THE FINAL PHASE?

This essay reviews the recent book by Carolyn Dean that seeks to elucidate the ways in which complaints about a “surfeit of memory” and the privileging of Jewish victimization during the Holocaust as unique and as the emblem of radical evil in our times has shaped discussions of victims in general, creating an environment in which groups vie for victim status as a means of validating their grievances and making claims for justice. The hostility to such claims has, Dean argues, created antivictim discourses that end up generating aversion toward victims, primarily by denying the validity of their claims to suffering and, in the case of Jews, projecting them as “perpetrators” in their neglect of the suffering of others. At the same time, Dean argues, the demand that victims narrate their suffering in the aesthetically constrained style of “minimalism” equally undermines the legitimacy of victims' memories by demanding that they be presented in an already mastered form, thereby erasing the very trauma that, in principle, such narratives seek to represent. At stake in the debates concerning Holocaust memorial consciousness and its proper modes of representation, this article suggests, are larger historiographical and ethical issues about how to integrate the horrors of the past and the traumatic experience of terror into the normal protocols of historical writing, which rely on distance, objectivity, and interpretive critique as governing procedures. To incorporate terror into historical representation will mean acknowledging and accepting as historiographically legitimate the differing status of analytically recuperated “facts” and victim testimony and finding a way to theorize the reality of “voices” from the past without assuming the necessary “truth” of what they convey.     

Collective Trauma and the Evolution of Nehru's Worldview: Uncovering the Roots of Nehruvian Non-Alignment

ABSTRACT

Scholarship on Nehruvian non-alignment often assumes an artificial continuity between Jawaharlal Nehru's pre-independence thinking and post-independence decision, as India's prime minister, to pursue a policy of rejecting any international blocs or military alliances. This article demonstrates that, in fact, the ideas that constituted Nehruvian non-alignment were largely absent from Nehru's pre-independence thought – during the decades before India's independence Nehru articulated a strong willingness to cede India's sovereignty to international groupings for idealistic aims. To explain Nehru's shift from idealistic internationalist to professed internationalist but de facto isolationist with regard to alliances and blocs, I advocate a first-image, constructivist approach which considers the impact of collective trauma on Nehru's worldview. Drawing upon a novel, synthesized approach to theorizing collective trauma's impact on national identity, this article argues that the collective trauma Nehru witnessed and experienced during the decades before Indian independence profoundly impacted his trust in international institutions and views on representational diplomacy. In turn, this trauma affected his interpretation of various ideational and strategic considerations, contributing to the formulation of Nehruvian non-alignment.     

Francesco è vivo,e lotta insieme a noi! Rebuilding local identities in the aftermath of the 1977 student protests in Bologna

The decade spanning from 1968 to 1980, known also as the anni di piombo, is among the most difficult and traumatic periods in Italian post-war history. One of the most memorable years of this decade was 1977, when a new student movement stood up against the established order. The so-called Movement of ’77 manifested itself among others in Bologna, where it had a predominantly creative and joyful character. Nevertheless, the protests were violently struck down when left-wing student Francesco Lorusso was killed by police forces during clashes, resulting in an urban guerriglia. This incident worsened the relationship between the historical left and younger generations of (more radical) left-wing activists, and marked the beginning of the end of the Movement of ’77. The chapter on 1977 was, however, never really closed, and a ‘counter-memory’ has continued to divide the local community ever since. In this article, we shall see how different memory communities in Bologna have dealt with this ‘collective trauma’, focusing on the former Movement of ’77 and the way it has used public commemorative rituals to rebuild a collective identity for itself in subsequent years.     

The Tenco effect. Suicide,San Remo,and the social construction of the canzone d'autore

Abstract

Canzone d'autore is an indigenous expression that has no precise equivalent in other languages. Its social use identifies a genre of popular song that presuppose the existence of an ‘autore’ taken in its most vigorous sense, meaning a ‘creator’, an ‘artist’– but how did this claim to artistry originate? How did it insinuate itself into the world of song, a genre that by definition belongs to the realm of what is traditionally called in Italian ‘musica leggera,’ with unmistakably pejorative connotations? In this essay, I will put forward a sociological interpretation of the genesis of the canzone d'autore, using as a strategic conceptual device the idea of cultural trauma. The traumatic event that I propose to explore, making use of this concept and its analytical machinery, is the suicide of the singer-songwriter Luigi Tenco during the seventeenth San Remo ‘Festival della Canzone’ (‘song festival’) – that is the best-known, most controversial, and most influential single event in the field of Italian ‘musica leggera’, an annual event regularly attended every year – via radio, television, or audience participation – by millions of Italians. Through a reconstruction of that suicide and above all of the public and dramatic events that followed in response to it, the paper examines the social process that transformed an individual tragedy into a collective, social drama, a process that not only produced a new musical classification, but also a new cultural and aesthetic category.     

Paleopathology of The Population of Krasnoyarsk,Central Siberia (Pokrovskiy and Voskresensko-Preobrazhenskiy Cemeteries of the 17th– Early 20th Centuries)

Published data on the paleopathology of Siberian populations are scarce. However, two samples of adult and non- adult skeletons taken from excavations at the Pokrovskiy (17th–18th centuries) and Voskresensko-Preobrazhenskiy (17th–early 20th century) cemeteries in Krasnoyarsk (123 and 204; 101 and 81, respectively) revealed cases of rickets, tuberculosis, and congenital syphilis in children, and vertebral tuberculosis and tertiary syphilis in adults. Trauma areas included ribs, hands, forearms, and tibiae. These two samples provide evidence on which to base an assessment of the health of the Krasnoyarsk population from 1628 to the early 1900s.     

The death and burial of sunghir 1

The Mid Upper Paleolithic Sunghir 1 burial of an older adult male is one of the most elaborate burials known, with red ochre, thousands of mammoth ivory beads, and other body ornaments. Reanalysis and cleaning of the skeletal remains revealed a perimortem incision in the ventral–lateral first thoracic vertebra (T1) body, most likely from a sharp blade or point and the probable cause of death. Context indicates that the trauma was most likely from a hunting accident or social altercation. The unusual cause of death may be correlated with the exceptional burial elaboration of Sunghir 1, adding to the high frequency of unusual individuals in the ‘red ochre’ burials of the Mid Upper Paleolithic. Copyright © 2010 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Weapon‐related Cranial Lesions from Medieval and Renaissance Turin,Italy

Archaeological excavations carried out in the square around the Cathedral of S. Giovanni in Turin brought to light burials referable to the medieval and Renaissance periods. The anthropological examination of the skeletal remains allowed to identify two skeletons from the medieval period (10th–11th centuries) and four skeletons from the Renaissance age (15th century) showing weapon‐related cranial injuries. These peri mortem lesions are indicators of interpersonal aggression and in particular of armed conflicts. The two individuals from the early medieval period presented three traumas consisting in sharp force lesions caused by bladed weapons. As regards the Renaissance sample, the majority of the nine peri mortem injuries were sharp force wounds, followed by a blunt force trauma. These distribution patterns might reflect different fighting techniques, whereas the side distribution and location of the skull trauma provide further indications on the fighting modalities. Identification of the weapons that caused these traumas is suggested. The lack of post‐cranial wounds at Piazza S. Giovanni might be explained by the greater attention paid to the head, which was the main target of attack, or by adequate protection of the body through medieval and Renaissance armours. Otherwise, the wounds in the body would have been found only in the soft tissues, with no involvement of the bones. Despite the presence of weapon injuries, the results obtained from the study of the Renaissance sample are different from the findings of other contemporary battlefields. It is highly likely that the individuals of the Renaissance age were not young soldiers employed in war episodes and brought back for burial in Turin after battles that had taken place elsewhere. Instead, they were probably individuals who had died in riots or in other violent city episodes, as the historical records for the Renaissance age seem to confirm. Copyright © 2013 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Trauma to the Skull: A Historical Perspective from the Southern Levant (4300BCE–1917CE)

Background: Although the southern Levant is commonly perceived as having been a violent region throughout history, few studies have explored the pattern and intensity of skull trauma through time in the general population. The aim of this study is to follow changes in traumatic injury patterns in the southern Levant, over an extensive period of 6,000 years. Methods: 783 archaeological skulls from the Tel Aviv University osteological collection were examined for evidence of trauma. The specimens were divided into three periods: Chalcolithic‐Bronze‐Iron Age (4300–520 BCE), Hellenistic‐Roman‐Byzantine Period (332 BCE‐640 CE), and Early and Late Arab Period (640–1917 CE). The characteristics of injury on each skull were recorded. Results: A high frequency (25%) of traumatic lesions to the skull was evident among historic populations of the southern Levant, a rate that did not fluctuate significantly over 6,000 years. The most common pattern of trauma was minor circular depressed injuries. Most of the injuries were located on the parietal or frontal bones. Traumatic lesions were more frequent in males than in females, and in mature individuals than in adolescents and children, during all periods. Conclusions: The rate of trauma in the southern Levantine populations was shown to be considerably higher than in other archaeological populations worldwide. The fact that no significant differences in trauma rates were found over time implies that socio‐economical shifts (from agrarian to urban populations) had little impact on the local populations’ aggressive behavior. In contrast, changes in type of injury, from blunt force trauma to sharp force trauma and eventually projectile trauma, reflects changes in weaponry over time. The accumulated characteristics of cranial trauma pattern (type, location, side, size, sex, age) suggest that most of the individuals studied were not engaged directly in warfare. Rather, most injuries seem to be due to blows given during interpersonal violent encounters. Copyright © 2012 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Avulsion fractures of the transverse processes of the first thoracic vertebra: an archaeological case study from Raunds

Avulsion fractures of the transverse processes of vertebrae have not been previously identified in the archaeological record. This paper provides a case study of a 21–25 year old male skeleton from the 10^th century cemetery at Raunds Furnells (Northamptonshire, UK) with bilateral avulsion fractures of the transverse processes of the first thoracic vertebra. Possible aetiologies of this condition are discussed and conclusions drawn about the impact of this condition upon the individual. Copyright © 2008 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Geographical testimony: a short history of a Yugoslav family

ABSTRACT

I attempt in this essay to travel outside of and beyond the more spectacular or established geopolitical discourses associated with research on post-conflict regions, and follow instead the trail of another more essential or everyday history and geography. Listening to and responding to the testimony of a single Yugoslav family, I draw from and write of memories of former places, initially returning to the traumatic moments of 1992, and a journey across Europe. In so doing, I reflect upon the use of testimony in geographical writing, positioning it as an inherently geographical psychoanalytic technique, which not only eases suffering in individuals and communities, but also offers new possibilities for societal change and transitional justice in post-conflict regions.