National reproduction: Norway's new national library

ABSTRACT. This article elaborates on the concept of national reproduction as a means of analysing how national categories were redefined and adjusted in the political process that led to the establishment of the National Library of Norway. Three different forms of national reproduction may be distinguished in this process: the adjustment of cultural and territorial hierarchies within the nation‐state in the 1980s; the consolidation of the national community by defining it in contrast to the “foreign” in the 1990s; and the definition by the political elite of a “new national we” that includes the “foreign” after the turn of the millennium.     

战后日本政府“解释改宪”历史过程评述

战后日本宪法因其第九条规定而被称为"和平宪法"。长期以来,日本政府通过"解释改宪"的方式,不仅使日本突破了和平宪法所规定的"不保持战力"等限制,而且在军事实力上获得了巨大的发展,并将以"专守防卫"为任的自卫队派往了海外。通过政府对宪法第九条进行的扩大解释,战后日本在国家发展方向上偏离了和平宪法确立的和平主义宗旨与原则。     

The Monument to Victory in Bolzano: desacralisation of a fascist relic

The Monument to Victory in Bolzano, raised to remember Italian soldiers who fell in the First World War and to celebrate the victory over the Austro-Hungarian army, was contested from the moment of its installation in 1928. The German-speaking inhabitants of Bolzano were offended by its expression of Italian patriotism and the monument continued to symbolise the antagonism between the Italian- and the German-speaking population in the period following the end of Second World War. The monument’s explicit fascist propaganda attracted strong polemical reactions and some political groups even asked for it to be demolished. A recently-opened permanent exhibition in the crypt of the monument explores the twentieth-century dictatorships of Italy and their impact on Bolzano. Its historicisation offers a new interpretation of the monument – not one based on a schism between the populations of Bolzano, but rather one proposing reconciliation. This historicisation happens through the contextualisation of the monument, an efficient tool for the ‘desacrilisation’ of politically charged buildings; by exposing the detested ideology that they represent, they are stripped of their original ‘sacred’ character. This process also shows that it is possible for controversial, politically significant structures to become legitimate parts of a country’s modern heritage.     

An alternative interpretation of the Ediacaran (Precambrian) chondrophore Chondroplon Wade

The genus Chondroplon, known from only 2 specimens worldwide, is re-interpreted as a deformed Dickinsonia.