The internet, information architecture and community memory

This article reviews current technological developments, particularly Peer-to-Peer technologies and Distributed Data Systems, and their value to community memory projects, particularly those concerned with the preservation of the cultural, literary and administrative data of cultures which have suffered genocide or are at risk of genocide. It draws attention to the comparatively good representation online of genocide denial groups and changes in the technological strategies of holocaust denial and other far-right groups. It draws on the author's work in providing IT support for a UK-based Non-Governmental Organization providing support for survivors of genocide in Rwanda.

Learning and memory in holocaust survivors with posttraumatic stress disorder

Background: Impairments in explicit memory have been observed in Holocaust survivors with posttraumatic stress disorder. Methods: To evaluate which memory components are preferentially affected, the California Verbal Learning Test was administered to Holocaust survivors with (n = 36) and without (n = 26) posttraumatic stress disorder, and subjects not exposed to the Holocaust (n = 40). Results: Posttraumatic stress disorder subjects showed impairments in learning and short-term and delayed retention compared to nonexposed subjects; survivors without posttraumatic stress disorder did not. Impairments in learning, but not retention, were retained after controlling fir intelligence quotient. Older age was associated with poorer learning and memory performance in the posttraumatic stress disorder group only. Conclusions: The most robust impairment observed in posttraumatic stress disorder was in verbal learning, which may be a risk factor for or consequence of chronic posttraumatic stress disorder. The negative association between performance and age may reflect accelerated cognitive decline in posttraumatic stress disorder.

‘The Historikerstreit: Uniqueness and Comparability of the Holocaust'

A critical analysis of the public debate among German historians, philosophers and other intellectuals in the mid-1980s about the uniqueness or comparability of the Holocaust in relation to other instances of genocide.

Denial of change: the 'Military Revolution' as seen by contemporaries

Writers on military matters from the 14th century until the late 18th century either regretted the decadence of their times compared with Antiquity, or they saw no great change in military affairs since Antiquity. Few saw a revolutionary change ushered in by gunpowder, although this number increased since the great "querelle" about the Ancients and the Moderns under Louis XIV. In the early 19th century, the balance tipped, and few would have denied that technology had profoundly changed warfare. All this is a far cry, however, from any contemporary perception of a "Military Revolution" in the 16th and 17th centuries.

Fetishizing the Holocaust: comedy and transatlantic connections in Howard Jacobson's 'Kalooki Nights'

The British Jewish novelist Howard Jacobson has, from the start of his career, found himself saddled with the unenviable label of 'the English Philip Roth'. For many years, Jacobson bristled at the Roth comparisons, offering the alternative label 'the Jewish Jane Austen' and insisting that he had not read Roth at all, though more recently he has put on record his admiration for Roth's comic masterpiece, Sabbath's Theater.If Jacobson's early work was certainly imbued with a Rothian Jewish humour, its cultural reference points were almost invariably English. In contrast, Kalooki Nights is saturated with allusions to American culture, in particular Jewish American culture. This article traces some of the ways in which Kalooki Nights explores and exploits these transatlantic connections in a comic novel that both participates in and satirizes what will be called here the fetishization of the Holocaust. It is concluded that Kalooki Nights is Jacobson's audacious attempt to produce a piece of Holocaust literature that exploits the tension between the desire of some Jews of his generation to know all the 'gory details', and the necessity of recognizing that their own historical situation prevents them from ever doing so. The result is to make people laugh not at the events of the Holocaust itself but at the attempt to fetishize them.

Individual differences in the effects of perceived controllability on pain perception: critical role of the prefrontal cortex

The degree to which perceived controllability alters the way a stressor is experienced varies greatly among individuals. We used functional magnetic resonance imaging to examine the neural activation associated with individual differences in the impact of perceived controllability on self-reported pain perception. Subjects with greater activation in response to uncontrollable (UC) rather than controllable (C) pain in the pregenual anterior cingulate cortex (pACC), periaqueductal gray (PAG), and posterior insula/SII reported higher levels of pain during the UC versus C conditions. Conversely, subjects with greater activation in the ventral lateral prefrontal cortex (VLPFC) in anticipation of pain in the UC versus C conditions reported less pain in response to UC versus C pain. Activation in the VLPFC was significantly correlated with the acceptance and denial subscales of the COPE inventory [Carver, C. S., Scheier, M. F., & Weintraub, J. K. Assessing coping strategies: A theoretically based approach. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 56, 267–283, 1989], supporting the interpretation that this anticipatory activation was associated with an attempt to cope with the emotional impact of uncontrollable pain. A regression model containing the two prefrontal clusters (VLPFC and pACC) predicted 64% of the variance in pain rating difference, with activation in the two additional regions (PAG and insula/SII) predicting almost no additional variance. In addition to supporting the conclusion that the impact of perceived controllability on pain perception varies highly between individuals, these findings suggest that these effects are primarily top-down, driven by processes in regions of the prefrontal cortex previously associated with cognitive modulation of pain and emotion regulation.

Charles Darwin's liberalism in 'Natural Selection as affecting civilised nations'

This article reassesses 'Natural Selection as affecting Civilised Nations': a thirteen-page section in the first volume of The Descent of Man (1871) often assumed to be problematic for those who wish to emphasize Darwin's liberal credentials. For hismost virulent critics the section connects Darwin to eugenics and the Nazi Holocaust. Even his admirers tend to view it as symptomatic of Darwin succumbing to a more conservative politics. This article demonstrates, through a delineation of the intellectual context and a close reading of key passages, that in fact 'Natural Selection as affecting Civilised Nations' confirmed, rather than abandoned, Darwin's liberalism.

Haunted by History: Myths in International Relations

A series of studies on interpretations of history and their use in political debates. Includes: Beatrice Heuser & Cyril Buffet: ‘Michel and Marianne’ Beatrice Heuser & Cyril Buffet: ‘Of Myths and Men’, Beatrice Heuser & Cyril Buffet: ‘Historical Myths and the Denial of Change’, Beatrice Heuser: ‘Dunkirk, Dien Bien Phu, and Suez, or why France doesn't trust allies and has learned to love the bomb’.

Terminal: a miracle play with popular music from the end of the world

Terminal: A Miracle Play with Popular Music from the End of the World is a film and live performance project exploring the politics of post-apocalyptic fiction. A theatrical staging of a morality play for end times and future folk music, it recasts eschatology, as a foundational myth for a future society. Post-apocalyptic writing and cinema are grounded in an ethos of survivalism. Invoking Rousseau’s state of nature, or time before government, these fictions propose violent scenarios in which nuclear holocaust, environmental catastrophe and other disasters generate an individualistic politics of pure pragmatism, negating the possibility of democratic deliberation. Terminal narrates this familiar scenario, but at the same time questions its validity. The film, shot on black and white VHS at Kurt Schwitters’ Merzbarn in Cumbria, dramatises a series of conversations between future-historical archetypes about the needs and pressures of the situation in which they find themselves at the end of the world. The performers then gather to play worshipful songs about acid rain, radiation sickness and eating the dog, using a mix of conventional, obscure and makeshift instruments In the tradition of books such as Russell Hoban’s Riddley Walker and Arthur M. Miller Jr.’s A Canticle for Liebowitz, Terminal imagines artistic expression and new folk traditions for a world to come after the apocalypse. If, as Slavoj Žižek would have it, it is easier to imagine the end of the world than to think of the end of capitalism, the project juxtaposes these two endpoints to test out how alternative scenarios might emerge from the collaborative practice of making theatre and music against a setting of social collapse.

Des liaisons dangereuses? Réseaux donnés, réseaux supposés et réseaux déguisés d’une nonne vénitienne au XVIIe siècle

This article deals with Tarabotti's own family, her religious family within her nunnery and her ideal family, the so-called "République des lettres". Despite her permanent denial about her parents and siblings, she has ties with them all: she benifitted from her sister Camilla's and her mother's wills, she had a friendly relationship with one of her brothers-in-law, she took pity of her two sisters who remained spinsters. The same occurred with her religious family, where she developed close friendships with at least two of them. Moreover, her sisters in religion often belonged to patrician, well-off families and it is possible to argue that Tarabotti managed to expand her relationships with very important people via her sisters in religion. But the family she truly cherished, was her family d'election, the one she had been free to choose and to pursue: her literary family. However, this latter one was not a very recomandable family for a nun: therefore she kept silent with the most relevant elements of it, namely with the French priest and astronomer Ismael Boulliau who acted as the go-between for her last book, published abroad two years after her death. The article provides evidence to such connections, ties and knots, explaining at least in part Tarabotti's extraordinary success in life as a proto-feminist and political writer.

EU membership of the WTO: international trade disputes and judicial protection of individuals by EU Courts

The European Union (EU) is embedded in a pluralistic legal context because of the EU and its Member States’ treaty memberships and domestic laws. Where EU conduct has implications for both the EU’s international trade relations and the legal position of individual traders, it possibly affects EU and its Member States’ obligations under the law of the World Trade Organization (WTO law) as well as the Union’s own multi-layered constitutional legal order. The present paper analyses the way in which the European Court of Justice (ECJ) accommodates WTO and EU law in the context of international trade disputes triggered by the EU. Given the ECJ’s denial of direct effect of WTO law in principle, the paper focuses on the protection of rights and remedies conferred by EU law. It assesses the implications of the WTO Dispute Settlement Understanding (DSU) – which tolerates the acceptance of retaliatory measures constraining traders’ activities in sectors different from those subject to the original trade dispute (Bananas and Hormones cases) – for the protection of ‘retaliation victims’. The paper concludes that governmental discretion conferred by WTO law has not affected the applicability of EU constitutional law but possibly shapes the actual scope of EU rights and remedies where such discretion is exercised in the EU’s general interest.