[ecrea] CFP: Re-enacting the Past: Memory, Materiality, Performance

*Re-enacting the Past: Memory, Materiality, Performance*

Call for papers, special issue of /theInternational Journal of Heritage 
Studies/



This special issue focuses on /re-enacting the past/:that is, on 
performances that act and re-act upon past events by processes ofmimesis 
or (selective) repetition. In recent years, a great deal of compelling 
research has emerged on narrative, visual and material /representations/ 
of the past. Few scholars, however, have addressedthe manifold 
processes, performances and collaborations through which pastevents are 
re-staged and re-presenced, and analysed them as such. Thus, in 
thisspecial issue we will focus on the more-than-representational layers 
in /presenting/ the past, the mediated representationsfrom which 
re-enactments often draw their inspiration, as well as the politicsof 
such re-performances.  We seekto explore various processes related to 
heritage performance and the "production of presence" (Gumbrecht 2004) 
forming around, and referring to past events and scenarios.  In 
addition, we will take up the question of why these processes and 
performancesare important subjects for scholarly critique within 
heritage studies.


Re-enactment as a term is well known from studies in history and 
historiography, especially from Collingwood's theories on "history as 
re-enactment of past experience".  In such studies, the concept of 
re-enactment is almost invariably tied to discussions on the 
relationship and level of similarity between past and present experience 
(Dilthey, Ankersmit). In contrast to historical studies of this kind, we 
want to focus more sharply on the work 'history' does in the present 
 and on the concerns and consequences of such 'doing'. The consequences 
of re-performing pastevents and scenarios can be manifold: it may 
involve an /exoticism/ of the past, as in some nostalgic tourist and 
cultural heritage locations; it can produce /learning /through bodily 
practices that re-create past gestures, rituals and performances(e.g. 
time travels, festivals, advanced tourist learning concepts, 
Gulagtourism), it may seek a /healing/ and/or/socially/ /transformative/ 
effect through retelling and re-membering traumatic or violent pasts, or 
it can serve to invoke /empathy /and/or /heightened awareness/ by 
re-vitalizing forgotten, abject, repressed or difficult pasts.

While opening the field of heritagestudies to various forms of 
re-enactment, we wish to foreground bodily andspatial engagements and 
performances, as well as the crucial role of objects, inscription 
technologies and other 'non-human actors' (Latour). By ' thinking 
through things' (Henare et al. 2007) as well as through medias we invite 
contributors to view technological empowerment, material quality 
andartifactual power as going beyond representation and empowering 
processes of re-enacting and memorializing. Also, the role (and 
experience) of /time/ and temporality is often critical, as such 
re-stagings often attempt to somehow break, stop or even symbolically 
reverse time.


Bracketing issues of representation,rationality and knowledge, we seek 
instead to highlight dimensions of affect,vitality, immediacy and/or 
experience. We aim to contribute to themethodological and theoretical 
development of memory analysis within heritageand cultural studies, 
understood broadly as non-representational /practice/, by exploring the 
multilayeredeffects of various instances of re-staging and by 
reinvigorating the past withinthe present. We thus invite scholars 
interested in investigating re-enactment to submit their abstracts to 
Britta Timm Knudsen ((norbtk /at/ hum.au.dk) <mailto:(norbtk /at/ hum.au.dk)>), Mads 
Daugbjerg ((mads.daugbjerg /at/ hum.au.dk) <mailto:(mads.daugbjerg /at/ hum.au.dk)>) 
or Rivka Eisner ((ihorei /at/ hum.au.dk) <mailto:(ihorei /at/ hum.au.dk)>).Final 
articles should be between 6000 and 8000 words including notes and 
references and must be accompanied by a 150 word abstract and up to six 
key words.



Possible questions and topic areas include:

How is thepast acted or re-acted upon? What is /altered/, and what is 
kept the same, through different performative acts that serve to 
commemorate, enliven orreconcile past events?

By what kinds of present markers (e.g. dimensions of affect, vitality, 
and/or immediacy) isthe past re-enchanted or re-invigorated within 
tourist or nostalgic settings,in reenactment societies or among 
individuals or groups who seek to re-createpast gestures, rituals or 
performances?

What notions of temporality are involved in understanding the overall 
spatial logics ofperformative acts and re-enactments?

Are distinctions between different framings of the re-enactment still 
relevant(such as recreations of history as art, e.g. Jeremy Deller)?

How does one distinguish between different re-enactment gestures, the 
uses of varioustechnologies and medias, and their conceptual 
consequences (imitations,citations, remediations, re-enactments, 
repetitions, re-creations)?

How are heritage re-enactments created, experienced and understood 
differently (or similarly) invarious cultural contexts and by different 
groups?

In what ways are re-enactments designed or intended for different 
audiences? What difference does the question of "audience" make?

How does experiencing the past, or heritage, through re-enactments 
initiate learningprocesses? What different sorts of politics arise when 
addressing "firsthand" and "secondhand" memory of the past and its 
pedagogically oriented re-enactments?


*Due Dates*

Abstracts: November 1,2011

First drafts: April 1,2012

Reviews returned:

Final drafts:

Submission to Journal:



Please use the IJHSstyle guide: 
http://www.tandf.co.uk/journals/authors/style/layout/tf_1.pdf

Quick guide: 
http://www.tandf.co.uk/journals/authors/style/layout/tf_quick1-4.pdf

Additional information: 
http://www.tandf.co.uk/journals/journal.asp?issn=1352-7258&linktype=44 
<http://www.tandf.co.uk/journals/journal.asp?issn=1352-7258&linktype=44>



All submissions will go through the full IJHS review process.



Britta Timm Knudsen
lektor, ph.d./Associate Professor Ph.D.
Nordisk Institut/Scandinavian Institute
Jens Chr.  Skousvej 7, 467/324
Aarhus Universitet/Aarhus University
8000 Aarhus C
Denmark
t: 89422450 /29263916 /86163070
e: (norbtk /at/ hum.au.dk) <mailto:(norbtk /at/ hum.au.dk)>
http://person.au.dk/en/norbtk@hum