Archivo de la etiqueta: Porrajmos

Experiencias de cautiverio: relatos de las grandes guerras del siglo XX

¿Qué tienen en común un soldado inglés de la Gran Guerra, un republicano español en el exilio, un gitano-sinto alemán perseguido por el nazismo, un resistente belga en la Segunda Guerra Mundial…?

Estudiar experiencias de sufrimiento transversales en el marco de los grandes conflictos armados del siglo XX ha sido uno de los objetivos del III Workshop Internacional coorganizado por el Departamento de Historia Contemporánea de la Universidad de Sevilla y el Grupo de Estudios Históricos sobre la Guerra de l Instituto Ravignani-CONICET de Argentina. Sigue leyendo

The Holocaust and Iconic Images: How Do We Read Photographs of the Unrepresentable?

Taking a critical look at pictures that we assume are self-evident and true is not a challenge that we normally face. Nevertheless, the first step in the process of recognising genuine equality of rights involves finding out how representations of groups of people marked by some form of discrimination were historically produced and then reflecting on how many implicit prejudices are involved in them. Unless an effort is made to eliminate the presuppositions held by the social majority about what these “others” are like, legislation will make no difference. This is of course an uncomfortable task, because it brings us brought face to face with how far we are prepared to go to live in a society that is inclusive and just, and also a complicated one, because the objectives are not always obvious, even in the fight against discrimination. A case in point is the marked hierarchization of victims shown in the history of the way the Allied countries came to terms with the horror of the massive violence perpetrated under Nazism after the Second World War was over. A picture may help us penetrate the cultural underpinnings of our political attitudes. Sigue leyendo