Remember and never forget

In this article we try to analyse the relationship constructed between the memories of individuals and collective memory. This analysis is based on the confrontation of two types of sources: on the one hand the Yisker‐biher or “books of memories”; devoted to several hundred Jewish communities of the Diaspora (mostly in Poland), and on the other, autobiographies of Jews, both written (selected among the many published in the last ten years) and oral. Both kinds of texts are part of a literature of memorial and of mourning which makes use of analogous procedures and themes. Despite the diveristy and the irreducible uniqueness of each lived experience, the individual accounts all recount basically, the same trials: uprooting, migration, persecution, exile and impossibility of mourning. The authors of the autobiographies, in their role as spokespeople for others, who are no longer alive to bear witness, contribute not only to transmit individual memories, but also to reconstitute a collective memory. Inversely, collective memory takes its substance from individual memories, and bases its rhythm and movement upon them. These exchanges, in the form of chiasmes, creates a memory which is both unified and multiple, where individual memories reproduce general categories which subsume them and give them meaning.     

魁北克城 滋味永忆我心

<正>魁北克城向导Richard的美食寻味之旅从一家标榜正宗的拿波里披萨店开始,可惜我才吃了一半就仓惶而逃,据他说下段行程是带我去吃奶酪——想想那味道我要吓死了。美国纪录片《丑陋的美食》曾经嘲讽过玛格丽特披萨这种抱残守缺、因循守旧,以守护传统为名,     

60年山河记忆

60年一瞬间。在历史的长河里,60年只是惊鸿一瞥,但是对于共和国来说,60年却是波澜壮阔、跌荡起伏的一段光辉历程。它见证了河山变迁,见证了中国大地最美的那些山川历经岁月打磨,愈加光彩夺目。     

A Day to Remember, a Day to Forget

Book reviewed:
Emily S. Rosenberg. A Date Which Will Live: Pearl Harbor in American Memory . Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2003. 216 pp. $24.95 (paper).     

Dangerous Visions: the Cassowary as Good to Think and Good to Remember among the Anganen

The cassowary, although no longer a popular animal for possession or gift exchange in contemporary Anganen, is good to think in the Lévi-Straussian sense and good to remember. Its excessive violence may stand for the violence of which men are capable. This is the case for inter-group warfare. It also refers to intra-community hostilities, not sharing cassowary meat being a frequent cause for clan fission and an agonistic exchange called rawa where those conceptualised as brothers engage in the competitive slaughter of, ideally, cassowaries. The article primarily concerns rawa and its extraordinary character. It is typified by paradox and danger despite the displacement of anger from direct attacks on humans to the slaughter of animals. Rawa protagonists throw blood and uncleaned entrails at each other while shouting the vilest of insults in the hope the opponent will eventually not respond and lose the contest. However, while escalation of a dispute to the level of rawa is evidence of failed mediation, this competitive exchange establishes the condition for eventual intervention and, via a communal feast of the slaughtered animals, the resumption of strong community relations, including those between the former protagonists. The final ethnographic section focuses on the fact that warfare and rawa were prohibited by the Australian Administration. Anganen men feel they were disenfranchised by the Administration, in part because they were denied access to the culturally lauded male pursuits of being warriors and rawa men. As such, that cassowaries are thought to have been much more popular in the past is central to my claim they are good to remember.     

Choosing What to Remember in Neoliberal Singapore: The Singapore Story,State Censorship and State-Sponsored Nostalgia

This article interrogates the persistence of heavy-handed censorship of political films in Singapore at a time of cultural liberalisation when the state has generally shown greater tolerance for alternative political expression in theatre, the literary arts, academia and public events. Part of this has to do with the focus of these films on political dissidents and their greater capacity to present a fundamental challenge to The Singapore Story, which is the regime-legitimising official account of Singapore’s history. It also has to do with the power and outreach of relatively low-budget independent films and the documentary genre in particular to evoke alternative histories vividly, give voice to the silenced, and channel these voices digitally into the collective cinematic and social media experience of the present. With the jubilee celebrations of 2015, the ruling party has been working hard to regain hegemony after experiencing its worst electoral losses in the 2011 general elections. Its main approach for achieving this has been to sponsor widespread national nostalgia coupled with highly selective censorship of political films that challenge the dominant official discourse in ways that can erode the government’s electoral dominance and political authority.     

‘Remember the Sabbath’: a history of technological decisions and innovation in Orthodox Jewish communities

ABSTRACT

The relationship of Modern Orthodox Jewish communities to technology is mediated by the calendar, following requirements to keep the Sabbath holy. As nineteenth-, twentieth-, and twentyfirst-century inventions reshaped work, public spaces, and domestic living, rabbis intensely debated whether, how, and why observant Jewish people should avoid using electric switches, kitchen appliances, elevators, and other everyday devices on the Sabbath. To justify their decisions, rabbis interrogated minute technical details of these objects. Sabbath prohibitions promoted innovation, as rabbis collaborated with Jewish engineers to create what they judged to be Sabbath-compliant adaptions of everyday technologies. Given that prominent rabbis often disagreed about proper technology use on the Sabbath, Jewish families had the opportunity to decide for themselves what counted as authentic devotion in handling personal and domestic technologies.