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... a native language for us; we were taught in Spanish in our schools; we learned about Bolivian history and about Murillo, Bolivar, Sucre--heroes ... At one point during that 'revolution,' when one side was trying to... more
... a native language for us; we were taught in Spanish in our schools; we learned about Bolivian history and about Murillo, Bolivar, Sucre--heroes ... At one point during that 'revolution,' when one side was trying to bomb various public buildings, my parents hid my sister Elly and me ...
What has Holocaust Studies brought to the study of memory, and, conversely, how has theoretical work on the Holocaust been inflected by Memory Studies? Focusing on witness testimony, we argue that the theoretical and philosophical efforts... more
What has Holocaust Studies brought to the study of memory, and, conversely, how has theoretical work on the Holocaust been inflected by Memory Studies? Focusing on witness testimony, we argue that the theoretical and philosophical efforts to grasp and define its contours have provoked a radical rethinking of the workings of memory and transmission: in particular, a foregrounding of embodiment, affect and silence. Yet we caution against a hyperbolic emphasis on trauma and the breakdown of speech. We find that the very aporias that have made the Holocaust a touchstone for the study of twentieth-century memory have engendered two distinctive interpretive uses of witness testimony — one linked to a troubling idiom of uniqueness and exceptionalism, potentially supporting nationalist and identity politics, the other, to cosmopolitan or transnational memory cultures able to sustain efforts towards the global attainment of human rights.
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After my mother died in New York in 1988, I became the keeper of memorabilia that she and my father had brought to the United States from their nearly 12 years of what she used to call “our time” in Bolivia. Among the items I inherited is... more
After my mother died in New York in 1988, I became the keeper of memorabilia that she and my father had brought to the United States from their nearly 12 years of what she used to call “our time” in Bolivia. Among the items I inherited is a framed, hand-colored, artist-signed lithograph of Vienna’s St. Stephen’s Cathedral and the Stephansplatz in dusky, late afternoon light—an early twentieth-century print that my father particularly loved, and which he displayed as a central icon on the wall of our family room in La Paz. It seemingly never occurred to my father and mother, and certainly not to me until recently, that there was something incongruous for Jews like us to have a Catholic cathedral occupy a shrine like space in our home—a position the picture continued to fill even after my family came to this country and my parents became United States citizens. I don’t precisely know when the lithograph was acquired by them—apparently my father had received it in payment for some work he did for another Austrian refugee not very long after arriving in Bolivia—but I remember the picture from very early childhood, its identification with “beautiful old Vienna,” my father’s estimation of its potential value as a signed artist’s proof, and the sense of wonder it inspired in my imagination about a city which I had never seen, in which I was almost born, and about which my parents, my relatives, and their friends spoke so often, and with immense nostalgia.
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Naming a person makes him or her a part of the social world—a name gives the person a social identity. At the same time, a name stands for the person, it symbolizes personal identity. It indicates to members of society who the named one... more
Naming a person makes him or her a part of the social world—a name gives the person a social identity. At the same time, a name stands for the person, it symbolizes personal identity. It indicates to members of society who the named one is and, to the named one, who he or she is expected to be. Comparing naming practices and name acquisition by blacks and Jews in British colonial West Africa and Central Europe during the century of emancipation from the 1780s to the 1860s, and during the subsequent era of growing exclusionist racism and anti-Semitism, this essay examines being given a name and taking or changing a name as acts of identification, differentiation, camouflaging, and resistance.
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:This study focuses on the life histories of an Afro-Brazilian, a Sierra Leone Creole, and an Austrian Jew—persons whose experiences help us to refine our understanding of the connections between individual identity, perceptions of... more
:This study focuses on the life histories of an Afro-Brazilian, a Sierra Leone Creole, and an Austrian Jew—persons whose experiences help us to refine our understanding of the connections between individual identity, perceptions of prejudice and discrimination, and the variety of responses to exclusion and domination.
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Page 1. INTERPRETING AFRICAN INTELLECTUAL HISTORY: A CRITICAL REVIEW OF THE PAST DECADE, 1960-1970 Leo Spitzer ... economic history. But little work has been completed in the area of African intellectual history, surely one of the most... more
Page 1. INTERPRETING AFRICAN INTELLECTUAL HISTORY: A CRITICAL REVIEW OF THE PAST DECADE, 1960-1970 Leo Spitzer ... economic history. But little work has been completed in the area of African intellectual history, surely one of the most fascinating and ...
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... He returned home the same year and set up private practice as a doctor at 15 Pultney Street, Freetown.49 His two brothers of the first marriage followed different careers. John St HawleyEkundayo, the eldest, followed the career of his... more
... He returned home the same year and set up private practice as a doctor at 15 Pultney Street, Freetown.49 His two brothers of the first marriage followed different careers. John St HawleyEkundayo, the eldest, followed the career of his father as a businessman. ...