study of war in the decades before the Second World War, and whose professional attainments defy the popular image.     

Wartime everydayness: beyond the battlefield in China’s Second World War

ABSTRACT

This article suggests that the study of the War of Resistance against Japanese aggression should pay due attention to the effect of the war on the wartime everyday, that is, on Chinese culture, politics, society, and the economy away from the battlefield. Not only was the impact deep and enduring, but evolving, regionally and socially divergent responses to the war also shaped the war’s military. In modern war, as Karl von Clausewitz pointed out, public morale is a key factor in deciding the outcome of the fighting. The article first sketches the war’s impact on the Chinese economy, suggesting that the main consequences were “demodernization” and the revival of traditional trading patterns. It then discusses the reading lives of a young woman who grew up during the war and a senior Nationalist official to delineate contrasting emotional private responses, with one person finding in literature an inspirational alternative and the other becoming increasingly disillusioned. The article concludes with an examination of three popular history textbooks. They all stressed the importance of an awareness of Chinese civilization but narrated its nature and its prospects in contrasting ways. Such textbooks were used in required Chinese history courses at universities. The article makes no attempt to be comprehensive but instead uses a few examples as illustrations of the potential of researching wartime everydayness.