Partisan Histories The Past in Contemporary Global Politics

by Kenney, Padraic; Friedman, Max Paul

• ISBN13: 9781403964564
• ISBN10: 1403964564
• Format: Paperback
• Copyright: 2005-06-11
• Publisher: Palgrave Macmillan

Summary

This collection provides an introduction to the multiple uses of history in contemporary political debate and conflict, for introductory and advanced courses in comparative politics and contemporary world history. As communities reimagine themselves, a contest over defining legitimacy, identifying us and others, and jockeying for political control intersects with fights over history and memory. Here distinguished scholars examine how competing versions of national identity are legitimized through appeals to carefully constructed "pasts" both in democracies and in repressive regimes. The essays focus on the cases of Armenia, Chile, Spain, Germany, India and Pakistan, Israel and Palestine, Japan, Nigeria, and the United States to draw broader conclusions about the worldwide effect of traumatic memory, questions of punishment and restitution, and the instrumentalization of the past for political purposes.

Author Biography

Max Paul Friedman is Assistant Professor at Florida State University, Tallahassee. Padraic Kenney is Professor of History at the University of Colorado, Boulder.

Table of Contents

Introduction: History in Politics	1	(14)
Max Paul Friedman
Padraic Kenney
PART 1 New Regimes	15	(74)
The Past in the Politics of Divided and Unified Germany	17	(22)
Andrew H. Beattie
Apologizing for the Past between Japan and Korea	39	(16)
Alexis Dudden
Breaking the Silence in Post-Authoritarian Chile	55	(20)
Katherine Hite
Political Uses of the Recent Past in the Spanish Post-Authoritarian Democracy	75	(14)
Carsten Jacob Humlebak
PART 2 New Nations	89	(76)
Constructing Primordialism in Armenia and Kazakhstan: Old Histories for New Nations	91	(20)
Ronald Grigor Suny
Knowledge for Politics: Partisan Histories and Communal Mobilization in India and Pakistan	111	(16)
Subho Basu
Suranjan Das
Historiophobia or the Enslavement of History: The Role of the 1948 Ethnic Cleansing in the Contemporary Israeli--Palestinian Peace Process	127	(18)
Ilan Pappe
Nigeria: The Past in the Present	145	(20)
Toyin Falola
PART 3 New Lessons	165	(24)
Histories and ``Lessons'' of the Vietnam War	167	(22)
Patrick Hagopian
Acknowledgments	189	(2)
List of Contributors	191	(2)
Index	193