ISSUE 4 | MAY 2011

THE PROGRESS OF MEMORY

Michael Kinnucan

Incest, Cannibalism, and the Gods: The Rise of the House of Atreus

the House of Atreus - Tantalus had served them human flesh - the end of social exchange between gods and mortals - « nothing that is great comes to the life of mortals without atë » - enough bones to build a temple to Ares - a bowl filled with human hands and feet - Thyestes and Aegisthus ought to die - an utterly trivial and laughably hubristic act - a new form of art, the tragedy - the apotheosis of the city

Brian Mayer

Valley of the Afrikaners: Orania and the Making of a Post-Apartheid White Identity

failed 20th-century sociopolitical experiment - independent volkstaat - nostalgia and opportunism - group with your own - whiteness as separation, delegitimization - deconstruction of a racist aberration - a shadow in search of a form - « reverse apartheid » - « Kill the Boer, Kill the Farmer » - « There’s nothing wrong with racism. » - our houses that became our jails!

Charlotte Krontiris

At Covey’s Farm: History in the Mind’s Eye

a girl-spy in the Resistance - intricately plotted daydreams - a New England landscape without trees - historical memories that verged on delusions - the Lost Cause of the Confederacy - something more ephemeral, what it was like - the past is unrelentingly unfamiliar - « an apostrophe to the moving multitude of ships » - « O that I were free! » - I can almost imagine

Etha Williams

Recurrences: Contemporary Music and the Question of Time

the medium of music is time - the concept of return - the gradual expansion—and then, decay—of tonality - mnemonic too-muchness - « competing trajectories as constituent contradictions » - the totalizing effect of the unisons - a dizzying array of dance - extremely strange sounds

Ellis Calvin

The March of Racial Progress in Malaysia

progress is the blurring of lines - the colonial authorities’ hands-off immigration policy - peranakan - four racial categories - a segregated Malaya - a jungle war - The Malay Dilemma - a hardy race - unite the country into a « Malaysian race » - a universal idea of racial progress

Eric Noah Feldman

Everyone Cheats

a caustically intoxicating Pisco Sour - a sober country would make a more responsible electoral decision - an untraceable gypsy cab racing breathlessly through Miraflores - Ollanta Humala - « Agua por Todos » - they cursed him between shots of grain whiskey - the spray-painted campaign promises of the losers - a choice between cancer and AIDS

Cat Pierro

The Infamy of Agrippina

some offenses are worse than capital - damnatio memoriae - « Let him kill me—provided he becomes emperor! » - a fascinating piece of gossip - a sex life subordinated to a political life - only a fear of posterity could have kept her vice in check - a poorly enacted shipwreck - « Strike here! »