History, Memory, and Trans-European Identity

History, Memory, and Trans-European Identity PDF Author: Aline Sierp
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 1317662059
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 204

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Book Description
This book questions the presupposition voiced by many historians and political scientists that political experiences in Europe continue to be interpreted in terms of national history, and that a European community of remembrance still does not exist. By tracing the evolution of specific memory cultures in two successor countries of the Fascist/Nazi regime (Italy and Germany) and the impact of structural changes upon them, the book investigates wider democratic processes, particularly concerning the conservation and transmission of values and the definition of identity on different levels. It argues that the creation of a transnational European memory culture does not necessarily imply the erasure of national and local forms of remembrance. It rather means the creation of a further supranational arena where diverging memories can find their expression and can be dealt with in a different way. Through the triangulation of agents of memory construction, constraints and opportunities and actual portrayals of the past, this volume explores the difficulties faced by a multinational entity like the EU in reaching some kind of consensus on such a sensitive subject as history.

History, Memory, and Trans-European Identity

History, Memory, and Trans-European Identity PDF Author: Aline Sierp
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 1317662059
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 204

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Book Description
This book questions the presupposition voiced by many historians and political scientists that political experiences in Europe continue to be interpreted in terms of national history, and that a European community of remembrance still does not exist. By tracing the evolution of specific memory cultures in two successor countries of the Fascist/Nazi regime (Italy and Germany) and the impact of structural changes upon them, the book investigates wider democratic processes, particularly concerning the conservation and transmission of values and the definition of identity on different levels. It argues that the creation of a transnational European memory culture does not necessarily imply the erasure of national and local forms of remembrance. It rather means the creation of a further supranational arena where diverging memories can find their expression and can be dealt with in a different way. Through the triangulation of agents of memory construction, constraints and opportunities and actual portrayals of the past, this volume explores the difficulties faced by a multinational entity like the EU in reaching some kind of consensus on such a sensitive subject as history.

Dynamics of Memory and Identity in Contemporary Europe

Dynamics of Memory and Identity in Contemporary Europe PDF Author: Eric Langenbacher
Publisher: Berghahn Books
ISBN: 0857455818
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 248

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Book Description
The collapse of the Iron Curtain, the renationalization of eastern Europe, and the simultaneous eastward expansion of the European Union have all impacted the way the past is remembered in today's eastern Europe. At the same time, in recent years, the Europeanization of Holocaust memory and a growing sense of the need to stage a more "self-critical" memory has significantly changed the way in which western Europe commemorates and memorializes the past. The increasing dissatisfaction among scholars with the blanket, undifferentiated use of the term "collective memory" is evolving in new directions. This volume brings the tension into focus while addressing the state of memory theory itself.

Performing the Past

Performing the Past PDF Author: Karin Tilmans
Publisher: Amsterdam University Press
ISBN: 9089642056
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 369

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Book Description
Karin Tilmans is an historian, and academic coordinator of the Max Weber Programme at the European University Institute, Florence. Frank van Vree is an historian and professor of journalism at the University of Amsterdam. Jay M. Winter is the Charles J. Stille Professor of History at Yale. --

A European Memory?

A European Memory? PDF Author: Małgorzata Pakier
Publisher: Berghahn Books
ISBN: 0857454307
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 373

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Book Description
An examination of the role of history and memory is vital in order to better understand why the grand design of a United Europe--with a common foreign policy and market yet enough diversity to allow for cultural and social differences--was overwhelmingly turned down by its citizens. The authors argue that this rejection of the European constitution was to a certain extent a challenge to the current historical grounding used for further integration and further demonstrates the lack of understanding by European bureaucrats of the historical complexity and divisiveness of Europe's past. A critical European history is therefore urgently needed to confront and re-imagine Europe, not as a harmonious continent but as the outcome of violent and bloody conflicts, both within Europe as well as with its Others. As the authors show, these dark shadows of Europe's past must be integrated, and the fact that memories of Europe are contested must be accepted if any new attempts at a United Europe are to be successful.

History and Belonging

History and Belonging PDF Author: Stefan Berger
Publisher: Berghahn Books
ISBN: 1785338803
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 0

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Book Description
In cultural and intellectual terms, one of the EU’s most important objectives in pursuing unification has been to develop a common historical narrative of Europe. Across ten compelling case studies, this volume examines the premises underlying such a project to ask: Could such an uncontested history of Europe ever exist? Combining studies of national politics, supranational institutions, and the fraught EU-Mideast periphery with a particular focus on the twentieth century, the contributors to History and Belonging offer a fascinating survey of the attempt to forge a post-national identity politics.

Collective Memory and European Identity

Collective Memory and European Identity PDF Author: Willfried Spohn
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 1351950592
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 235

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Book Description
Is it possible to create a collective European identity? In this volume, leading scholars assess the link between collective identity construction in Europe and the multiple memory discourses that intervene in this construction process. The authors believe that the exposure of national collective memories to an enlarging communicative space within Europe affects the ways in which national memories are framed. Through this perspective, several case studies of East and West European memory discourses are presented. The first part of the volume elaborates how collective memory can be identified in the new Europe. The second part presents case studies on national memories and related collective identities in respect of European integration and its extension to the East. This timely work is the first to investigate collective identity construction on a pan-European scale and will be of interest to academics and postgraduate students of political sociology and European studies.

Transcultural Memory and European Identity in Contemporary German-Jewish Migrant Literature

Transcultural Memory and European Identity in Contemporary German-Jewish Migrant Literature PDF Author: Jessica Ortner
Publisher: Boydell & Brewer
ISBN: 1640140220
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 299

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Book Description
Examines how German-Jewish writers from Eastern Europe who migrated to Germany during or after the Cold War have widened European cultural memory to include the traumas of the Gulag.

Memory, History and Critique: European Identity at the Millennium

Memory, History and Critique: European Identity at the Millennium PDF Author: Frank Brinkhuis
Publisher:
ISBN: 9789073022119
Category : Europe
Languages : en
Pages :

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Book Description


Memorylands

Memorylands PDF Author: Sharon Macdonald
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 1135628793
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 336

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Book Description
Memorylands is an original and fascinating investigation of the nature of heritage, memory and understandings of the past in Europe today. It looks at how Europe has become a ’memoryland’ – littered with material reminders of the past, such as museums, heritage sites and memorials; and at how this ‘memory phenomenon’ is related to the changing nature of identities – especially European, national and cosmopolitan. In doing so, it provides new insights into how memory and the past are being performed and reconfigured in Europe – and with what effects. Drawing especially, though not exclusively, on cases, concepts and arguments from social and cultural anthropology, Memorylands argues for a deeper and more nuanced understanding of the cultural assumptions involved in relating to the past. It theorizes the various ways in which ‘materializations’ of identity work and relates these to different forms of identification within Europe. The book also addresses questions of methodology, including discussion of historical, ethnographic, interdisciplinary and innovative methods. Through a wide-range of case-studies from across Europe, Sharon Macdonald argues that Europe is home to a much greater range of ways of making the past present than is usually realized – and a greater range of forms of ‘historical consciousness’. At the same time, however, she seeks to highlight what she calls ‘the European memory complex’ – a repertoire of prevalent patterns in forms of recollection and ‘past presencing’. The examples in Memorylands are drawn from both the margins and metropolitan centres, from the relatively small-scale and local, the national and the avant-garde. The book looks at pasts that are potentially identity-disrupting – or ‘difficult’ – as well as those that affirm identities or offer possibilities for transcending national identities or articulating more cosmopolitan futures. Topics covered include authenticity, temporalities, embodiment, commodification, nostalgia and Ostalgie, the musealization of everyday and folk-life, Holocaust commemoration and tourism, narratives of war, the heritage of Islam, transnationalism, and the future of the past. Memorylands is engagingly written and accessible to general readers as well as offering a new synthesis for advanced researchers in memory and heritage studies. It is essential reading for those interested in identities, memory, material culture, Europe, tourism and heritage.

The European Puzzle

The European Puzzle PDF Author: Marion Demossier
Publisher: Berghahn Books
ISBN: 9781571816269
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 238

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Book Description
The twin concepts of "Culture" and "Identity" are inescapable in any discussion of European Integration and yet over the last ten years their meaning has become increasingly contested. By combining an anthropological and political perspective, the authors challenge the traditional boundaries within the issue of the construction of Europe. In the first part, historians and anthropologists from various national traditions discuss the process of the construction of Europe and its implications for cultural identities. The second section examines a number of topics at the core of the process of Europeanization and presents up-to-date information on each of these issues: political parties, regions, football, cities, the Euro, ethnicity, heritage and European cinema. Emphasis is be placed on the political structuring of cultural identities by contrasting top-down and bottom-up processes that define the tensions between the unity and diversity of the European Community.