Historical Events

Recently, we have seen a lot of Princess Diana's sons on television as they have been remembering the anniversary of her untimely death. And, we hear about all the good that she had done. Granted, these things are true. But we have heard similar stories about people who were supposed to have been 'good', who, later, we found out to be less than the 'good' we thought that they were (Christopher Columbus, Mother Theresa, Father Serra, etc.). And we must also remember all of the popes who knew the truth about Christianity, but went on pretending that Christianity is 'good' and not a fraud. I'm not trying to say that the late Diana Spencer wasn't a good person, or that her sons are not. However, we do have to reexamine a lot of what we have been told, as well as what was presented to us in history and by whom.

This dissertation explores four recent examples of video art by four South African women artists. It focuses on Jo Ractliffe’s Vlakplaas: 2 June 1999 (drive-by shooting) [1999/2000], Berni Searle’s Mute (2008), Penny Siopis’ Obscure White Messenger (2010) and Minnette Vári’s Chimera (the white edition, 2001 and the black edition 2001-2002).

I consider the visual, sonic, temporal, durational, spatial, sensory and affective capacities of these works, and their encounter with historical events/episodes and figures the significance and affective charge of which move across the eras differentiated as apartheid and post-apartheid. I seek to contribute to critiques of the post-apartheid democracy, and the impetus to move forward from the past, to forgive and reconcile its violence, while not actively and critically engaging historical trauma, and its relation to memory. Each of the videos engaged enter into a dialogue with historical narratives embedded within the experience and memory of violence and racial oppression in South Africa. The study is concerned with the critical significance and temporality of memory in relation to trauma as a historical and psychoanalytical concept applicable to ongoing conditions of historical and political violence and its continuous, apparently irresolvable repetition in political-historical life.

This inquiry is underpinned by art historical approaches to the relationship between art and trauma, and, in particular, the work of Jill Bennett (2005) and Griselda Pollock (2013). It is concerned primarily with Bennett and Pollock’s privileging, from their particular theoretical perspectives, of the affects and internal logics/worlds of art objects, which prompt critical thought, and theoretical and historical inquiry. The particular temporality of video is engaged through historical and psychoanalytical concepts of trauma. The videos selected for this dissertation suggest ideas of temporal and spatial disorientation, displacement, collapse, and irresolvable repetitive return. The opacity that characterises the works is a major point of emphasis, and is related to the dissertation’s concern with trauma, racial oppression and historical/epistemic violence.
A major concern is how artists and scholars enter into dialogues with history, from the perspectives of their own subjectivities, without reinscribing historical and epistemic violence, and the objectification of marginalised subjects. Situated within the parameters of feminist ethics the study foregrounds women artists. I argue for an ethics that takes into account self-reflexivity, and the artist’s, and the scholar’s, situated relationship to history, in the aftermath of sustained historical racial oppression and authoritarianism. It considers the possibilities of art objects as sites that facilitate empathetic, critical and intellectually engaged encounters with historical trauma and violence in South Africa. The videos explored counter spectacle and didactic, and authoritarian, modes of representation. In the absence of a sustained and visible art historical narrative of the history of video art in South Africa, the study focuses on work representative of the earliest, documented examples of video art by women artists, which emerge out of the transition from apartheid. The tension between history’s relationship to objectivity, detachment and empirical knowledge, and its participation in subjective, imaginary, and performative processes underpins the study.
 

We are easily surprised to see the gap between the progress that has been made, and are constantly being made, in the field of physical-mathematical sciences and the difficulty of finding similar progress in the field of social and human knowledge (in fact: in these fields, beyond the beliefs of the experts, the actual knowledge on the mechanisms that determine historical evolution, not to mention the elements that make up the essence of human nature, actual knowledge seems to have stopped at the dawn of philosophical speculation). The cause of this gap derives not so much from the difficulties, and from the specific complexity, which these fields of investigation present, but from the different type of motivation that drives researchers in the two different great fields of investigation. If for the physical-mathematical sciences the researchers seem driven only by the desire to contribute to increasing knowledge, without taking into account the advantages and personal dangers that can derive from such action (think of the risks run by Galileo Galilei, had following the disclosure of the deductions derived from their own telescopic observations), the thinkers of the field of social and human knowledge seem to be driven, mainly, by the desire to acquire: fame, glory and power. Only when the “scientists” of these last two sectors radically change their basic objectives, will knowledge in these fields make genuine cognitive progress.
The knowledge of the actual historical evolution and of the actually relevant events in relation to this evolution is constantly relegated to allusions and metaphors, never to a timely analysis and such that it can be confirmed, or denied, by the comparison with the reality of the facts. This is due to the need for historians to justify historical reality and, indeed, to magnify it, to the greater glory of the powerful they serve, or those powerful whom they believe may prevail in the near future. The maximum of historical objectivity can be found in those historians who, considering themselves free, prepare an analysis of history that they believe cannot be refuted by future historians, who, like them, would inevitably be subjected to the decisive conditioning of historical reality. they are about to analyze.
However, human beings who are truly aware of their own dignity and of the need to bring about effective progress in the process of civilizing, cannot but undertake to analyze in a truly comparable way with historical events actually relevant to the evolutionary dynamics of historical reality, in its essence in act. This is, in fact, the indispensable premise for groped to design a new model of society which corresponds to the desires, needs and purposes of individuals and which evolves in harmony with them.

Abstract. Building on the social movement/revolutions and recent social movement emotions literature and using interviews and oral history from revolutionary Nicaragua,
I make a case for recognizing the significance of emotions when studying revolutions.  The essay aims for a contextual understanding of the role of emotions in the making of
revolution during the insurrectionary period in Nicaragua. These are examined from the vantage point of “revolutionary accelerators,” the conflictual event-contexts from which revolutionary actors emerge. Through the historical analysis of testimonies associated with a number of politically significant events that changed the course of political dynamics in 1970s Nicaragua, the piece illustrates: (1) how events function as
generators of revolutionary action and (2) how event-related emotions such as anger and fear, but primarily moral outrage and hope, contribute to a transformation in consciousness
that leads potential participants to define their circumstances as needing their revolutionary involvement. It also attempts to demonstrate how the latter two emotions – moral outrage and hope – are dominant under different event-contexts.  Lastly, the relationships between these emotions and how these are connected to revolutionary accelerators are similarly explored.

Teniendo en cuenta la repercusión que tuvo el Concurso de Cante Jondo de Granada (1922), no solo en concursos posteriores como el de Córdoba, sino en performances realizadas en festivales fuera de España, en esta comunicación pretendo analizar una serie de conciertos realizados en Inglaterra organizados por un colectivo de músicos-profesores, intelectuales, españoles e ingleses. Para la preparación de dicho espectáculo se tomaron ideas del Concurso de Granada y se debatieron cuestiones relacionadas con el concepto de autenticidad, la profesionalidad de sus participantes, quien compondría el jurado, etc. Recuperando material audiovisual de aquel proyecto y las voces de sus protagonistas de algún modo nos trasladaran tanto al concurso como al espectáculo británico. El Legado del Concurso que nos lleva incluso a la Lámpara Minera de la Unión, nos hace (re)plantearnos nuevamente cuestiones sobre que se espera de los concursantes y del flamenco que presentan, los palos que ejecutan y la transmisión de un conocimiento que cruza fronteras e instituciones.

Comparative political scientists have sought to remedy their subdiscipline’s structuralist tendencies by paying greater analytical attention to transformative political events. Yet, our conceptual understanding of events remains rudimentary. The article addresses this conceptual gap in two ways. First, it foregrounds symbolic meaning-making as the constitutive attribute of events. Second, it demonstrates that events are not inherently agency-facilitating by developing the concept of prospectively framed events. These are occurrences that actors know will take place, but of whose outcome they are uncertain. Political challengers frame the upcoming event so as to discursively trap incumbents into political action they would rather not undertake. The article demonstrates this process by tracing the conflict between secessionist challengers and political incumbents within the Catalan nationalist movement between 2006 and 2010. The concluding section discusses the causal implications of the argument.

Los medios de comunicación masiva de élite en Rusia moderna se dedican a fomentar la antigua ideología del aislamiento y contribuyen al creciente militarismo del país. Objetivos. A raíz de ello se ha propuesto detectar y analizar el papel de las imagines del pasado en los procesos de la autoidentificación temporal de la juventud rusa. Se sabe que las imágenes de los acontecimientos históricos forman la mayor parte de la consciencia básica de la identidad nacional y civil de los ciudadanos. Para este fin dentro del presente estudio se ha analizado la memoria histórica de los jóvenes rusos. Metodología. La metodología principal y el material empírico se basaban en cuestionarios y entrevistas grupo focalesefectuados en 12 ciudades del distrito federal de Rusia (excepto Crimea) con la participación de 1.548 personas. Resultados. El estudio de las peculiaridades de la percepción de los acontecimientos históricos del siglo ХХ ayudó a determinar las características de la identidad de la juventud moderna, detectar los factores que influyen en la evaluación de los hechos históricos principales para un país y el papel de los medios de comunicación. Discusión y conclusiones. Mediante el conocimiento del proceso de autoidentificación se pretende resolver varios problemas ideológicos y educativos actuales en vista del hecho de atravesar Rusia en los últimos años tiempos políticamente complicados para Rusia debido en parte a la rebeldía en Ucrania.

Depuis bientôt quatre décennies, les recherches de l'historien américain William H. Sewell Jr. tentent de tisser un dialogue entre l'histoire et les autres sciences sociales, au premier rang desquelles la sociologie et l'anthropologie. Deux séquences peuvent être distinguées dans son travail théorique. En réponse aux paradigmes nord-américains alors dominants, Sewell a d'abord investi, au début des années 1990, la question des temporalités et notamment la catégorie analytique de l'événement. Mais depuis une dizaine d'années, les recherches de Sewell revisitent le capitalisme comme un phénomène qui induit et qui génère des temporalités spécifiques. L'article ici traduit s'inscrit dans ce cadre. Le capitalisme est envisagé en ce qu'il possède une unité qui, malgré ses transformations et changements réguliers, permet de le considérer comme une époque en tant quel.

Die Geschichte ist eine Art Gewebe, das sich aus einer großen Zahl mehr oder weniger dichter Verknüpfungen zusammensetzt. Die Knotenpunkte sind die historischen Ereignisse, die Fäden die Geschichtsbilder mit ihren temporalen Strukturen und Zeitordnungen, die wir als historisch arbeitende Menschen zwischen den Ereignissen herstellen und erkennen. Historisch zu denken ist nur eine Möglichkeit der Aneignung von und Orientierung in der Welt, wenn auch eine bislang immer noch außerordentlich erfolgreiche.