Humanities

This paper contends that 9/11 remains subject to a crisis in criticism, resulting from the failure of certain strains within American studies to sufficiently separate their modes of critique from the ideological means of 9/11’s manipulation. An overreliance upon themes of trauma, and a failure to observe the means by which these discourses have been compromised by their mobilization in political rhetoric, has led to the development of an interpretative void unable to produce a much-needed counternarrative. Whilst the explicit politicization of 11 September has been widely criticized, far less remarked upon is the extent to which the tropes in which 9/11 is represented have been standardized across popular, political, critical and artistic narratives. Failure to challenge the basic terms of this movement has engendered a compromised interpretative field, in which frames of reference slip too easily between the public and the personal, simultaneously militarizing mourning and sentimentalizing politics. This compromises counter-hegemonic narratives, neutering the force of their thrust by presenting them as echoing, and even reinforcing, the discourses of the public–political realm. I will contend that this crisis of representation has arisen, at least in part, from the ubiquity of traumatic narratives, which have been transferred across discursive realms, disguising crucial authorial and critical differences, and seeming to validate the perspective of the state by testifying to an apparent unity of interpretation and response.

The turn towards transculturalism engenders a focus on modes of remembrance that conceptualise memory as dialogic and diverse rather than hierarchical and linear. However, this paper expresses concern that this apparent openness will lead to the presumption that all manifestations of ‘multidirectional’ or ‘cosmopolitan’ memory are ethically-oriented, according commemorative practice a transparency that is not always merited. Particularly disquieting are overly analogical memorial endeavours that suggest unproblematic equivalence between historical events, as exemplified by the reliance upon tropes inherited from Holocaust discourse in the public memorial culture of 9/11. This paper analyses the convergence of two pre-existing cultural discourses in the American public sphere after 9/11. The first relates to the ‘Americanization’ of the Holocaust in memorial culture from the early 1990s, which critics have suggested involves a transition from viewing the Holocaust as a historical event to reading it as an affirmative national parable. The second concerns the mobilisation of the Holocaust in support of U.S. military intervention in foreign policy rhetoric in the post-Cold War period. Analysing the intersection of these discourses with the nar- rative of American exceptionalism, I question whether the prevalence of Holocaust tropes in 9/11’s memorial culture suggests a deliberate appropriation of its master narrative of loss. I argue that, in the decade since 9/11, other memorial constellations have been ignored in favour of less problematic acts of historical analogy. Ultimately, I call for greater attention to the potential consequences of applying analogical templates of remembrance without adequate self-reflexivity. I suggest that it is not always the most visible points of connection that offer the potential for ethical modes of remembrance, but the hidden histories, the forgotten memories, whose relationship to 9/11 opens the most important claims to attention.

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This article explores the use of counter-reenactment by Black community heritage organisations in the Deep South. By counter-reenactment, we refer to the creation and dissemination of a Black living history that challenges the white master-narrative of the regional past. In Sadiya Hartman’s (p. 85) terms, counterreenactments ‘redress’ the suffering of historical Black bodies by ‘counterinvesting in the [contemporary]
body as a site of possibility’. These performances are commonly staged at sites of historic violence where tangible Black heritage has been erased. Using Miss Lou Heritage Group & Tours from Natchez, Mississippi, as a case study, we suggest that counter-reenactments rematerialise African American history in a memorial landscape where Black experience is structurally invisibilised, enacting a form of ‘mnemonic restitution’ that resists the depleting effects of everyday racism, past and present.

This article explores the naturalisation of memories of racial violence at heritage sites in and around Birmingham, Alabama. Birmingham's cityscape has been forged from systemic processes of racial capitalism that have led to ongoing forms of environmental racism. Against this backdrop, prominent tourist attractions prioritise the celebration of industrial heritage above acknowledging past and present forms of racialised injustice-from slavery to convict leasing, segregation to redlining. These sites present a sanitised account of the city's iron and steel industry, resulting in a selective transmission and production of memories of industrial progress which obscures the operations of racial capitalism and the environmental racism it produces. This heritage, we suggest, cannot reconcile the brutality of inequitable labour systems, such as convict leasing, and the environmental violence of industrial production with the celebration of capitalist progress that positions Birmingham as the "Magic City" of industrial miracles.

The main purpose of this essay is to develop the idea that the object-relations theory, introduced in the psychoanalytical movement as an opposition to the libido theory as basis to psychic constitution, produced a radical change in the psychoanalytical concept of subjects. Change is represented by the quitting of the drive as a subject foundation and by the apprehension and comprehension of subjects as personalities, or rather, substantially structured. In terms of methodology, the main work by William Ronald D. Fairbairn (1889-1964) was analyzed and taken as paradigmatic for all object-relations theories. The evolution of Fairbairn's thoughts, from his studies on schizophrenia – and the contradiction it brought to the contemporary libido theory – to the changes and overcoming the author proposed to accomplish in psychoanalytical theory, as a result of his finding that the libidinal goal is an object, are presented.

Музей Современного Искусства: функция форума За последние два десятилетия по всему миру открылось множество Музеев Современного Искусства. Толчком к развитию этого процесса послужило основание музея в Нью-Йорке (MOMA) еще в 1929 г. Позиционирующий себя как, в первую очередь, образовательная институция, основная цель которой развивать диалог зрителя с художником посредством предоставления различных образовательных программ и подходов к экспонированию, музей MOMA заложил основу музея нового типа, Музея Современного Искусства 1 в том виде, в котором он существует сейчас во всех столицах и крупных городах Америки, Европы и Азии, а также продолжает распространяться по менее населенным городам. Феномен широкого распространения МСИ чрезвычайно интересен; в качестве его иллюстрации, мы можем рассмотреть пример Австрии. На данный момент, в Австрии существуют четыре МСИ: MUMOK в Вене, основанный в 2001 году, Кунцтхаус Граз (Граз, 2003 г.), музей Лентос (Линц, 2003) и, наконец, Музей Современного Искусства в Зальцбурге (2004 г.) Необходимо заметить, что, согласно данным 2014 г., население страны составляет 8,2 млн человек, при среднем значении населения в 181 тыс. человек в

The recent sounds of BLM protests can be thought of as reconstituting George Floyd’s extinguished voice - amplifying his solitary protest against restraint through creating a ruckus that interrupted the wider silencing of Black voices. UK Grime and Rap music is another way in which these silences are being challenged today, in the face of all the attempts to police it and close it down, and to restrict the artistic freedom of young Black musicians, especially as expressed in Drill music. Policing Black sound is part of the wider policing of the black body - and restrictions on Black music are discussed in relation to the many laws on anti-social behaviour that have been enacted since New Labour’s first creation of ASBOs. David Starkey’s fear about whites becoming black is linked to a long-held fear on the right about the potentially corrupting effect of Black music on white listeners, and its perceived threat to the status quo - the spread of a ‘dub virus’.

This article examines the meanings of the crime scene in serial killings, and the tensions between the real and the imagined in the circulation of those meanings. Starting with the Whitechapel Murders of 1888 it argues that they, as well as forming an origin for the construction of the identity of 'the serial killer', initiate certain ideas about the relationship of subjects to spaces and the existence of the self in the modern urban landscape. It suggests that these ideas come to play an integral part in the contemporary discourse of serial killing, both in the popular imagination and in professional analysis. Examining the Whitechapel Murders, more recent cases and modern profiling techniques, it argues that popular and professional representations of crime scenes reveal more of social anxieties about the nature of the public and the private than they do about serial killers. It suggests that 'the serial killer' is not a coherent type, but an invention produced from the confusions of persons and places.

The Arab Media Centre's (University of Westminster) 2th international conference, 'Mapping Cultural Policy in the Arab Region', aims to bring together academics, artists, policymakers, activists and civil society groups to discuss the role of ‘culture’ and ‘cultural policy’ in the Arab region within a context that takes into account the recent historical and political events that are reshaping the region’s societies, economies and culture industries.

Looking ahead to a post-oil future, Gulf states have for more than a decade been systematically investing in 'culture' or what is known as the ‘creative’ economy. In Arab countries that saw regime change since the uprisings of 2010, cultural policy constitutes an indispensable tool of struggle for both revolutionary and anti-revolutionary forces. And while the politics of difference and representation have resurfaced as a key and contentious issue in several Arab countries, Arab youth and subcultures, alienated by state-owned cultural institutions and the private culture industry sectors, have sought DIY strategies and independent sources of funding to give voice to new and alternative artistic forms of expression, including performative arts, experimental film and music.