Cultural_Memory

"Philosophy and Memory Traces defends two theories of autobiographical memory. One is a bewildering historical view of memories as dynamic patterns in fleeting animal spirits, nervous fluids which rummaged through the pores of brain and body. The other is new connectionism, in which memories are ‘stored’ only superpositionally, and are reconstructed rather than reproduced. Both models depart from static archival metaphors by employing distributed representation, which brings interference and confusion between memory traces. Both raise urgent issues about control of the personal past, and about relations between self and body.

The book’s historical argument is anchored by a reinterpretation of Descartes’ dynamic physiology of memory and strange philosophy of the body. English critics of Descartes’ view of memories as motions complained that mechanistic neurophilosophy could not guarantee order in memory, and instead sought techniques for controlling the brain. In a new account of 18th-century philosophers’ fears of confusion in remembering, the author demonstrates the role of bizarre body fluids in moral physiology, as philosophers from Locke to Reid and Coleridge struggled to control their own innards and impose cognitive discipline on ‘the phantasmal chaos of association’. Finally, in a defence of connectionism against Jerry Fodor and against phenomenological and Wittgensteinian critics of passive mental representations, the author shows how problems of the self are implicated in contemporary sciences of mind. The book is an experiment in historical cognitive science, based on a belief that the interdisciplinary study of memory can exemplify the simultaneous attention to brain, body, and culture towards which psychological sciences must aim.

CONTENTS (Download at http://www.johnsutton.net/PhilosophyandMemoryTraces.htm)
1 Introduction: traces, brains, and history
                  Appendix: memory and connectionism

Part I Animal spirits and memory traces
Introduction to Part I: Animal Spirits and Memory Traces
2 Wriggle-work: the quick and nimble animal spirits
3 Memory and 'the Cartesian philosophy of the brain'
                  Appendix 1: nerves, spirits, and traces in Descartes
                  Appendix 2: Malebranche on memory

Part II Inner discipline
Introduction to Part II: Inner Discipline
4 Spirit sciences, memory motions
5 Cognition, chaos, and control in English responses to Descartes' theory of memory
6 Local and distributed representations
7 John Locke and the neurophilosophy of self
                  Appendix: memory and self in Essay II.27
8 The puzzle of survival
9 Spirits, body, and self
10 The puzzle of elimination

Part III 'The phantasmal chaos of association'
Introduction to Part III: 'The phantasmal chaos of association'
11 Fodor, connectionism, and cognitive discipline
12 Associationism and neo-associationism
13 Hartley's distributed model of memory
14 Attacks on neurophilosophy: Reid and Coleridge

Part IV Connectionism and the philosophy of memory
Introduction to Part IV: connectionism and the philosophy of memory
15 Representations, realism, and history
16 Attacks on traces
17 Order, confusion, remembering

References
Index"

Στην παραλία της Θεσσαλονίκης εμπλέκονται διαδρομές, τροχιές, συγχρονικότητες. Τα φευγαλέα και ανώνυμα βήματα στο κράσπεδο της παραλίας εμπλέκονται με τα ίχνη της ιστορίας που έχει παγιωθεί σχηματοποιημένη σε μνημεία, ηρώα, γλυπτά. Αν το μνημειοποιημένο ιστορικό παρελθόν μακράν απέχει από τη βιωμένη εμπειρία των περιπατητών, η φύση συρρικνωμένη σε παρτέρια και τεχνητές λίμνες στους κήπους της ανα-πλασμένης παραλίας, έχει ίσως ακόμη μια θέση στον μνημονικό χάρτη των ανθρώπων της πόλης. Η εμπειρία, ως μια βιωματική κατάσταση στην οποία συμμετέχει το σώμα ως συνάθροιση και ενσωμάτωση ψυχικών και βιολογικών αναγκών, αποκλείεται κατά τα άλλα. Επιπλέον, σε μια καθαρή σύγχρονη πόλη ο θάνατος νοείται μόνο ως κορύφωση ηρωικών πράξεων, ως ιστορικοποιημένο γεγονός. Ο θάνατος δεν έχει θέση στην υγιή πόλη.

Affirmer que les Québécois ne s'intéressent pas à l'histoire du Québec va du sens commun aujourd'hui. Un intellectuel peut l'affirmer à travers diverses entrevues, sans être incité à fournir de preuve de ce qu'il avance. Et les Québécois dans tout ça, leur a-t-on simplement demandé s'ils s'intéressent à leur histoire?

""In January 25 Revolution, Ancient Egypt continued to be strongly present in Tahrir Square in Cairo. However, this time not in the galleries of the famous Egyptian Museum but rather among the crowds of Egyptians who gathered protesting for a new democratic Egypt. Importing figures from Ancient Egypt to relate to the political situation served to bring nationalistic confidence of glories of the past to those fighting a corrupt regime that ruled for years. The iconic image of Tutankhamun wearing the beret of Che-Guevara was spread over revolutionaries in Tahrir Square as well as Egyptians demonstrating in front of their embassies worldwide. Many illustrations that showed Mubarak as the last pharaoh or a ruling mummy were drawn by cartoonists as well as Egyptian protesters. This paper attempts to analyze visually this phenomena of calling on the glories of the past which was started by Tuthmosis IV in the New Kingdom circa 1400 BCE until the January 25 Revolution 2011 CE.
More than a year from January 2011, Ancient Egypt continues to be strongly present in Egypt’s
unfinished revolution. For the moment, they are covering large parts of the walls in Mohamed
Mahmoud street, a main street branching of Tahrir square which has witnessed the murder of more than 50 killed in November 2011 during the battle between hundreds of young protestors and the police, close to the Ministry of Interior building, during one of the strong waves of the Egyptian
Revolution. Artists do not only copy scenes from tombs, temples and ostraca, but re-elaborate on them to give certain messages.
“For me, if Tahrir square is a town, then Mohamed Mahmoud can be considered as its main cemetery”, said Ammar Abu Bakr, Graffiti artist who teaches art in the faclty of Fine Arts in Luxor.
Similar to what Ancient Egyptians did by referring to their own past as a source of wisdom or good taste, modern graffiti artists employed ancient Egyptian funerary art to lament the dead who fell and are still falling in Tahrir square as well as other places in Egypt. However, inspiration from Ancient Egypt went further than just copying funerary scenes as they are; motives and elements from ancient Egyptian art were used by the graffiti artists with a whole innovative sense that is fitting very well the needed expression of the political and social changes of the lived moment.
“The Graffiti is in the street and I am first of all targeting Egyptians walking in the streets of Downtown Cairo coming from all over the country, therefore I decided to draw Ancient Egyptian scenes because I wanted to choose an image language that is easy for them to understand since it is part of their identity and heritage”, said Alaa Awad, graffiti artist, who also lives in Luxor and has drawn tens of ancient Egyptian funerary scenes or other graffiti inspired from Ancient Egyptian The details here are interesting, specially the floral motifs inspired from Ancient Egypt. Motifs employ scenes from Ancient Egypt. It mixes this with Coptic tradition of drawing martyrs with wings while using Quranic religious text.
The Egyptians in modern Egypt have been alienated on purpose from the old regime from their own heritage. This has left scenes from Ancient Egypt a sight on television or tourism advertisements, it was usually looked upon as foreign art and not their own. Thus what Alaa is doing is bridging the gap between the Egyptians and their own heritage through graffiti.
Graffiti as an art was a tool which ancient Egyptians used to document events and memories. Modern day Egyptians inspired by ancient Egyptian art decorated streets with graffiti fueled with political messages. The archaizing or the appeal of the ancient Glories is not alien to the
Egyptians, throughout their history ancient and modern; Egyptians have dwelt on their glorious past. The artistic movement has also suffered the previous regime for access to art was only for the elite and freedom of artistic expression was not always granted. Mohamed Mahmoud Street and other spots around Tahrir square offers a new window for the Egyptians for both heritage and art with a political agenda in an intermediate period of modern Egyptian history. This renaissance of art reflects what Egypt went through in the First Intermediate Period when access to state art and sculpture of Memphis was not available in Thebes leading artisans to create new styles of art with a lot of creativity and less state limitations; however , we are not anymore in the first intermediate period but in the 21 century AD."

"This is a script of a performance-lecture in 3 parts:
1) An introduction by Roberta's colleague/her mother, which you have to imagine.
2) Welcome! You are at a birthday party. It is 1985 and you are in Southfield, Michigan, which is a suburb of Detroit. Your hostess, the birthday girl, is called Bobby and it is her house. She is something of a local celebrity. Bobby is working the room this evening.
3) This part of the presentation tries to illuminate what has just been experienced. Concentrating on the concept of the “in-between” and the instability of boundaries, Roberta discusses what “city” might mean in relation to Detroit and its surrounding suburb communities, how Bobby is meant to function, what Roberta’s personal investment is in this material, and how this relates to the discipline of Performance Studies.

It includes photos of the event by Benjamin Dunk."

"This project aims at analyzing the connections and disconnections between the official Cuban historical narrative its transmission and finally its reception among the Cuban public – thereby bringing processes of historical remembering in an authoritarian context into focus. The slight lessening of restrictions on free speech over the last decades have challenged the regime hegemony over historical truth. It is therefore possible to access the Cuban public through a qualitative sociological approach.

First the project will map out the official narrative. Which message does it present, and how does it change over time? Secondly, the project will analyze the transmission of the official narrative. Which methods are employed to communicate the official narrative? Finally, the project will focus on the reception of the official narrative. Which part of its narrative has made it from the historical consciousness of the regime to that of the Cuban population"

Both nostalgia and melancholia have been portrayed as psychological inabilities or refusals to mourn, coming to denote a common failure to having adapted to situations of social and political change. Both concepts have been used to either condemn the conditions they diagnose, or, alternatively, to hail them for their emancipatory potential. In this regard, both nostalgia and melancholia have been used effectively, separately and alongside one another, as instruments for political critique. However, with this mutual opposition to mourning, melancholia and nostalgia have also been used in ways that make them almost interchangeable. In the absence of a detailed and direct comparison of these two concepts, this article explores the differences and overlaps between melancholia and nostalgia, as well as the different kinds of analyses of posttransition societies they enable. This is achieved through the juxtaposition of a particular regularity in post-apartheid South African popular culture, Afrikaner self-parody, which is characterized as melan- cholic, with what has frequently been called Ostalgie, nostalgia for the former German Democratic Republic.

This special issue explores the way Italian fictional series, produced from the end of the Cold War onwards, have been instrumental in rewriting the country’s public memory, in the moment of historical and political transition that followed the disappearance of political parties belonging to the Constitutional pact established in 1945. Using the provocative neologism ‘televisionism’, i.e. the usage of television as a way to promote new historical narratives which find their political and intellectual roots in post-Cold War historical revisionism, the special issue explores different points of view and debates on the ways in which television reconfigures the relation between the past and the present.

This article explores some French Canadian (Québec) students’ historical consciousness of the nation through the lens of Social Identity Theory (SIT). Informed by SIT principles, our narrative analysis shows how most Franco-Québécois categorize the past in homogenous categories (e.g., the imperialist Anglophone; the surviving Francophone) and frame their stories into particular modes of present-day orientations. Implications of this study for history education are also discussed.

This is a critical assessment of the winning entry to the Monument to Freedom and Unity in Leipzig, won by M+M (Munich) including issues related to the countermonument and the reenacting of history, but also practical issues of urban renewal.

More than 30 years ago the violent death - on 11 March 1977 - of a left-wing student in the Italian city of Bologna brought an end to a student protest movement, the ‘Movement of ’77’. Today nostalgia dominates public commemorations of the movement as it manifested itself in Bologna. However, this memory is not an exclusive memory of the 1977 generation. A number of young, left-wing activists that draw on the myth of 1977 in Bologna and in particular on the memory of the local Workers Autonomy faction appropriate this memory in a similarly nostalgic manner. This article then explores the value of nostalgia in generational memory: how does it relate to past, present and future, and to what extent does it influence processes of identity formation among youth groups? I argue that nostalgia is more than a longing for the past, and that it can be conceived as progressive and future-orientated, providing empowerment for specific social groups.

The decade spanning from 1968 to 1980, known also as the anni di piombo, is among the most difficult and traumatic periods in Italian post-war history. One of the most memorable years of this decade was 1977, when a new student movement stood up against the established order. The so-called Movement of ’77 manifested itself among others in Bologna, where it had a predominantly creative and joyful character. Nevertheless, the protests were violently struck down when left-wing student Francesco Lorusso was killed by police forces during clashes, resulting in an urban guerriglia. This incident worsened the relationship between the historical left and younger generations of (more radical) left-wing activists, and marked the beginning of the end of the Movement of ’77. The chapter on 1977 was, however, never really closed, and a ‘counter-memory’ has continued to divide the local community ever since. In this article, we shall see how different memory communities in Bologna have dealt with this ‘collective trauma’, focusing on the former Movement of ’77 and the way it has used public commemorative rituals to rebuild a collective identity for itself in subsequent years.