State-Sponsored History After 1945: An Introduction

Bevernage, Berber; Wouters, Nico

doi:10.1057/978-1-349-95306-6_1

Cited by 10 publications

(8 citation statements)

References 81 publications

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“…As Clark (2018) demonstrates, past European rulers and regimes rooted their sovereign claims in a very specific codification of time—a regime-specific “historical signature” (Clark, 2018: 22). The consolidation of sovereign rule then required the production, management, and dissemination of historical knowledge, grounding state authority in “certain representations of the state” (Bevernage and Wouters, 2018: 4) in history. In modern Ethiopia too, idea of state sovereignty has been built on a specific account of the state’s history as a “teleological narrative” of the past structured around selective “periods, people and places” (Clapham, 2002: 41).…”

Section: Selective Ethiopian History and The “Great Tradition”mentioning

confidence: 99%

The emperor, the lion and the peacock: Monuments and contested state sovereignty in contemporary Ethiopia

Regassa

Emmenegger

2023

Environment and Planning C: Politics and Space

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As a first project launched after his nomination as Ethiopia’s new prime minister in 2018, Abiy Ahmed renovated the Imperial Palace in Ethiopia’s political center, Addis Ababa to turn it into a heritage site of significance for nation-state building. This project was widely interpreted as a sign for the end of authoritarian rule and political tensions in the country. In this paper, we scrutinize the monumentalization inside the palace as an assemblage of of mythical figures – political rulers and animals. In our focus are different statues, which we interpret in the context of Ethiopia’s political history of authoritarian rule, the politics of history, and ongoing ethno-nationalist contestations. On that basis, we demonstrate the strategic significance for Abiy Ahmed of articulating these mythical figures in his attempt to substantiate his sovereignclaim—especially in the context of his regime’s sever legitimacy crisis. Our analysis reveals the palace as a site of cultural and political significance in the broader context of ongoing ethno-nationalist struggles about nation-state authority, representation, legitimacy and history. It contributes to an inherently political understanding of developments of monuments and their significance for state sovereignty, hegemony, and authoritarian rule in Africa and beyond.

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Section: Selective Ethiopian History and The “Great Tradition”mentioning

confidence: 99%

The emperor, the lion and the peacock: Monuments and contested state sovereignty in contemporary Ethiopia

Regassa

Emmenegger

2023

Environment and Planning C: Politics and Space

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“…It allows us to see the emergent possibilities of experience, to conceptualize such places beyond the historical narratives that might frame them. It can begin to explain how such a room might engender experiences or events with a resonance that shimmers in time and space, that emerges and dissipates, that ‘punctuates the in-act, leading the event elsewhere than toward the governant fixity of the major’ (Manning, 2016: 7), the major in this case being the state-sponsored history (Bevernage and Wouters, 2018) represented at Camp des Milles. In Ben’s case, the ‘minor’ was part of a personal memory that made the experience of the space more intense and connected him, through his own past, to the experiences of others in the same space, at least as he imagined them.…”

Section: The Minor Gesture and Atmospheric Attunementmentioning

confidence: 99%

Rust and dust: Materiality and the feel of memory at Camp des Milles

Sumartojo

Graves

2018

Journal of Material Culture

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In this article we explore the potential of state-sponsored memory sites to engender multi-chronological and sensorial accounts of the past, and create new meanings for visitors in doing so. We do so through recounting first hand experiences of the Camp des Milles, a Second World War internment and deportation camp in the south of France, near Aix-en-Provence. Inaugurated in 2012, in addition to being an official lieux de mémoire, Camp des Milles also has an explicit pedagogical function in seeking to raise awareness of racism and anti-semitism, and how to combat it. The article hinges on oral accounts of a visit to the site, and accompanying photographs, which together provide an empirical starting point for a series of linked concepts that frame our arguments. Beginning with Manning's (2015) notion of the 'minor gesture', we build on recent work on more-than-representational approaches to memory and place, and draw in explorations of materiality and industrial ruins. Overall, we call for a more subtle and atmospheric understanding of state-sponsored memory sites, one that attends to the emergent experiences people have in them, that can allows us to understand their affective impact much more clearly, and thus their potential to promulgate and intensify their messages.

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“…Accordingly, this article critically engages with geographies of state commemoration, seeking a new way to understand how this particular form of state-sponsored history, or those forms of the past that are officially narrated, inscribed, memorialised and promulgated, are part of our lives. Such histories are the ‘processes and outcomes of direct and indirect state influence’ that, although complex and diverse, have a direct relationship to official versions of the past and their reinforcement by the state (Bevernage and Wouters, 2018: 1). In focusing on state-sponsored forms of war commemoration, this article does not consider vernacular, folk or informal sites or ceremonies, nor those to other types of national histories, even though these often stimulate intense affective and sensory responses.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

New geographies of commemoration

Sumartojo

2020

Progress in Human Geography

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This article identifies new geographies of commemoration. These draw on non-representational perspectives that foreground the experiential aspects of commemorative sites and events, drawing these together with methodologies alive to the subtle but excessive feelings that arise in such settings. It argues that one aim of commemoration – to reinforce the contours of national identity – is disrupted by a focus on the experiential world because of the unpredictable and excessive nature of sensory and affective feelings. New research in geographies of commemoration also draws together different temporalities, holding the potential to unsettle and complicate national narratives.

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State-Sponsored History After 1945: An Introduction

Cited by 10 publications

References 81 publications

The emperor, the lion and the peacock: Monuments and contested state sovereignty in contemporary Ethiopia

The emperor, the lion and the peacock: Monuments and contested state sovereignty in contemporary Ethiopia

Rust and dust: Materiality and the feel of memory at Camp des Milles

New geographies of commemoration

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