Acts of Irreconcilable Mourning: Post-Holocaust Witness and Testimony

Abstract

This essay revisits the question of post-Shoah responses to cataclysm in light of the now-urgent question of transmission – the shift in mourning and memory between first-generation survivors and later generations. Offering a different but complementary analysis to those in trauma or memory studies, I argue that post-Shoah witness and testimony are acts of ‘irreconcilable mourning’. This sense of mourning departs from post-Freudian approaches that focus on closure. Instead, irreconcilable mourning is a non-totalising approach to loss that resists ‘redemption’ and instead necessitates an ongoing, creative, and critical response to loss. In the course of this argument, I examine first-generation accounts such as Primo Levi's and Elie Wiesel's to highlight the necessity and contingency of transmission by interrogating concepts such as the ‘unsayable’ and the remnant. I then focus on Art Spiegelman's second-generation Maus: A Survivor's Tale, bringing cross-generational questions of witness and testimony as acts of irreconcilable mourning into the fold of Marianne Hirsch's ‘postmemory’ and Edith Wyschogrod's heterological history-telling.     

《建党伟业》中毛泽东的扮演者刘烨

为纪念中国共产党成立90周年,中国电影集团投资拍摄的大型献礼影片《建党伟业》,群星灿烂,阵容强大,特别是剧中扮演毛泽东的青年演员刘烨,引起了人们的关注。     

《论语》中的"论辩"与孔子对言的态度

本文以西方传统中对论辩或论争的研究为参照,考察<论语>中孔子对于言的态度以及对论辩的态度,并分析<论语>中的某些言语方式所蕴含的哲学意义.这一研究将为中西思想传统中的哲学论辩比较研究提供必要基础.     

Speech genres and cultural value in the Anglo-American public speaking course as a site of language socialization

Speech genres have a significant role in socializing children and adults not only to speak in culturally appropriate ways but also to present desirable identities. We analyze narratives of self-transformation collected in an undergraduate public speaking course in the United States to learn how the acquisition of public speaking as a speech genre contributes to U.S. students’ language socialization. Our study contributes to two traditions of intercultural communication research, one interested in the context-bound, culturally situated character of Anglo-American speech, and another that seeks to explain how local communication resources, including speech genres, travel across cultural boundaries.     

普者黑：一方充满灵性的水土

普者黑是一方充满灵性的水土,阳光、空气、峰林、池塘、荷叶、蜻蜒、村舍……一个个零碎的片断,构成了静谧绝美的山水田园风光,带给我们的是一个跃动着的沉醉与梦幻,一段忘却尘世喧嚣的快乐时光。     

蔡元培和画家威廉的父女深情

在杭州植物园内玉泉路1号,有一幢绿树围绕的中式花园别墅叫“马岭山房”,前为平房,后为楼房,黑瓦粉墙,泥壁木地,另有大小花园、附房若干、井一口。这是80年前蔡元培为长女威廉出嫁而资助建造的新房,也是父女深情的一个见证。     

台州刺绣：从实用走向欣赏

2012年11月,中国工艺美术学会刺绣艺术专业委员会在浙江台州市召开年会。来自全国各地28个绣种的近百名专家齐聚台州,共同探讨刺绣艺术技艺,开展学术研究。     

七彩农事 美丽尚田

在我国宜居城市奉化,有个风隋醉人的尚田镇。那里东南平旷近海,西北群峰高峻。蓝天白云下,远山隐隐,近山苍苍。发源于山中的县溪、东江流经尚田。伴随着袅袅茶香,呈现出古村的七彩农事。     

Showing and coding: venture pitching and nonmaterial production

ABSTRACT

This article explores practices of representation and role stabilization in an emerging innovation ecosystem in Beirut, Lebanon. With little local track record of software startup activity, any overt practices of venture or business process representation were of immediate utility. The two moments explored, a pitch session at a mentorship committee meeting and a startup founding competition, capture parts of the nascent topology of a venture development setting in the making. In both, pitches for software products were at the heart of the productive process, and this paper argues that these moments of performative representation were not surplus to the process of founding a startup, but rather are crucial productive elements in themselves. Early-stage software development consists of a constant oscillation between making and modeling. The interdependence of writing software code, stabilizing social platforms for work and industry development, and finding specialists who could relate these tasks was crucial to the development of this business ecosystem in Lebanon. It was a system in motion, built of code and confidence. The circulation of information crucial to decision making within a single project required distinct practices of publicity, which in turn required articulatory platforms.