Catharina Raudvere

History as a Mirror and Places of Belonging: Some Remarks on Contested Memories and the Demands of the Past

Taking its point of departure the existing literature on cultural memory in Muslim communities, the introductory chapter argues in favour of perspectives that underline the importance of transnational/transregional contacts at work in contemporary Muslim history cultures. Memory is in this context regarded as a border zone and the focus in the volume is on the agents and agendas moving in between.

Loss and Creativity: Affect and Effect. Political and Cultural Representations of the Past in South-East Europe

Nostalgia and cultural memory have for the last two decades been broadly used concepts for framing a border zone where politics, culture, art, and history writing meet. By emphasizing how the relationship between the sense of loss and the momentum for creativity are intertwined in cultural production and history writing, the contributors to this volume discuss themes that include many parts of South-East Europe as well as various chronologies and scales in society. Loss in this volume is connected to creativity and represented memory, from the avant-garde artistic to the popular, not to say populist. In emphasizing how a sense of loss intertwines with creative momentum in cultural production and history writing, the volume spans many parts of the region as well as various chronologies and levels of society.

Experience and Expression: Aleksandar Hemon, Fiction, and (Dis)placement

This chapter discusses the Bosnian-American writer Aleksandar Hemon’s stories and counter-stories, arguing that his fictional texts can function as a valuable contribution to our understanding of the background and consequences of the war in the Balkans in the 1990s, and the ethical implications of history writing.

Sufism som vardagsislam. Ett pågående projekt om gemenskap, nätverk och identitet.

Sufismen, som ofta definieras i enkla kategorier som islams mystik, har betydligt mer vardagliga och jordnara dimensioner an vad som vanligen framkommer i religionsvetenskapliga handbocker. Sufiska sammanslutningar finns inte alltid som konkurrenter till muslimska forsamlingar, utan ofta inom dem och mer familjenara, t ex som kitt mellan slaktingar eller kontaktytor for handel i storre eller mindre skala. Projektet ”Exil och tradition”, som stods sedan 2005 av Riksbankens Jubileumsfond (Stockholm), syftar till att dokumentera och analysera hur sufigrupper i Skandinavien utvecklas och forandras i diaspora samtidigt som de uppratthaller kontakter med formella sufiordnar i muslimska lander. Nedanstaende ar, pa inbjudan av FIFOs redaktion, nagra korta reflektioner kring projektets forutsattningar.