Historisk tidskrift 122:2 • 2002
Innehåll (Contents) 2002:2
Uppsatser (Articles)
I mötet med minnet – historiekulturer i Skandinavien
Cecilia Trenter
Fulltext (pdf)
Summary
Encounter the Memory – Scandinavian History Cultures
This article deals with history culture in different areas
in Scandinavia. The main points are as follow:
History culture
is in official and political contexts masculine. Symbols of
war, death and nationality create the realm in which political
and ideological use of history flourish, while the feminine
elements, especially the female sexuality, present passive
pictures of the nation. This might lead to a diverse history
culture whereas official political culture which narrative
abbreviations connotation war affect men while a more personal
and intimate history representation, such as advertisement,
are supposed to affect women.
History culture produces different
kinds of uses. A perspective on what Friedrich Nietzsche
names the antiquarian way, is history as fetish. By means of
the fetishistic use of artifacts as well as narrative abbreviations,
history replaces absence in daily life and official politic,
such as taboo or lack of positions in political agendas.
An example of that is the Swedish campaign Levande Historia
(Living History) on Holocaust. The idea was politically initiated
and derived from certain assumption about lack of knowledge
on Holocaust among Swedish schoolchildren, but also from
a will to entrance the global social memory of World War II.
The historian has two roles in the official history culture.
The first is the part as an expert on history and thereby an
actor among others in the field of history production. The
second function is that of the analyzer of history culture.
This article stresses the idea that theory of social memory
and history culture must include not only the reception of
history, but also the reception and representation of history
in areas we do not associate with history representation in
order to seek for the connection between official history culture
and private social memory.
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