scholarly journals What if? Epidemic discourse and serial narration in the alternate history series La Révolution (2020)

2021 ◽  
pp. 095715582110633
Author(s):  
Anna Isabell Wörsdörfer
Keyword(s):  
Historical Narrative ◽  
Historical Event ◽  
Historical Events ◽  
Revolutionary Era ◽  
The Real ◽  
Alternate History ◽  
Specific Implementation ◽  
Viral Outbreak

The article examines the formal and thematic manifestations of seriality in the Netflix series La Révolution, which justifies the revolutionary outbreak in a counterfactual plot with a viral outbreak that turns the nobles into zombie-like monsters. While, on a macrostructural level, the generic frame of alternate history promotes the serial character through the varying repetition of the historical event, the microstructural level of the narration evokes seriality by exponential contagion and spread of the disease as well as an increasing spiral of violence. First, the focus is on the representation of the aristocrat as a monster in pamphlets and caricatures of the revolutionary era. Subsequent to a contextualization of seriality in the age of streaming platforms, the analysis then discusses the medium-specific implementation of the epidemic discourse based on selected sequences of the series. Finally, it gives a hypothetical outlook on the implied motivations regarding the fictional development of the revolutionary event: through its contrasting exaggeration, the alternate-historical narrative can shed new light on the real historical events.

Richard Sisson and Leo E. Rose. War and Secession: Pakistan, India and the Creation of Bangladesh. New Delhi: Vistaar Publications. 1990. 338 pp.Price Rs 225.00 (Hardbound).

1991 ◽  
Vol 30 (1) ◽  
pp. 95-99
Author(s):  
Ziaul Haque
Keyword(s):  
Political Polarization ◽  
The Political ◽  
New Delhi ◽  
Historical Events ◽  
National Elections ◽  
The Real ◽  
Global Issues ◽  
Political Processes ◽  
Political Events ◽  
The Creation

After thirteen long years of military dictatorship, national elections on the basis of adult franchise were held in Pakistan in December 1970. The Awami League, led by Sheikh Mujibur Rahman, and the Pakistan Peoples Party, under Zulfiqar Ali Bhutto, emerged as the two majority political parties in East Pakistan and West Pakistan respectively. The political party commanding a majority in one wing of the country had almost no following in the other. This ended in a political and constitutional deadlock, since this split mandate and political exclusiveness gradually led to the parting of ways and political polarization. Power was not transferred to the majority party (that is, the Awami League) within the legally prescribed time; instead, in the wake of the political/ constitutional crisis, a civil war broke out in East Pakistan which soon led to an open war between India and Pakistan in December 1971. This ultimately resulted in the dismemberment of Pakistan, and in the creation of Bangladesh as a sovereign country. The book under review is a political study of the causes and consequences of this crisis and the war, based on a reconstruction of the real facts, historical events, political processes and developments. It candidly recapitulates the respective roles of the political elites (both of India and Pakistan), their leaders and governments, and assesses their perceptions of the real situation. It is an absorbing narrative of almost thirteen months, from 7 December, 1970, when elections were held in Pakistan, to 17 December, 1971 when the war ended after the Pakistani army's surrender to the Indian army in Dhaka (on December 16, 1971). The authors, who are trained political scientists, give fresh interpretations of these historical events and processes and relate them to the broader regional and global issues, thus assessing the crisis in a broader perspective. This change of perspective enhances our understanding of the problems the authors discuss. Their focus on the problems under discussion is sharp, cogent, enlightening, and circumspect, whether or not the reader agrees with their conclusions. The grasp of the source material is masterly; their narration of fast-moving political events is superbly anchored in their scientific methodology and political philosophy.

Strindberg's A Dream Play: Postmodernist Visions on the Modernist Stage

1999 ◽  
Vol 40 (2) ◽  
pp. 43-70
Author(s):  
Klaus van den Berg
Keyword(s):  
Michel Foucault ◽  
Historical Narrative ◽  
Historical Narratives ◽  
Spatial Relationships ◽  
Theatre History ◽  
Historical Events ◽  
Architectural Styles ◽  
Theatre Theory ◽  
Theatre Historiography ◽  
Historical Periods

Since the 1980s, new approaches to theatre historiography, the study of what Sue-Ellen Case has called the “convergence of history and theory,” have begun to arise in a challenge to generally accepted principles of theatre history, such as the supremacy of independent facts, the autonomy of dramatic texts, and the hierarchy of text, performance, and culture. The French critic and philosopher Michel Foucault has pointed out that the grouping and ordering of events into historical periods creates a “space of reference,” which lends some events a heightened meaning, while obscuring or submerging others. In a substantial challenge to traditional methods of theatre history, historiographers influenced by this view have begun to examine the theoretical underpinnings of historical periodization. In theatre theory, Thomas Postlewait has investigated the often unarticulated assumptions by which theatre historians isolate a group of historical events and designate them with period names.Many scholars now center their attention on historical discontinuity: searching for ruptures in the historical narrative, focusing on dynamics which lend instability rather than stability to historical periods, and reconceptualizing temporal historical narratives into spatial relationships. For example, from a perspective of discontinuity, a play is conceived not simply as a fixed entity created at some moment in history, but as a representation of layers of historical influences; likewise, a theatre building is not simply a material location in space, but a physical expression of historically emergent architectural styles and sociopolitical circumstances, and a performance is not simply a translation of a text to the stage, but a collage of past and emergent cultural and aesthetic processes.

scholarly journals Counterfactual Histories of Moon Landing

2018 ◽  
Vol 14 (1) ◽  
pp. 16-27
Author(s):  
Mateusz Borowski
Keyword(s):  
African American Women ◽  
Space Flight ◽  
Historical Narrative ◽  
Historical Event ◽  
Space Race ◽  
Current Events ◽  
Historical Fact ◽  
Moon Landing ◽  
Point Of Departure ◽  
Representations Of Space

Summary The article is devoted to the analysis of chosen examples of counterfactual narratives which diverge from the typical alternative accounts of history written in the “what if” mode. It focuses on counterfactual representations of space flight and moon landing as crucial historical events of the 20th century. The point of departure for the text is provided by the New Historicist understanding of historical fact and historical event, with particular attention paid to Hayden White’s concept of metahistory. However, to identify the possible functions of the new counterfactuals, I go beyond the binary of past and present which lies at the core of White’s concept. To this end, I employ Jacques Derrida’s concept of artifactuality, which describes the process of the production of facts about current events. I apply this concept to analyse two examples of counterfactual films about space flight: the comedy Moonwalkers (dir. Alain Bardou-Jacquet, 2015) and a mockumentary First on the Moon (dir. Aleksey Fedorchenko, 2005). In these examples, I identify strategies of deconstruction of fact-making which Derrida recommended in his essay. In the concluding part, I introduce the third example of counterfactual narrative, which not so much deconstructs factuality but, rather, counteracts the process of cultural oblivion. In Hidden Figures (2016), Margo Lee Shetterly reconstructed the role that African-American women played in the space race, introducing them into the official historical narrative. In this case, I also compare the book with its cinematic rendition to argue that counterfactuals introduce a new model of thinking of collective relationship with the past.

scholarly journals The specifics of interpretation of the history in the story by A. Doronin «A Wolf Ravine»

2021 ◽  
Vol 11 (1) ◽  
pp. 139-147
Author(s):  
S. V. Sheyanova ◽  
◽  
N. M. Yusupova ◽  
Keyword(s):  
Literary Criticism ◽  
Historical Narrative ◽  
Volga Region ◽  
Psychological States ◽  
The Real ◽  
The Subject ◽  
The Individual ◽  
Relationship Of ◽  
First Time ◽  
The Relationship

Introduction: at present the reader’s audience is particularly interested in creative experiments in which the historical fate of the Russian peasantry in the «turning» eras is artistically comprehended. The article is devoted to the study of the problem-thematic range of modern Mordovian historical prose. The subject of analysis is the peculiarity of the reception of the period of collectivization and dekulakization in the story by Erzyan prose writer A. Doronin «A Wolf Ravine». Objective: to reveal the features of the artistic reconstruction of the events of the 1930s, the modeling of the relationship between a man and society in the story by A. Doronin «A Wolf Ravine».Research materials: the story by A. Doronin «A Wolf Ravine». Results and novelty of the research: the historical story « A Wolf Ravine » for the first time becomes the object of scientific understanding and is introduced into the context of Finno-Ugric literary criticism. A. Doronin artistically interprets the real events and circumstances of the resettlement of dispossessed peasants of the Volga region to the uninhabited steppes of Kazakhstan. As a result of the study, we conclude that the actualization of this problem-thematic cluster is due to the creative concept of the historical writer; the individual author’s approach to the reconstruction of historical narrative can be traced in the writer’s desire to realistically reveal the relationship of personality and society in the tragic 1930s; to analyze intentions of people and of the psychological states of the characters. Problems of a sociopolitical nature, actualized in the story, are filled with philosophical, axiological content, and lead to a multi-faceted understanding of the «man and history» problem.

scholarly journals The “legendary style” in “The comprehensive life of Constantin (Cyril) the Philosopher”

2020 ◽  
Vol 26 (1) ◽  
pp. 11-16
Author(s):  
Svitlana Borshch
Keyword(s):  
Phenomenological Analysis ◽  
Historical Events ◽  
The Real ◽  
Historical Method ◽  
Slavonic Language ◽  
The New Testament ◽  
The Subject ◽  
Real Person ◽  
The Universe ◽  
Christian Society

The subject of the study is the “legendary style” of one of the most iconic hagiographic text of the IX century “The Comprehensive Life of Constantine (Cyril) the Philosopher”. This Pannonian legend belongs to the texts of Cyril-Methodius cycle and has the description of the re-finding and transportation Saint Clement’s relics by Constantine the Philosopher from Korsun (Chersonesus) to Rome. This episode is an important part of the process of legalizing the translation of the Divine Books to the so-called Church-Slavonic language. The phrase “legendary style” was borrowed from I. Franko’s work “Saint Clement in Korsun” (Lviv, 1902–1905) and has not been explained as a term yet. The purpose and the novelty of our research is to find out how “legendary style” was formed, which techniques were needed to create this concept. The relevance of this study is due to the analyzing sources for the legend as a genre (it was formed on the base of the hagiographical texts such as Jacobus da Varagine’s "The Golden Legend", XIII century). Ideological description of historical events ("tendentious historicity"), disclosure of holiness and using the category of the miraculous were clarified as the technique of “legendary style”, using the cultural-historical method, elements of comparative, structural and phenomenological analysis. Holiness, called by J. Le Goff “the most important value of Christian society”, is a predetermined aspect in “The Comprehensive Life of Constantine (Cyril) the Philosopher” and it connected the saint’s life with the events of the New Testament. The category of the miraculous is considered from the point of mythological view: miracles regulated the universe, restored harmony and established true rules and laws. According to A. Losev, the true Christian miracle occurred when the real person dialectically synthesized with his/her inner ideal at a certain moment. “Tendentious historicity” is observed in the episode about saint relics of Pope Clement I. There are variations in the very process of re-finding the holy remains: locations, heroes and time in some stories are not the same in different texts from the so-called Cyril-Methodius cycle. It gives reasons to consider these texts ideologically involved. It is advisable to include other hagiographic texts to confirm or refute, expand or narrow the “legendary style” as a term in further research.

How Can We Seize the Past?

Philosophy ◽  
1989 ◽  
Vol 64 (247) ◽  
pp. 67-78
Author(s):  
Christopher Cherry
Keyword(s):  
Philosophy Of History ◽  
Direct Access ◽  
Perceptual Awareness ◽  
Historical Events ◽  
The Real ◽  
The Past ◽  
Direct Acquaintance ◽  
Real People ◽  
Intelligible World ◽  
Historical Past

My concern is to understand how it is that contemplation of the past— better, of this or that preferred past—evokes in some people an impression which is distinctively weird. It is unmistakable; and anyone who has felt it will soon know what I am talking about. What is the impression, and whence the impressionability?To help identify my concern (and make it seem less eccentric) I shall let it emerge from some highly selective remarks about an issue in philosophy of history which is, by contrast, familiar and respectable: the debate between constructionists and realists. We cannot conceivably have direct acquaintance with, direct access to, the past; by their very nature, past events are over and done with and so unavailable for inspection. This much both camps agree on. However, they differ massively over what follows from this truth. For the constructionist concludes that what he calls the ‘real past’, what actually happened, can play no part whatsoever in historical thought. It is necessarily hidden, and we can have no inkling of it. What, and all, the historian can sensibly claim to know is the ‘historical past’, something which is constituted by and exists only in relation to his thought. Against this, the realist maintains that of course historians do not, necessarily or even typically, constitute the past; rather, they construct accounts of it which will be true if they conform to it as it actually was and false if they do not. And he charges his opponent with a number of fundamental confusions: mistaking accounts of historical events for the events themselves, confusing epistemological matters with ontological, and worst of all equating knowledge with direct perceptual awareness. Now, the realist is, in basics at least, fairly obviously right. And his criticisms are reinforced when we note that constructionists tend to combine with their vision of the impenetrability of the ‘real’ past the thesis that we undoubtedly know that there is a real past, with real people and real events. However, this piece of knowledge must for him, like that of an intelligible world for Kant, ever remain contentless, ‘factually vacuous’.

Dreißigjähriger Krieg und Öffentlichkeit

Daphnis ◽  
2019 ◽  
Vol 47 (1-2) ◽  
pp. 25-67
Author(s):  
Holger Böning
Keyword(s):  
Print Media ◽  
Historical Narrative ◽  
Newspaper Coverage ◽  
Human History ◽  
Historical Events ◽  
Weekly Basis ◽  
History Of ◽  
Contemporary Perspective ◽  
War Reporting

This study considers print media produced during the Thirty Years War, focusing on the fact – largely unknown by most historians of the war - that this was the first war in human history to be accompanied by newspapers printed on a regular weekly basis. It assesses the effectiveness of newspaper coverage of political, diplomatic and military affairs and the characteristics of war reporting. Little of what, in historiography, is generally counted among the arcana imperii remained hidden from the readers. A history of the war could be written on the basis of the newspaper reports alone. With very few exceptions, every battle and siege was covered in great detail. No other media shadowed the events of the war as closely as the newspapers, which present a unique narrative of the war and revealing insights into these historical events. They represent an indispensable historiographical source, constituting an initial draft historical narrative from a contemporary perspective.

Afterword

2019 ◽  
pp. 186-192
Author(s):  
C. Palmer-Patel ◽  
Glyn Morgan
Keyword(s):  
Science Fiction ◽  
Narrative Structure ◽  
Cultural Critique ◽  
Common Theme ◽  
Historical Events ◽  
Alternate History ◽  
History Narratives ◽  
Current Reality ◽  
The Way

The afterword sums up the conclusions made by the chapters in the collection. All the chapters demonstrate that – although there is a wide variety of alternate history narratives produced – these texts all reflect on and reveal the nature of our current reality. A common theme throughout the collection is ‘Great Man’ model, where a sole figure is held responsible for big historical events. Another thread for discussion is the structure of form of alternate history, as the book explored science fiction and epic narratives alongside the development of alternate history. Issues of time within the structure of narrative were explored, as the collection considered breaks and continuities within alternate history. Many of these discussions emphasized the way that the cultural critique of minority voices are embedded in the narrative structure itself. Issues of power and dogma are often integral to these evaluations. Ultimately the collection concludes that there are a lot of questions that alternate history provokes, and while this collection cannot perhaps provide definite answers, it presents new ways to think about the genre in the hopes of stimulating further conversations.

scholarly journals Oor die bestaan van God en oor niksheid

1997 ◽  
Vol 53 (4) ◽  
Author(s):  
Kobus Labuschagne
Keyword(s):  
Karl Barth ◽  
Historical Research ◽  
The Other ◽  
Historical Events ◽  
Existence Of God ◽  
The Real ◽  
Subjective Approach ◽  
Existentialist Philosophy ◽  
The One ◽  
Point Of Departure

On the existence of God and on nothingness The views of Karl Barth and the 'Heilsgeschichte'-tradition on the one hand, and those of Rudolf Bultmann and the 'Formkritik'-tradition on the other hand, do not differ so much on the method of objective historical research. The real differences start to appear on the hermeneutical front, where facts and events referred to in the Scriptures are evaluated and explained. The 'Heilsgeschichte' -tradition is consistent in maintaining an objective point of departure, whilst Bultmann and the 'Form-kritik'-tradition, influenced by existentialist philosophy, reveals a subjective approach. For Bultmann the kerygma cannot be verified historically but only subjectively or existentially. For Barth the kerygma cannot be separated from its true basis of historical events, in and through the person of Jesus Christ. These two different approaches have enormous con-sequences for the question of the existence of God.

scholarly journals THE RELATIONSHIP BETWEEN THE EXPERIENCE OF SIGNIFICANT HISTORICAL EVENTS AND COGNITIVE FUNCTION AMONG OLDER ADULTS

2019 ◽  
Vol 3 (Supplement_1) ◽  
pp. S936-S937
Author(s):  
Stephanie M Bergren ◽  
Gabriella Dong
Keyword(s):  
Older Adults ◽  
Working Memory ◽  
Cognitive Function ◽  
Episodic Memory ◽  
Processing Speed ◽  
Historical Event ◽  
Historical Events ◽  
Chinese Older Adults ◽  
Global Cognition ◽  
The Relationship

Abstract Research has found relationships between experiencing stressful events and lower cognitive function in late life. However, there is little research about the cumulative experiences of significant historical events and cognitive function. Historical events may be unique compared to other life events due to their potential distal relationship to the individual. This study aims to examine the relationship between experiencing significant historical events and cognitive function among Chinese older adults. Data were drawn from the PINE Study, a cohort study of 3,126 US Chinese older adults collected from 2017-2019. Participants were asked if they experienced the Japanese invasion, famine, Great Leap Forward, Vietnam War, Cultural Revolution, and the Tian’anmen Square Protests. A composite score of 0-6 was calculated to count the number experienced. Cognitive function was measured through global cognition, episodic memory, working memory, processing speed, and Chinese MMSE. Linear and quantile regression were performed. Among the participants, 1908 (61.04%) were female with mean age of 75.33 (SD=8.22) years. The average number of historical events experienced was 2.36 (SD=1.44). After adjusting for covariates, every one additional historical event experience was associated with better global cognition (b=0.26, SE=0.009, p<.01), episodic memory (b = 0.045, SE=0.012, p<.001), and processing speed (b=0.383, SE=0.135, p<.01). Number of historical events was not significantly associated with working memory or C-MMSE. The positive relationship between historical events and some cognitive domains suggests a potential resilience effect after experiencing historical events. Future research should examine whether participants found events stressful and whether there are differential relationships to cognitive function.

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