Sites of imperial memory

Sites of imperial memory
Author: Dominik Geppert
Publisher: Manchester University Press
Total Pages: 379
Release: 2016-05-16
Genre: History
ISBN: 1526111888

Europe’s great colonial empires have long been a thing of the past, but the memories they generated are still all around us. They have left deep imprints on the different memory communities that were affected by the processes of establishing, running and dismantling these systems of imperial rule, and they are still vibrant and evocative today. This volume brings together a collection of innovative and fresh studies exploring different sites of imperial memory – those conceptual and real places where the memories of former colonial rulers and of former colonial subjects have crystallised into a lasting form. The volume explores how memory was built up, re-shaped and preserved across different empires, continents and centuries. It shows how it found concrete expression in stone and bronze, how it adhered to the stories that were told and retold about great individuals and how it was suppressed, denied and neglected.

Sites of International Memory

Sites of International Memory
Author: Glenda Sluga
Publisher: University of Pennsylvania Press
Total Pages: 369
Release: 2023-09-12
Genre: Architecture
ISBN: 1512824062

Whether we think of statues, plaques, street-names, practices, material or intangible forms of remembrance, the language of collective memory is everywhere, installed in the name of not only nations, or even empires, but also an international past. The essays in Sites of International Memory address the notion of a shared past, and how this idea is promulgated through sites and commemorative gestures that create or promote cultural memory of such global issues as wars, genocide, and movements of cross-national trade and commerce, as well as resistance and revolution. In doing so, this edited collection asks: Where are the sites of international memory? What are the elements of such memories of international pasts, and of internationalism? How and why have we remembered or forgotten "sites" of international memory? Which elements of these international pasts are useful in the present? Some contributors address specific sites and moments--World War II, liberation movements in India and Ethiopia, commemorations of genocide--while other pieces concentrate more on the theoretical, on the idea of cultural memory. UNESCO's presence looms large in the volume, as it is the most visible and iconic international organization devoted to creating critical heritage studies on a world stage. Formed in the aftermath of World War II, UNESCO was instrumental in promoting the idea of a "humanity" that exists beyond national, regional, or cultural borders or definitions. Since then, UNESCO's diplomatic and institutional channels have become the sites at which competing notions of international, world, and "human" communities have jostled in conjunction with politically specific understandings of cultural value and human rights. This volume has been assembled to investigate sites of international memory that commemorate a past when it was possible to imagine, identify, and invoke "international" ideas, institutions, and experiences, in diverse, historically situated contexts. Contributors:Dominique Biehl, Kristal Buckley, Roland Burke, Kate Darian-Smith, Sarah C. Dunstan, David Goodman, Madeleine Herren, Philippa Hetherington, Rohan Howitt, Alanna O'Malley, Eric Paglia, Glenda Sluga, Sverker Sörlin, Carolien Stolte, Beatrice Wayne, Ralph Weber, Jay Winter.

Sharpening the Haze

Sharpening the Haze
Author: Giulia Carabelli
Publisher: Ubiquity Press
Total Pages: 191
Release: 2020-01-07
Genre: Art
ISBN: 1911529668

This volume presents ten visual essays that reflect on the historical, cultural and socio-political legacies of empires. Drawing on a variety of visual genres and forms, including photographs, illustrated advertisements, stills from site-specific art performances and films, and maps, the book illuminates the contours of empire’s social worlds and its political legacies through the visual essay. The guiding, titular metaphor, sharpening the haze, captures our commitment to frame empire from different vantage points, seeking focus within its plural modes of power. We contend that critical scholarship on empires would benefit from more creative attempts to reveal and confront empire. Broadly, the essays track a course from interrogations of imperial pasts to subversive reinscriptions of imperial images in the present, even as both projects inform each author’s intervention.

The Politics of Imperial Memory in France, 1850–1900

The Politics of Imperial Memory in France, 1850–1900
Author: Christina B. Carroll
Publisher: Cornell University Press
Total Pages: 301
Release: 2022-05-15
Genre: History
ISBN: 1501763121

By highlighting the connections between domestic political struggles and overseas imperial structures, The Politics of Imperial Memory in France, 1850–1900 explains how and why French Republicans embraced colonial conquest as a central part of their political platform. Christina B. Carroll explores the meaning and value of empire in late-nineteenth-century France, arguing that ongoing disputes about the French state's political organization intersected with racialized beliefs about European superiority over colonial others in French imperial thought. For much of this period, French writers and politicians did not always differentiate between continental and colonial empire. By employing a range of sources—from newspapers and pamphlets to textbooks and novels—Carroll demonstrates that the memory of older continental imperial models shaped French understandings of, and justifications for, their new colonial empire. She shows that the slow identification of the two types of empire emerged due to a politicized campaign led by colonial advocates who sought to defend overseas expansion against their opponents. This new model of colonial empire was shaped by a complicated set of influences, including political conflict, the legacy of both Napoleons, international competition, racial science, and French experiences in the colonies. The Politics of Imperial Memory in France, 1850–1900 skillfully weaves together knowledge from its wide-ranging source base to articulate how the meaning and history of empire became deeply intertwined with the meaning and history of the French nation.

Transposed Memory: Visual Sites of National Recollection in 20th and 21st Century East Asia

Transposed Memory: Visual Sites of National Recollection in 20th and 21st Century East Asia
Author:
Publisher: BRILL
Total Pages: 228
Release: 2024-02-06
Genre: Art
ISBN: 900469109X

Transposed Memory explores the visual culture of national recollection in modern and contemporary East Asia by emphasizing memories that are under the continuous process of construction, reinforcement, alteration, resistance, and contestation. Expanding the discussion of memory into visual culture by exploring various visual sites of recollection, and the diverse ways commemoration is represented in visual, cultural, and material forms, this book produces cross-cultural and interdisciplinary conversations on memory and site by bringing together international scholars from the fields of art history, history, architecture, and theater and dance, examining intercultural relationships in East Asia through geopolitical conditions and visual culture. With contributions of Rika Iezumi Hiro, Ruo Jia, Burglind Jungmann, Hong Kal, Stephen McDowall, Alison J. Miller, Jessica Nakamura, Eunyoung Park, Travis Seifman, and Linh D. Vu.

Postcolonial Realms of Memory

Postcolonial Realms of Memory
Author: Etienne Achille
Publisher: Contemporary French and Franco
Total Pages: 440
Release: 2020
Genre: History
ISBN: 178962066X

Addressing the remarkable absence of colonial legacy from Pierre Nora's Les Lieux de mémoire, the present volume fosters a new reading of the French past by discerning and exploring an initial repertoire of realms that bridges the gap between traditionally instituted French memory and traces of the colonial on the Republic's soil, including its Outremer.

Heritage, Contested Sites, and Borders of Memory in the Asia Pacific

Heritage, Contested Sites, and Borders of Memory in the Asia Pacific
Author:
Publisher: BRILL
Total Pages: 381
Release: 2023-10-09
Genre: History
ISBN: 9004512985

Contests over heritage in Asia are intensifying and reflect the growing prominence of political and social disputes over historical narratives shaping heritage sites and practices, and the meanings attached to them. These contests emphasize that heritage is a means of narrating the past that demarcates, constitutes, produces, and polices political and social borders in the present. In its spaces, varied intersections of actors, networks, and scales of governance interact, negotiate and compete, resulting in heritage sites that are cut through by borders of memory. This volume, edited by Edward Boyle and Steven Ivings, and with contributions from scholars across the humanities, history, social sciences, and Asian studies, interrogates how particular actors and narratives make heritage and how borders of memory shape the sites they produce.

Memories of Post-Imperial Nations

Memories of Post-Imperial Nations
Author: Dietmar Rothermund
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Total Pages: 220
Release: 2015-05-14
Genre: History
ISBN: 1316569829

Memories of Post-Imperial Nations presents the first transnational comparison of Great Britain, the Netherlands, Belgium, France, Portugal, Italy and Japan, all of whom lost or 'decolonized' their overseas empires after 1945. Since the empires of the world crumbled, the post-imperial nations have been struggling to come to terms with the present, and as recall sets in 'wars of memory' have arisen, leading to a process of collective 'editing'. As these nations rebuild themselves they shed old characteristics and acquire new ones, looking at new orientations. This book brings together varying perspectives with historians and political scientists of these nations attempting to bind memory and its experience of different post-imperial nations.

Managing and Interpreting D-Day's Sites of Memory

Managing and Interpreting D-Day's Sites of Memory
Author: Geoffrey Bird
Publisher: Routledge
Total Pages: 335
Release: 2016-03-02
Genre: Business & Economics
ISBN: 1317515714

More than seventy years following the D-Day Landings of 6 June 1944, Normandy's war heritage continues to intrigue visitors and researchers. Receiving well over two million visitors a year, the Normandy landscape of war is among the most visited cultural sites in France. This book explores the significant role that heritage and tourism play in the present day with regard to educating the public as well as commemorating those who fought. The book examines the perspectives, experiences and insights of those who work in the field of war heritage in the region of Normandy where the D-Day landings and the Battle of Normandy occurred. In this volume practitioner authors represent a range of interrelated roles and responsibilities. These perspectives include national and regional governments and coordinating agencies involved in policy, planning and implementation; war cemetery commissions; managers who oversee particular museums and sites; and individual battlefield tour guides whose vocation is to research and interpret sites of memory. Often interviewed as key informants for scholarly articles, the day-to-day observations, experiences and management decisions of these guardians of remembrance provide valuable insight into a range of issues and approaches that inform the meaning of tourism, remembrance and war heritage as well as implications for the management of war sites elsewhere. Complementing the Normandy practitioner offerings, more scholarly investigations provide an opportunity to compare and debate what is happening in the management and interpretation at other World War II related sites of war memory, such as at Pearl Harbor, Okinawa and Portsmouth, UK. This innovative volume will be of interest to those interested in remembrance tourism, war heritage, dark tourism, battlefield tourism, commemoration, D-Day and World War II.

The Art of Remembering

The Art of Remembering
Author: Yat Ming Loo
Publisher: Taylor & Francis
Total Pages: 353
Release: 2024-05-31
Genre: Architecture
ISBN: 1040015328

Focusing on the non-Western context and case studies, this book explores theories of interdisciplinary architectural thinking and the construction of urban memory in Chinese cities, with an emphasis on contemporary architecture and the diversity of agencies. China has undergone one of the fastest urbanisation and urban renewal processes in human history, but discussions of urban memory in China have tended to be practice-oriented and lack theoretical reflection. This book brings together interdisciplinary architectural scholarship to interrogate the production of urban memory and examine experiences in China. The 14 chapters explore different processes, projects, materials, architecture and urban spaces in different Chinese cities by analysing cityscapes such as temples, bridges, conservation projects, architectural design, historical architecture, memorial hall, market street, city images, custom bike, food market and so on. The book deals with different agencies and methods, tangible and intangible, in the construction of memories aimed at promoting hybridised multiple identities, and explores the interplay of different versions of memory, i.e. state, public, regional, local, individual and collective memory. This book will be essential reading for scholars and students of architecture and urbanism, cultural studies and China studies, as well as architects, urban planners and historians interested in these fields.