Luisa Passerini

Memory and totalitarianism

Antagonistic memories - the post-war survival and alienation of Jews and Germans, Frank Stern where were you on 17 June? A niche in memory, Lutz Niethammer a German generation of reconstruction - the children of the Weimar Republic in the GDR, Dorothee Wierling after glasnost - oral history in the Soviet Union, Doria Khubova, Andrei Ivankiev and Tonia Sharova the Gulag in memory, Irina Sherbakova the abduction of Imre Nagy and his group - the Rashomen effect, Andras Kovacs mujeres libres - the preservation of memory under the policies of repression in Spain, Martha Akelsberg a shattered silence - the life stories of survivors of the Jewish proletariat in Amsterdam, Selma Leydesdorff dont forget - fragments of a negative tradition, Renate Siebert. Review articles: oral history and Italian fascism, Alfredo Martini stories of everyday life in Vichy, France, Dominique Veillon and Daniele Voldman voices from the chair - reflections on the development of oral history in Russia, Irina Sherbakova aspects of recent oral history in Germany, Alexander Von Plato.

`Utopia' and Desire

This article explores the change in meaning of the term `utopia between 1968 and today. It proposes an interpretation of 1968 based on the connection between utopia and desire; the emergence of subjectivity in history meant a new way of becoming subjects of ones own history, and a new understanding of socio-political change, as including daily life and personal emotions.

The interpretation of democracy in the Italian women's movement of the 1970s and 1980s

Abstract The practice of consciousness-raising in Italian neo-feminism can be interpreted on one hand as a revisitation of womens older tradition of exchange and self-expression, and on the other hand as a contribution to democracy. The small group provided new ways to implementing the principle of freedom of speech and the direct exercise of democratic rights. However, in the specific Italian context, it never quite addressed some major problems arising from the Mediterranean idea of the ‘great mother’. The connection between a concept of motherhood that includes full rights for mothers as political subjects and a ‘substantial’ form of democracy requires further exploration. It might have particular relevance in promoting understanding among women of different cultures, such as those that converge in Europe today under the pressure of migration and political change.

Europe of love: re‐centring intercultural affairs

The present collection of essays is the first collective result of the research project ‘Europe: Emotions, Identities, Politics’ that is being conducted at the Kulturwissenschaftliches Institut (KWI), Essen.1 The approach of our research is that of a cultural history of Europe, and the focus is on the historical connection between the idea of Europe and a certain type of personal emotion. The project aims to explore the relationships between political forms of identity and cultural attitudes in the field of emotions in Europe. More specifically, it is engaged in understanding the relationship between the formation of identity in the European context, on the one hand, and the idea of courtly and romantic love, on the other. I have argued elsewhere that European cultural identity must be distinguished from the political version based on the sense of belonging to the European Union. In the course of this introductory essay I always refer to a cultural Europe.2 This introduction is divided into a presentation of the project, the specific itinerary that we propose in this special issue, and some considerations on its thematic. Cf. Luisa Passerini, ‘From the Ironies of Identity to the Identities of Irony’, in A. Pagden, ed., The Idea of Europe. From Antiquity to the European Union, Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, 2002. The original inspiration for this type of research came to me at the Wissenschaftskolleg, Berlin, where I spent the year 1992–93; I continued the research at the European University Institute, Florence, in the years 1994–2002. The first product of this research was my book Europe in Love, Love in Europe (London: Tauris, 1999 and New York: New York University Press, 2000) that takes 1930s Britain as a case study, by situating it within a European context of longue durée. The present project has been funded by the Kulturwissenschaftlicher Forschungspreis des Landes Nordrhein‐Westfalen from 2002 to 2004. Within its general framework, the members of the research group, directed by Luisa Passerini, have developed their own individual projects; they are Liliana Ellena, Alexander Geppert, Jo Labanyi, Ruth Mas, Almira Ousmanova, and Alison Sinclair. Guests of the project have been invited for periods of time up to a month; numerous seminars, workshops and conferences have been organised, with the participation of junior and senior scholars from various countries. The majority of the papers presented on these occasions will be published at the end of the project.

‘Bodies Across Borders. Oral And Visual Memory in Europe and Beyond’ (BABE): a conversation with Luisa Passerini, Donna Gabaccia, and Franca Iacovetta

In this final contribution to this theme issue on Luisa Passerinis important scholarship, the guest editors and Passerini discuss her current EU Research Council-funded collaborative project, BABE, which is meant to bring together oral and visual forms of memory that reformulate the concept of Europe (and Fortress Europe) in more inclusive ways. Its distinctive features are discussed, including the collection and analysis of drawings and other visual itineraries by artists and other subjects, including students, from the global diaspora in Europe. Other topics include the importance of conversation in oral history work, the ‘mobility turn,’ and the gendered nature of mentorship.

Response on Borders, Conflict Zones, and Memory

In response to five essays (including the historiographical introduction) written in her honour, Luisa Passerini offers precise commentary and wide-ranging reflections on the different authors’ applications of such key concepts as subjectivity, intersubjectivity, memory, narration, love, utopia, and ego-histoire. Mixing the intellectual, emotional, professional, and personal, she considers the varied implications of the transnational and multigenerational panel of scholars whose respective contributions address Mennonite refugee womens food memories; testimonies by far-left Chilean women tortured by the military dictatorship after the 1973 coup; memories of the war between East and West Pakistan, and India and Pakistan; and a self-reflexive re-visitation of her career-encompassing work.

La prospettiva della storia culturale e l'approccio autobiografico

Cultural history can contribute to age studies in many ways: by using literary texts, memory sources (both written and oral), and visual images from art and the cinema, it can give a sense of the plurality of ways of aging in various ages and places. It recognizes the centrality of the body for this type of research on subjectivity and it considers the autobiographical approach essential for the study of aging. The author includes her own reflections on the experience of aging and writing on age, besides reviewing a number of existing texts from Europe and North America.

Mémoire et histoire: la visite de Mussolini à l'usine Fiat de Mirafiori

La recherche dont je presente ici une partie est nee dun projet precis : recueillir la memoire ouvriere du fascisme. Jusqu% maintenant, les publications de memoires et lhistoriographie ont illustre le souvenir que gardent de ce regime les classes moyennes, les intellectuels et les couches les plus politisees de la classe ouvriere. Cette recherche a au contraire tente de donner aussi leur place a des travailleurs qui ne furent ni des activistes ni des militants, et a des aspects de leur experience qui ne sont pas directement politiques. On a donc prete une attention toute particuliere non seulement au contenu mais a la forme de la memoire, aux faits culturels et symboliques qui emaillent les r6cits.

An Eclectic Ego-Histoire

My interest in psychoanalysis dates from the mid-1960s, when as a member of a very small pro-Situationist group in Turin and Milan, I was part of the still disjointed movement of the Italian radical left. My original interest was theoretical and political, in the sense that I strongly believed—following the philosophy of the Frankfurt school—that the present situation of the world, and strategies to change it, had to be understood at both a social and individual level, incorporating the public and the private, the political and the personal: adopting a Marxian analysis for the dynamics of material production and a Freudian one for the dialectics of the libido and the psyche. I read systematically and with total assent the philosophy of Max Horkheimer and the Frankfurt School, but I was not convinced by The Authoritarian Personality (published in Italy in 1973 and signed among others by Theodor Adorno), and I was disturbed by what I considered were mechanistic efforts to combine Marxism and psychoanalysis.1

Peut-on donner de 1968 une histoire à la première personne?

Le flot de commemorations qui celebrent, ou execrent, le vingtieme anniversaire de 68 est cette fois-ci le bienvenu. II est vrai aussi que cela nous apporte une moisson de mauvais journalisme. Mais en meme temps ont paru, mgme dans les medias, des reflexions et des informations interessantes. La perspective de colloques scientifiques a encourage un certain nombre dhistoriens et de sociologues a mettre en oeuvre une elaboration theorique de leurs materiaux et de leurs notes; elle a donne un elan qui a pousse a recueillir et a rassembler les archives privees dans des dep6ts publics et accessibles. Surtout, durant les mois 6coules doctobre 1987 A aujourdhui, on a pu observer une reprise de memoire chez les protagonistes memes du mouvement des etudiants, reprise tres instructive si lon veut bien assumer comme objet detude x Iesprit ancien combattant * tout a fait particulier qui laccompagne.