Bringing Memory Home: Historical (Post)Memory and Patricio Pron's El espíritu de mis padres sigue subiendo en la lluvia (2011)

Published in 2011, Patricio Pron's semi-autobiographical novel details the return of a young Argentine academic to visit his dying father in Buenos Aires, and points precisely to the problematic generational inheritance that characterises the work of Argentina's second generation of dictatorship victims. Negotiating both personal and appropriated memories of his father's militancy during Argentina's last dictatorship (1976–1983), the protagonist gestures to memory not as a source of any objective or official history, but to its inherent quality as a subjective, postponed and mediated construct. Playing with the distinction between history and memory, the novel problematises the potential of postmemory's insistence on creative investment and highlights the difficulties inherent in the re-writing of history as an attempt to understand the past. By building on critical debates surrounding the application of post-Holocaust theory in Argentina, this article will place theories of postmemory firmly within an Argentine context and call for the need to reassess the political nature of the legacy inherited by this second generation. While advancing the discussion of these political elements of Argentine postmemory, attention will thus be drawn to the mechanisms of mnemonic transfer both between and within generations, highlighting how the subjective modification of what is being remembered allows Pron to move beyond an objectively unknowable past and look toward a future that is both open to, and shaped by, his contemporaries.     

New ages for the post-Howiesons Poort,late and final Middle Stone Age at Sibudu,South Africa

Optically stimulated luminescence (OSL) measurements are reported for single grains of quartz from deposits within Sibudu rock shelter. Such measurements enable rejection of unrepresentative grains and application of the finite mixture and central age models to obtain the most reliable age estimates. Three types of single-grain equivalent dose (D_e) distributions were observed: one sample represented a single dose population, three samples indicated mixing between Iron Age (IA) and Middle Stone Age (MSA) deposits, and 10 samples (in addition to the three mixed samples) showed scattered distributions. The latter type resulted from differences in the beta dose received by individual grains. For these samples, the beta doses were modelled and adjusted accordingly. Ages for the 14 samples collected from MSA deposits post-dating the Howiesons Poort (HP) resulted in three age clusters, which are stratigraphically consistent with the three informally named cultural phases at Sibudu: namely, the post-HP, late MSA and final MSA. Weighted mean ages of 58.5 ± 1.4 ka, 47.7 ± 1.4 ka and 38.6 ± 1.9 ka were calculated for these phases, respectively. The three phases were separated by two occupational hiatuses with durations of 10.8 ± 1.3 ka and 9.1 ± 3.6 ka. We hypothesise that the punctuated presence of humans at Sibudu was determined by large-scale fluctuations in climate during oxygen isotope stage (OIS) 3, which resulted in alternating wet and dry periods. Phases of occupation correspond to wet periods when fresh water was available in the Tongati River, whereas intervals of site abandonment correspond to dry periods when people were forced to migrate in search of a reliable source of fresh water. Where people migrated to, remains unresolved.     

Productive Relations in the Northeast and the Rest‐of‐Brazil Regions in 1995: Decomposition and Synergy in Input‐Output Systems

Using a set of interregional input‐output tables built by Guilhoto (1998) for 1995 for two Brazilian regions (Northeast and rest of the economy), the methodology developed by Sonis, Hewings, and Miyazawa (1997) is applied in the construction of a series of linkages such that it is possible to examine, through the nature of the internal and external interdependencies, the structure of trading relationships between the two regions. The methodology uses a partitioned input‐output system and exploits techniques that produce left and right matrix multipliers of the Leontief Inverse. This procedure facilitates the classification of the types of synergetic interactions within a preset pairwise hierarchy of economic linkages subsystems. In general, the results show that the Northeast region has a greater dependence on the rest of the economy region than the rest of the economy has on the Northeast region, and at the same time the rest of the economy region seems to be more developed as it presents a more complex productive structure than the Northeast region.     

Why the General said No

Based upon recently published volumes of French diplomatic documents, this review article examines the course of the negotiations for British entry into the European Economic Community from 1961 to 1963 and the reasons why France vetoed Britains application. It is clear that even before the British government launched its application, the French government was aware of the threat it posed to the cohesion of the Community and to French interests. It therefore pursued tactics of delay. The British, who were in a hurry to join, vainly sought to convince the French of their conversion to the Gaullist conception of a con–federal Europe that would be independent of both the Soviet Union and the United States, even dangling the prospect of nuclear cooperation before President de Gaulle. The latter's position inside France was relatively weak until he won a referendum on the direct election of the president in October 1962 and his party triumphed in the legislative elections the following month. De Gaulle then felt secure enough to tell Prime Minister Macmillan quite bluntly at their Rambouillet meeting on 15–16 December 1962 that he did not believe that Britain was ready for EEC membership. He had thus already made up his mind to exclude Britain before the Nassau agreement between President Kennedy and Mr Macmillan in which the former agreed to supply Britain with Polaris nuclear missiles, although this agreement confirmed his belief that Britain was excessively dependent upon the United States. Although economic questions—particularly those relating to the system of agricultural support and to Britain's request for special concessions to Australia, Canada and New Zealand—did play an important part in de Gaulle's decision, it is clear that political factors were uppermost in his mind. He did not want either a diluted Community or one in which there was a possible rival to French leadership.     

VARYING EFFECT OF FERTILITY DETERMINANTS AMONG MIGRANT AND INDIGENOUS FEMALES IN THE TRANSITIONAL AGRO-ECOLOGICAL ZONE OF GHANA

The transitional agro‐ecological zone of Ghana, located between the richly endowed south and the impoverished north, has attracted seasonal and permanent farm migrants, mainly from northern Ghana, who now live side by side with the indigenous people. While migrants have higher numbers of Muslims, indigenous people are mainly Christians. Although the majority of the migrants live in migrant quarters with less favourable socio‐economic conditions, they are more successful farmers and therefore wealthier. The objectives are to examine the varying effect of fertility determinants among migrants and indigenous females. This paper uses data collected in 2002 among 194 females aged 15 to 49 years. Multiple regression models are used to assess fertility determinants. Results show that although migrant households were wealthier, migrant females were more traditional. They had more children living in foster care, and a lower proportion of them approved of men participating in household activities. In addition, they were less well educated, recorded higher infant mortality, gave birth earlier and used less contraception. Furthermore, while a female's migration status is statistically significant so far as non‐proximate determinants of fertility are concerned, the same variable is not significant with respect to proximate determinants. In addition, a married female migrant would on average have almost one more child compared to her indigenous counterpart, and migrant females who had experienced the loss of a child would on average have 2.5 more children compared to their indigenous counterparts. Finally, more affluent migrant females have 0.08 fewer children compared to their indigenous counterpart.