PHILOSOPHICAL REFLECTIONS ON THE WAYS OF MEMORY AND HISTORY

Philosopher Jeffrey Barash seeks to clarify the concept of collective memory, which has taken on wide‐ranging meanings in contemporary scholarship. Returning to the original insight of sociologist Maurice Halbwachs during the 1920s, he grounds the concept in the living social memory of the present, whose sphere is widened by its capacity to draw upon a past beyond its ken through the symbolization of its remembrance. He offers two preliminary propositions: first, there is a history to the way philosophers have contextualized collective memory through the ages; second, there is a politics in the transmission of collective memory, highly visible in the uses of memory by mass media in the contemporary age. He builds his argument around four interrelated interpretations concerning: the ever more circumscribed role attributed to collective memory in the passage from antiquity into modernity; the dependence of collective memory upon living memory; the rising power of media to mold collective memory to present purposes; and historical understanding vis‐à‐vis evocation of collective memory as oppositional ways of accessing the past. I close with commentary that places Barash's philosophical interpretation within the context of contemporary historiographical practice, with particular attention to the scholarship of French historian Pierre Nora on the French national memory, and that of German scholars Jan and Aleida Assmann on the preservation and transmission of memorable cultural legacies.     

1. DECOLONIZING HISTORIES IN THEORY AND PRACTICE: AN INTRODUCTION

This is a reflection on the close relations of the writing of postcolonial histories and recent decolonial critiques, and on the tensions between them. Postcolonial historical analysis often has been preoccupied with hybridity and mixture, conjugation and adaptation, exchange and interaction—with subversions of sovereignty in contact zones, borderlands, and on the beach. As a structuralist formulation, decolonial historical binarism in contrast echoes Indigenous politics of self-determination, even suggesting at times an ontological decoupling of settler and Indigenous histories and practices. Stringent decolonization of historical inquiry—implying the sabotage and superseding of settler colonial linguistic, narrative, and temporal conventions and the disturbing of standardized assumptions about evidence, agency, and authorship—would give us an epistemic assemblage perhaps not recognizable as “history.” Even if desirable, is that imaginable now except as metaphor or ideal?     

REFLECTIONS ON 'AN ARCHAEOLOGY OF GREECE': SURVEYS AND EXCAVATIONS

Summary. In his Sather Lectures, Professor Snodgrass maintains that circumstances in Greece will compel archaeologists to pursue field surveys instead of excavations. He, moreover, questions the value of excavations mainly on the grounds of imcompleteness, uncertainties regarding dating and the ambiguities of interpretation. The excavations at Lefkandi are cited on several occasions as an example and, where not referred to, are open to the same questioning.
In reply, reasons are given for continuing excavation in spite of difficulties, and the validity of the criticisms brought against excavation are considered with special reference to those carried out at Lefkandi.     

ON FUTURES AND ENDINGS: NARRATOLOGICAL REFLECTIONS ON CONTEMPORARY FORMS OF CRISES*

The article examines the changing relationship of the present to the future from a narratological perspective. It argues that three dominant narrative schemas structure the contemporary experiences of temporality in the Western social imaginary: the modern crisis narrative, the apocalyptic narrative, and the chronic crisis narrative. In its first part, the article shows how the modern sense of crisis, which emerged in the late eighteenth century, sedimented into a powerful narrative template by knitting together the past, the present, and the future into a unified plot. The second part focuses on the resurgence of apocalyptic stories in the Western social imaginary and humanities discourse. The final part highlights the special contribution of aesthetics of precariousness to the Western imaginary of time and temporality. It argues that the “chronic crisis narrative” deflates the teleological narrative arc of the modern crisis paradigm while also shunning the end-time discourse of the apocalyptic narrative.     

对中国城市化道路的新思考

本文在阐明中国人文生态特点并分析中国城市化特征的基础上,以可持续发展理论为依据,提出了中国可持续发展的城市化新道路,及在城市化新道路中所采取的措施,促使“人口—城市化—资源与环境”这一人文生态系统持续、平衡、协调发展。     

PYLOS: REFLECTIONS ON THE DATE OF ITS DESTRUCTION AND ON ITS IRON AGE REOCCUPATION

Summary. The opinions of Blegen on the date of the destruction of the 'Palace of Nestor' at Epano Englianos and on the slightness of Iron Age occupation on the site are questioned. It is suggested that the palace may have been destroyed very early in Late Helladic IIIB if some vases of IIIC or early Iron Age were mistakenly ascribed to the destruction instead of to subsequent occupation of the site which, in Geometric times at least, appears to have been considerably greater than Blegen admitted.