Snezhana Dimitrova
S. Dimitrova is Associate Professor in Balkan History. She received her PhD in History from Sofia University in 1994. She taught at SSEES, UCL, London, October 2002 – July 2006 as well as Visiting professor at University „Paul Valéry‟, Montpellier III, 2001-spring trimester, University “Le Mirail”, Faculty of History & FRAMESPA, Toulouse, 2006-spring term, C.R.I.S.I.S., University „Paul Valéry‟, Montpellier III, November –December 2011.
She is member of IARCEES, University Colleage of Dublni and F.E.R.-EURETHNO, Conseil de l'Europe as well as of editorial Board of "History" (Sofia University/Bulgarian Ministry of Education/), of Scientific Board of "Annual for Social History" (Belgrade).
She is the author of books and articles on reflexive history, gender studies, microhistory, and history of affect. Dimitrova’s publications on WWI and the Balkan Wars are focused on “society at war”, including aspects such as everyday life; diseases; hunger; death; corruption; social legislation; political emancipation; women’s revolt; military justice. Her research deals with the other archives of war: ego-documents (soldier’s writings and drawings); soldier’s monuments and graves; documentary films and movies.
Address: Address: Permanent position
Department of History,
Faculty of Law and History,
South-West University „Neofit Rilski‟,
2700 Blagoevgrad, Bulgaria
She is member of IARCEES, University Colleage of Dublni and F.E.R.-EURETHNO, Conseil de l'Europe as well as of editorial Board of "History" (Sofia University/Bulgarian Ministry of Education/), of Scientific Board of "Annual for Social History" (Belgrade).
She is the author of books and articles on reflexive history, gender studies, microhistory, and history of affect. Dimitrova’s publications on WWI and the Balkan Wars are focused on “society at war”, including aspects such as everyday life; diseases; hunger; death; corruption; social legislation; political emancipation; women’s revolt; military justice. Her research deals with the other archives of war: ego-documents (soldier’s writings and drawings); soldier’s monuments and graves; documentary films and movies.
Address: Address: Permanent position
Department of History,
Faculty of Law and History,
South-West University „Neofit Rilski‟,
2700 Blagoevgrad, Bulgaria
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This book is interested in affective turn in diplomacy and international relations. By studying the other context of the Paris Peacе (1919 – 1920), namely the emotions, passions, and moods, it argues that such a turn begins in the end of XIX century, and not in nowdays. And it claims that two historical events – WWI and its peace, are very symptomatic of it. Both open the acces to the opaque reality of historical process – the affects emerging within relational context of the politics and diplomatic actions then.
In fact, this book focuses on the French policy towards the Balkan Slav States. But it is based not only on event narration on Quai d’Orsay diplomacy between the Bulgarian Salonika armistice (September 1918) and diminishing of the Superior Council of the Paris Peace Conference (January 1920); rather, it is an attempt to re-construct this policy mainly through structural-functional analysis of its social-po¬litical mechanisms and emotional-psychological factors operating in ‘the moment’ when the strategic-economic foundations of the France’s post-war diplomacy were laid – the foundations that shifted the center of its Balkan policy from the Ottoman Empire to the restructured socio-political Central European space.
This attempt bases on a theoretical model that, firstly, searches and determines the political and social ‘agents’ of the system of links-relations-institutions, termed for convenience as a ‘structure of the international relations’, and, secondly, draws from the schemes postulated by the studies on ‘decision-making’. Therefore, firstly, we work with the French policy as a result of actions/interactions/coun-teractions of a government – diplomatic teams – public opinion, secondly, we examine these political actions as a final product of the influence/no influence of ‘the military and political elite’’ (changing its ‘agent’ positions in the relation ‘center-periphery’ on the different ‘centers’ of ‘political decision-making’), thirdly, we study this policy in the short time of the conjuncture (i.e. the time of the separate fact – the event, the individual) with references to “the longue durée of the structure“. This theoretical model determined both the range of the sources and the research techniques, some of which are familiar with micro history study – it is dealing with agency as powerful source for decision-making in the concrete case of French Balkan policy after the war and during the peace; decisions whose historical legacy is still overshadowing the relationships in the Balkan.
***
The pain... the suffering... the misery…, endured at the front and in the rear; the eternal enemy, menacing the silence and tranquility of ‘the neighbour’; the mani¬fested heroism of soldiers, fulfilling their duty to family and Motherland. These were the most frequent arguments for the right to happiness (seen as the ‘restoration of historical justice, the reparation of a painful past and guarantees against a future enemy’s aggression’) that were pleaded for by both the winners and the defeated.
The supplement – The multifaceted image of pain... suffering... misery..., outlines the experienced war, articulated in soldiers’ cards, photos and diaries about every¬day life in the trenches and in the rear. The war opens a gap to other historical archives – of those affected, often written ‘with blood from the heart’, literally and metaphorically. The war in which the invisible in history speaks – its relational con¬text in which the scenarios of the many individual and collective dramas of our victories and defeats are actually written.
These dramas are the environment of the politics of memory, the politics that in turn are inseparable from the context of modern diplomacy, as we assert in the new introduction of this book. These policies are often inseparable from diplomatic action, insofar as the latter encounters ‘particular nests’ of resistance from below against the use of our other past from above as an ideological resource, and of¬ten also against mobilization for civic and official positions in the field of domestic and foreign policy. And therefore Politics and Diplomacy face our other past (gen¬eration after generation, period after period), painful and alive, which never goes away – in fact, that other past is where diplomacy meets its greatest challenge: the dignity and honour of the seemingly non-living, who, nevertheless, have left us an important historical legacy: their lives as ideals, dreams, wills, downfalls, defeats, torments, sufferings, anger and insults, – but they wished to be present and to be present for ever more.
Тази книга се интересува от френската политика към две балкански славянски държави – България и Сърбия, за времето от Солунското примирие (септември 1918 г.) до закриването на Мирната конференция в Париж, практически състояло се с разпускането на Върховния ѝ съвет (януари 1920 г.). Като фокусът съвсем не е само върху събитията, които я очертават и основно характеризират. Обратно, тя изследва външнополитическото действие чрез структурнофункционалния анализ на социалнополитическите механизми и емоционалнопсихологическите фактори, които имат определяща роля при формиране на стратегикоикономическите начала на следвоенната дипломация на Третата Република. Тъй като тъкмо те преместват центъра на балканската ѝ политика от Османската империя към преструктуриращото се социалнополитическо пространство на Средна Европа.
Това научно усилие се основава на теоретичен модел, който доколкото е свързан с изследванията върху механизма на вземане на решение, поставя на преден план ролята на действащите лица (наричани политически и социални агенти) без да загърбва съответния контекст от връзки-отношения-институции, откъдето изплуват определени структури на международните отношения. И със самото това се разкрива и онази друго скрита среда (на отношения, включително емоционални), в която се правят индивидуални и колективни избори, за да се проясни как самата политика постепенно губи строгия си, сякаш само рационален регистър, оголвайки други свои невидими двигатели и ресурси – чувствата и страстите.
Затова тук френската политика е анализирана, първо, като резултативната величина от действията и противодействията между правителство – дипломатически екипи – обществено мнение; второ, това политическо действие се изследва и като краен продукт от въздействието на военния и интелектуален елит върху различните центрове на правене на решения, и от трета страна, тази политика се изучава в краткото време на конюнктурата (на факта, събитието, индивида) с референции към продължителното време (на структурата).
Изследвайки балканската политика на Франция във времевите нейни трептения и продължителните ѝ изменения, тази книга цели да очертае принципите, които формират френското външнополитическо действие. И оттук да разкрие не само системата от политически възгледи на управляващите среди, но и определящите черти на френската национална идеология; идеологията, която предопределя до голяма степен и френското външнополитическо действие на Балканите. Цели и научни амбиции, които на свой ред насочват вниманието към определени свидетелства и документи от архивните масиви, които се въвличат в научно обръщение, привилигировайки и конкретни изследователски методи при техния анализ.
***
„Болката..., страданието..., мизерията...“, понесени на фронта и в тила; „вечният враг“, заплашващ тишината и спокойствието на „съседа си“, „проявеният героизъм“ от войниците, изпълнили „дълга си към Род и Родина“..., това са най-често аргументите, с които се пледира „правото на щастие“ и от страна на победителите, и от страна на победените... Затова и Приложението („Многоликият образ на болката..., страданието..., мизерията...“: Войната като преживяване), търси да онагледи и контекстуализира тъкмо тях, нахвърляйки ескизи на преживяната война – войната, която се артикулира от войнишки картички, снимки, дневници за всекидневния живот в окопите и тила. Войната, която обаче отваря процепа към другите исторически архиви – афективните, често писани „с кръв от сърцето”, буквално и метафорично. Войната, в която говори невидимото в историята – отношенческия ѝ контекст, контекстът, в който всъщност се пишат сценариите на много индивидуални и колективни драми, на победите и пораженията ни.
Тъкмо тези драми са средата за политиките на паметта, политиките, които на свой ред са неотделими от контекста и на съвременната ни дипломация, както настояваме и с новото въведение на тази книга. А тези политики биват често така неотделими, само сякаш парадоксално от дипломатическото действие, доколкото то се натъква на „гнезда” на съпротива отдолу срещу употреба на друго ни минало като идеологически ресурс отгоре, а често и срещу мобилизация за граждански и офи¬циални позиции в сферата на вътрешната и външната политика. И със самото това Политиката и Дипломацията се натъкват (поколение след поколение, епоха след епоха) на него, другото ни минало, което никога не си отива, болезнено и живо – всъщност онова друго там, откъдето дипломацията се среща с най-голямото си изпитание: достойнството и честта на сякаш никога неживелите, които обаче са ни оставили важно историческо наследство, животите си като идеали, мечти, воля, падения, поражения, мъки, страдания, но пожелали да бъдат и да ги има и след тях...
Книгата би заинтригувала както специализираната академична публика, така и учители, дипломати и широк кръг читатели с интерес към балканското минало и влиянието на френската политика върху съдбовни моменти от историята на балканските страни.
The second essay (The Work of the Collective Unconscious) is a kind of ‘case study’. By analyzing the rewriting of Bulgarian history textbooks (1993-2000), it attempts to develop the thesis of the first essay (implied in a subject sentence: When the theory of history is considered redundant) in the context of concrete empirical data. Here it seeks at least one of the answers to the question: Why, still, after 14 years of historiographic transition…? Or, working with the transitional textbook as a functional place of memory (Nora 1978: 401) and as a function of historiography (Vincent 1987: 186), this essay outlines to a certain extent how transition historiography is still trying to bid farewell to the political history practiced within the framework of the reformist communist identity discourse. The essay strives to display what is happening in historical production, when historians still avoid discussing the opportunities for a micro-history that penetrates to the level of everyday experience and outlines a history of everyday life that is quite different from theoretical and methodical approaches of Jürgen Kocka and Hans-Ulrich Wehler’s social history, or of Braudel’s structuralism. The essay asks why, in the conditions of apparently flourishing research on modernization, social history, oral history and gender studies, the long-awaited research breakthrough has still not appeared on the historian’s horizon, and historians have not yet freed themselves from their discipline’s fears and prejudices (held in the public space of history by the figures of ‘objectivity and impartiality’). It explores when and how, in the different content levels of the narratives that organize the textbooks’ content, a Marxist understanding of economic structure and ideological substructure (providing possibilities for the ideological assumptions of the reformist communist discourse) is displayed as a profane scheme, in combination with the profound influence of the narrative structure of a conventional event-based history (regardless of the type of the history explicitly articulated - social, cultural, economic…).
The essay asks why, given political impulses in the public space to rewrite history in a search for the European identity of the Bulgarian past and to provide the historical resources for civic values, the transitional textbook still implicitly maintains the figures of anti-European pathos and the images of ethnic nationalism. It is interested how ignorance of the defeats of western Marxist historiography brought Bulgarian historical science in the 1990s to a crisis: awkward inter-generational communication and the (un)conscious paradigm wars are making it difficult to debate the historian’s craft and impossible to deal with the burden of ‘ancestral heritage’ (the bourgeois and the communist historical identity discourses). It asks whether instead of artificially charging the conventional historical narrative with psychoanalytic expectations, it is not time to supply historical science with its own reflexive field in order to deal with the work of trauma (with the structure that makes difficult access to one’s own past ) in the collective memory of historians.
Of course, probably I am trying to solve my own professional crisis through these essays: the effort to overcome the ‘structuralist and Marxist in me’ and the trauma of an internalized identity discourse. Perhaps because of that, these essays are to a certain extent an attempt to outline the traumatic places in the ancestral identity discourse in Bulgarian history: the Ottoman bracket (15-19c.), the unrealized Bulgarian unification (1878-1944), unsuccessful Bulgarian modernization and perfunctory Europeanization. Probably due to this they seek to understand how experience, stored up unconsciously in the ‘national body’, is manifested in the impulse to repeat that which is painful, in the reminiscences of the past, articulated in images of violence, defeat, catastrophe, misfortune, pain… Perhaps because of that they are a kind of attempt to thank my history teachers and friends-colleagues, regardless of the part of Europe they come from, to provoke my colleagues’ disagreement and to gain adherents to the project of Reflexive History.
Contents
Preface
Nina Nikolova, Svetlana Sibeva
‘Being concerned by…’: sociological view on reflexive history………
Introduction: Why not?
I. A Room of One’s Own ………………….
1. ‘Through Woolf...’ .............................................................
2. Traps of Biographical Illusio.....................................
3. Women and Fiction-History, but Nothing More…………..
II. The Work of the Collective Unconscious
4. History Didactics and the Textbook in Bulgarian History ..................
5. Imagined Europe and the Textbook of Transition
6. Long Lasting Figures of Identity ....................................
7. Paradigmatic Partnernship of ‘Ancestors’ .....................
III. Conclusion
The Defeat of Transition: Difficult Farewells!
IV. Bibliography
V. Afterword
Wendy Bracewell
What the Bulgarian case reveals about British humour (and history-writing)?
VI. English Abstract………
The research is based on the available sources and documents in the archives of Bulgaria, Serbia, Yugoslavia, the archive collections of the Bulgarian Academy of Sciences and the Serbian Academy of Sciences and Arts. In addition, both countries' central state archives offer the full microfilm collection of copies from the French foreign ministry's archive (relevant to our topic), both in geographo-structural and chronological terms. Furthermore, the study includes the extensive use of memoirs collections, published diaries and speeches, private correspondence, including the unpublished soldiers letters (preserved in the local museums of Blagoevgrad, Troyan...), propaganda and advertisement posters, photo-material published in the press, unpublished photographic collections, propaganda albums, articulating the history of the propaganda impact, literary criticisms, essays...
Hence
A. The study focuses on both the mechanisms that formulated and upheld the French war aims and the methods for gaining the broad public support of this program and its realisation. Its basic principles – 'Restoration of the historical justice, correction of a painful past and guarantees against a future German aggression' – are inferred through content analysis of the peace projects written by Briand, Clemenceau and Pichon: politicians of different political parties, disparate social doctrines, sharing dissimilar foreign policy concepts and belonging to various generations; the peace drafts composed under different military perspectives, diverse diplomatic situations, varying internal policy conditions. These facts provide some grounds for the thesis that these programs did outline some permanent tendencies and characteristic features of the French political thinking and diplomatic action (1914-1920):
1. Once being specified, the principles ('restoration, reparations, guarantees') of the French foreign policy were defended and maintained regardless of the government changes or the critical situations at the front. Both the principles and their moral-legal grounds (as well as their ideological argumentation) were maintained: the ensured allied support for the latter provided realizaton of the former. It was not by case that one of the first established Peace Conference's commission was on 'ascertaining the responsibilities for the Pan-European war': when the crime was proved it would be easier to plead for the harder punishment both in and outside the court hall. Since even under the most unfavourable military-political circumstances 'the policy of restoration, reparations, guarantees' was not abandoned (only some particular territorial claims were reduced) the victory of allied armies could lead only to energetic efforts for its total implementation.
2. The content analysis reveal that the "restoration' principle was an unseparable part from the two others; the three principles in its unity and interconnection organized the overall political scheme of the French foreign policy action. The policy of "restoration of the historical justice' was maintained precisely in this form and in the relevant context of permanent arguments and considerations; the relations between this form and its content reveal the ruling circles' system of political beliefs as well as the determining features of the French national ideology. Thus 'the restoration of the territories occupied – against the will of their populations – by the Germany and its allies' complied with the principle of national self-determination (after the 1871 Germany's annexation of Alsace-Lorraigne the French national doctrine pleaded this principle to be turned into an international law ). "The right of the peoples to be masters of themselves', formulated as a part of the international jurisdiction when applied to the Elsace-Loraigne case meant restoration of the two provinces within the Mother-Homeland's boundaries. In the outset of the Pan-European conflict both the president's address to the nation and the Parliament's declaration the war was proclaimed and defended on the basis of this law, broken by the violation of the Belgian neutrality.
Hence the restoration of this right was formulated and propagated as ultimate victory aim. The application of this right was always sought in historical perspective: it required 'a correction' because of the historical injustice exercised over the French nation in the past. The scope of this injustice was determined and described in inconstant and variable terms: from the Vienna Congress (1815) to the German Kaiser's crowning (in the Mirror room of the Versailles palace on 18 January 1871). The accomplishment of 'the policy of restoration' – according both law and historical justice – meant 'the correction of a painful past'. According the French political strategy and national ideology this correction could be consummated only in the form of territorial and economic reparations. The logic of the French foreign policy doctrine demanded that the restored historical justice and the received compensation for the moral and material sacrifices – as the only possible political result of the military victory – were expedient only as guarantees against the new German aggression. Defending the principles of 'restoration, guarantees, reparations' as the common Entente's political war aims the French diplomats and politicians tried to balance the Allied interests during the war, to create the necessary diplomatical grounds and public atmosphere for accomplishment of own aims in the post-war Europe. The successful application of the 'restoration policy' in the armistice-terming supposed successful realisation of the other political principles in the process of peace treaties making; in French statesmen's view this realisation was tantamount to a provision of the sum of the political, economic and military measures, ensuring the Third republic against every attempt for German revenge.
The analysis of these principles points to their certain unclearness as notions of the political dictionary, to their tensibility and elasticity in the situations of seeking the means and methods for their concrete realisation. That determines their multi-dimensional nature (as possibilities for application) and multi-variance (as direction of action). Multi-dimension and multi-variance permitting the French statesmen – without abandoning the key positions – to limit or enlarge both the set of considerations or arguments in favour of their political action and the spheres of strategy's application according to the military turnabouts. This limitation and enlargement, in its own turn, determined the character and essence of the French propaganda.
The same theoretical context focuses our attention on the relation 'officers-politicians' altered under the position war's conditions. The change was engendered by the new profile of the war situation, by the trench life, by the departure from the elegant war strategy's formulae studied in the military academies. At the turn of the century the people thought of 'the art of war'; the first Great War's years converted it rather to the grand extermination game. The notion and the nature of 'enemy's defeat' expanded outside the traditional frameworks to enter into spheres ruled by the psychology, diplomacy and politics. The Marna victory and the General Staff's responsibility for the German defeat strengthened the military's weight and changed the soldiers' attitude towards the accepted conventional norms of social subordination (politicians-the military). On the other hand, the same facts and circumstances did not have the same effect on the other pole – the public opinion. Thus:
1. A new phenomenon was created (which was to cause a substantial repercussions with the decisive effects on the French foreign policy in Central Europe and the Balkans): the strain and contradiction between the French politicians and the military over the definition of the French national interest. The former derived it from the general political-economic and military-strategic situation on the continent, the latter – from the given specific situation. The prescriptions of the military tactics rarely coincided with the postulates of the global national interest. This phenomenon manifested itself at several levels. The opposition of the part of the officers of the Armee d'Orient escalated in disagreement with the official government policy toward a specific Balkan state. Their position could be situated in the polar scheme: 'insufficient satisfaction of the lawful allied national-territorial demands' – 'excessive and unjustified generosity towards the winners at the expense of the defeated'. Obviously, these officers exceeded their normal functions (the execution of the given official policy) and attempted to form and dictate a policy. Some of the reasons for this phenomenon were rooted in the character of war.
In this frame we examine the results of the specific realization of the policy of 'restoration... reparations... and guarantees...' towards the winners and the defeated on the Balkans; the existed but unrealized alternatives to this policy are focal points in this analysis.
How the different political parties narrate the founding events of national history?
How has been interpreted the common sites of national memory by the official school textbooks in Modern Bulgarian History? What remains and accumulates by the collective and historiography memory?
Edited Journal Special Issues by Snezhana Dimitrova
Textbooks by Snezhana Dimitrova
University of Graz).*
We hope that our book will bring young people closer to the various life worlds of the past and will contribute to better understanding and cooperation of the new generations of South East Europe.
0. TOC
1.Love and Marriage in Patriarchal Society 9
2.Body 19
3.Education 33
4.Ideal Woman? 45
5.Love and Marriage in Bourgeois Society 55
6.Work of Men, Work of Women 67
7.Leisure and Beauty in Modern Times 77
8-9 Politics and Emancipation 89
10. Love and Marriage in Communist Society
Book chapters by Snezhana Dimitrova
Keywords: POW, Everyday Life, Law, Homo Sacer, Social Trauma, War Legacy, Great War
This book is interested in affective turn in diplomacy and international relations. By studying the other context of the Paris Peacе (1919 – 1920), namely the emotions, passions, and moods, it argues that such a turn begins in the end of XIX century, and not in nowdays. And it claims that two historical events – WWI and its peace, are very symptomatic of it. Both open the acces to the opaque reality of historical process – the affects emerging within relational context of the politics and diplomatic actions then.
In fact, this book focuses on the French policy towards the Balkan Slav States. But it is based not only on event narration on Quai d’Orsay diplomacy between the Bulgarian Salonika armistice (September 1918) and diminishing of the Superior Council of the Paris Peace Conference (January 1920); rather, it is an attempt to re-construct this policy mainly through structural-functional analysis of its social-po¬litical mechanisms and emotional-psychological factors operating in ‘the moment’ when the strategic-economic foundations of the France’s post-war diplomacy were laid – the foundations that shifted the center of its Balkan policy from the Ottoman Empire to the restructured socio-political Central European space.
This attempt bases on a theoretical model that, firstly, searches and determines the political and social ‘agents’ of the system of links-relations-institutions, termed for convenience as a ‘structure of the international relations’, and, secondly, draws from the schemes postulated by the studies on ‘decision-making’. Therefore, firstly, we work with the French policy as a result of actions/interactions/coun-teractions of a government – diplomatic teams – public opinion, secondly, we examine these political actions as a final product of the influence/no influence of ‘the military and political elite’’ (changing its ‘agent’ positions in the relation ‘center-periphery’ on the different ‘centers’ of ‘political decision-making’), thirdly, we study this policy in the short time of the conjuncture (i.e. the time of the separate fact – the event, the individual) with references to “the longue durée of the structure“. This theoretical model determined both the range of the sources and the research techniques, some of which are familiar with micro history study – it is dealing with agency as powerful source for decision-making in the concrete case of French Balkan policy after the war and during the peace; decisions whose historical legacy is still overshadowing the relationships in the Balkan.
***
The pain... the suffering... the misery…, endured at the front and in the rear; the eternal enemy, menacing the silence and tranquility of ‘the neighbour’; the mani¬fested heroism of soldiers, fulfilling their duty to family and Motherland. These were the most frequent arguments for the right to happiness (seen as the ‘restoration of historical justice, the reparation of a painful past and guarantees against a future enemy’s aggression’) that were pleaded for by both the winners and the defeated.
The supplement – The multifaceted image of pain... suffering... misery..., outlines the experienced war, articulated in soldiers’ cards, photos and diaries about every¬day life in the trenches and in the rear. The war opens a gap to other historical archives – of those affected, often written ‘with blood from the heart’, literally and metaphorically. The war in which the invisible in history speaks – its relational con¬text in which the scenarios of the many individual and collective dramas of our victories and defeats are actually written.
These dramas are the environment of the politics of memory, the politics that in turn are inseparable from the context of modern diplomacy, as we assert in the new introduction of this book. These policies are often inseparable from diplomatic action, insofar as the latter encounters ‘particular nests’ of resistance from below against the use of our other past from above as an ideological resource, and of¬ten also against mobilization for civic and official positions in the field of domestic and foreign policy. And therefore Politics and Diplomacy face our other past (gen¬eration after generation, period after period), painful and alive, which never goes away – in fact, that other past is where diplomacy meets its greatest challenge: the dignity and honour of the seemingly non-living, who, nevertheless, have left us an important historical legacy: their lives as ideals, dreams, wills, downfalls, defeats, torments, sufferings, anger and insults, – but they wished to be present and to be present for ever more.
Тази книга се интересува от френската политика към две балкански славянски държави – България и Сърбия, за времето от Солунското примирие (септември 1918 г.) до закриването на Мирната конференция в Париж, практически състояло се с разпускането на Върховния ѝ съвет (януари 1920 г.). Като фокусът съвсем не е само върху събитията, които я очертават и основно характеризират. Обратно, тя изследва външнополитическото действие чрез структурнофункционалния анализ на социалнополитическите механизми и емоционалнопсихологическите фактори, които имат определяща роля при формиране на стратегикоикономическите начала на следвоенната дипломация на Третата Република. Тъй като тъкмо те преместват центъра на балканската ѝ политика от Османската империя към преструктуриращото се социалнополитическо пространство на Средна Европа.
Това научно усилие се основава на теоретичен модел, който доколкото е свързан с изследванията върху механизма на вземане на решение, поставя на преден план ролята на действащите лица (наричани политически и социални агенти) без да загърбва съответния контекст от връзки-отношения-институции, откъдето изплуват определени структури на международните отношения. И със самото това се разкрива и онази друго скрита среда (на отношения, включително емоционални), в която се правят индивидуални и колективни избори, за да се проясни как самата политика постепенно губи строгия си, сякаш само рационален регистър, оголвайки други свои невидими двигатели и ресурси – чувствата и страстите.
Затова тук френската политика е анализирана, първо, като резултативната величина от действията и противодействията между правителство – дипломатически екипи – обществено мнение; второ, това политическо действие се изследва и като краен продукт от въздействието на военния и интелектуален елит върху различните центрове на правене на решения, и от трета страна, тази политика се изучава в краткото време на конюнктурата (на факта, събитието, индивида) с референции към продължителното време (на структурата).
Изследвайки балканската политика на Франция във времевите нейни трептения и продължителните ѝ изменения, тази книга цели да очертае принципите, които формират френското външнополитическо действие. И оттук да разкрие не само системата от политически възгледи на управляващите среди, но и определящите черти на френската национална идеология; идеологията, която предопределя до голяма степен и френското външнополитическо действие на Балканите. Цели и научни амбиции, които на свой ред насочват вниманието към определени свидетелства и документи от архивните масиви, които се въвличат в научно обръщение, привилигировайки и конкретни изследователски методи при техния анализ.
***
„Болката..., страданието..., мизерията...“, понесени на фронта и в тила; „вечният враг“, заплашващ тишината и спокойствието на „съседа си“, „проявеният героизъм“ от войниците, изпълнили „дълга си към Род и Родина“..., това са най-често аргументите, с които се пледира „правото на щастие“ и от страна на победителите, и от страна на победените... Затова и Приложението („Многоликият образ на болката..., страданието..., мизерията...“: Войната като преживяване), търси да онагледи и контекстуализира тъкмо тях, нахвърляйки ескизи на преживяната война – войната, която се артикулира от войнишки картички, снимки, дневници за всекидневния живот в окопите и тила. Войната, която обаче отваря процепа към другите исторически архиви – афективните, често писани „с кръв от сърцето”, буквално и метафорично. Войната, в която говори невидимото в историята – отношенческия ѝ контекст, контекстът, в който всъщност се пишат сценариите на много индивидуални и колективни драми, на победите и пораженията ни.
Тъкмо тези драми са средата за политиките на паметта, политиките, които на свой ред са неотделими от контекста и на съвременната ни дипломация, както настояваме и с новото въведение на тази книга. А тези политики биват често така неотделими, само сякаш парадоксално от дипломатическото действие, доколкото то се натъква на „гнезда” на съпротива отдолу срещу употреба на друго ни минало като идеологически ресурс отгоре, а често и срещу мобилизация за граждански и офи¬циални позиции в сферата на вътрешната и външната политика. И със самото това Политиката и Дипломацията се натъкват (поколение след поколение, епоха след епоха) на него, другото ни минало, което никога не си отива, болезнено и живо – всъщност онова друго там, откъдето дипломацията се среща с най-голямото си изпитание: достойнството и честта на сякаш никога неживелите, които обаче са ни оставили важно историческо наследство, животите си като идеали, мечти, воля, падения, поражения, мъки, страдания, но пожелали да бъдат и да ги има и след тях...
Книгата би заинтригувала както специализираната академична публика, така и учители, дипломати и широк кръг читатели с интерес към балканското минало и влиянието на френската политика върху съдбовни моменти от историята на балканските страни.
The second essay (The Work of the Collective Unconscious) is a kind of ‘case study’. By analyzing the rewriting of Bulgarian history textbooks (1993-2000), it attempts to develop the thesis of the first essay (implied in a subject sentence: When the theory of history is considered redundant) in the context of concrete empirical data. Here it seeks at least one of the answers to the question: Why, still, after 14 years of historiographic transition…? Or, working with the transitional textbook as a functional place of memory (Nora 1978: 401) and as a function of historiography (Vincent 1987: 186), this essay outlines to a certain extent how transition historiography is still trying to bid farewell to the political history practiced within the framework of the reformist communist identity discourse. The essay strives to display what is happening in historical production, when historians still avoid discussing the opportunities for a micro-history that penetrates to the level of everyday experience and outlines a history of everyday life that is quite different from theoretical and methodical approaches of Jürgen Kocka and Hans-Ulrich Wehler’s social history, or of Braudel’s structuralism. The essay asks why, in the conditions of apparently flourishing research on modernization, social history, oral history and gender studies, the long-awaited research breakthrough has still not appeared on the historian’s horizon, and historians have not yet freed themselves from their discipline’s fears and prejudices (held in the public space of history by the figures of ‘objectivity and impartiality’). It explores when and how, in the different content levels of the narratives that organize the textbooks’ content, a Marxist understanding of economic structure and ideological substructure (providing possibilities for the ideological assumptions of the reformist communist discourse) is displayed as a profane scheme, in combination with the profound influence of the narrative structure of a conventional event-based history (regardless of the type of the history explicitly articulated - social, cultural, economic…).
The essay asks why, given political impulses in the public space to rewrite history in a search for the European identity of the Bulgarian past and to provide the historical resources for civic values, the transitional textbook still implicitly maintains the figures of anti-European pathos and the images of ethnic nationalism. It is interested how ignorance of the defeats of western Marxist historiography brought Bulgarian historical science in the 1990s to a crisis: awkward inter-generational communication and the (un)conscious paradigm wars are making it difficult to debate the historian’s craft and impossible to deal with the burden of ‘ancestral heritage’ (the bourgeois and the communist historical identity discourses). It asks whether instead of artificially charging the conventional historical narrative with psychoanalytic expectations, it is not time to supply historical science with its own reflexive field in order to deal with the work of trauma (with the structure that makes difficult access to one’s own past ) in the collective memory of historians.
Of course, probably I am trying to solve my own professional crisis through these essays: the effort to overcome the ‘structuralist and Marxist in me’ and the trauma of an internalized identity discourse. Perhaps because of that, these essays are to a certain extent an attempt to outline the traumatic places in the ancestral identity discourse in Bulgarian history: the Ottoman bracket (15-19c.), the unrealized Bulgarian unification (1878-1944), unsuccessful Bulgarian modernization and perfunctory Europeanization. Probably due to this they seek to understand how experience, stored up unconsciously in the ‘national body’, is manifested in the impulse to repeat that which is painful, in the reminiscences of the past, articulated in images of violence, defeat, catastrophe, misfortune, pain… Perhaps because of that they are a kind of attempt to thank my history teachers and friends-colleagues, regardless of the part of Europe they come from, to provoke my colleagues’ disagreement and to gain adherents to the project of Reflexive History.
Contents
Preface
Nina Nikolova, Svetlana Sibeva
‘Being concerned by…’: sociological view on reflexive history………
Introduction: Why not?
I. A Room of One’s Own ………………….
1. ‘Through Woolf...’ .............................................................
2. Traps of Biographical Illusio.....................................
3. Women and Fiction-History, but Nothing More…………..
II. The Work of the Collective Unconscious
4. History Didactics and the Textbook in Bulgarian History ..................
5. Imagined Europe and the Textbook of Transition
6. Long Lasting Figures of Identity ....................................
7. Paradigmatic Partnernship of ‘Ancestors’ .....................
III. Conclusion
The Defeat of Transition: Difficult Farewells!
IV. Bibliography
V. Afterword
Wendy Bracewell
What the Bulgarian case reveals about British humour (and history-writing)?
VI. English Abstract………
The research is based on the available sources and documents in the archives of Bulgaria, Serbia, Yugoslavia, the archive collections of the Bulgarian Academy of Sciences and the Serbian Academy of Sciences and Arts. In addition, both countries' central state archives offer the full microfilm collection of copies from the French foreign ministry's archive (relevant to our topic), both in geographo-structural and chronological terms. Furthermore, the study includes the extensive use of memoirs collections, published diaries and speeches, private correspondence, including the unpublished soldiers letters (preserved in the local museums of Blagoevgrad, Troyan...), propaganda and advertisement posters, photo-material published in the press, unpublished photographic collections, propaganda albums, articulating the history of the propaganda impact, literary criticisms, essays...
Hence
A. The study focuses on both the mechanisms that formulated and upheld the French war aims and the methods for gaining the broad public support of this program and its realisation. Its basic principles – 'Restoration of the historical justice, correction of a painful past and guarantees against a future German aggression' – are inferred through content analysis of the peace projects written by Briand, Clemenceau and Pichon: politicians of different political parties, disparate social doctrines, sharing dissimilar foreign policy concepts and belonging to various generations; the peace drafts composed under different military perspectives, diverse diplomatic situations, varying internal policy conditions. These facts provide some grounds for the thesis that these programs did outline some permanent tendencies and characteristic features of the French political thinking and diplomatic action (1914-1920):
1. Once being specified, the principles ('restoration, reparations, guarantees') of the French foreign policy were defended and maintained regardless of the government changes or the critical situations at the front. Both the principles and their moral-legal grounds (as well as their ideological argumentation) were maintained: the ensured allied support for the latter provided realizaton of the former. It was not by case that one of the first established Peace Conference's commission was on 'ascertaining the responsibilities for the Pan-European war': when the crime was proved it would be easier to plead for the harder punishment both in and outside the court hall. Since even under the most unfavourable military-political circumstances 'the policy of restoration, reparations, guarantees' was not abandoned (only some particular territorial claims were reduced) the victory of allied armies could lead only to energetic efforts for its total implementation.
2. The content analysis reveal that the "restoration' principle was an unseparable part from the two others; the three principles in its unity and interconnection organized the overall political scheme of the French foreign policy action. The policy of "restoration of the historical justice' was maintained precisely in this form and in the relevant context of permanent arguments and considerations; the relations between this form and its content reveal the ruling circles' system of political beliefs as well as the determining features of the French national ideology. Thus 'the restoration of the territories occupied – against the will of their populations – by the Germany and its allies' complied with the principle of national self-determination (after the 1871 Germany's annexation of Alsace-Lorraigne the French national doctrine pleaded this principle to be turned into an international law ). "The right of the peoples to be masters of themselves', formulated as a part of the international jurisdiction when applied to the Elsace-Loraigne case meant restoration of the two provinces within the Mother-Homeland's boundaries. In the outset of the Pan-European conflict both the president's address to the nation and the Parliament's declaration the war was proclaimed and defended on the basis of this law, broken by the violation of the Belgian neutrality.
Hence the restoration of this right was formulated and propagated as ultimate victory aim. The application of this right was always sought in historical perspective: it required 'a correction' because of the historical injustice exercised over the French nation in the past. The scope of this injustice was determined and described in inconstant and variable terms: from the Vienna Congress (1815) to the German Kaiser's crowning (in the Mirror room of the Versailles palace on 18 January 1871). The accomplishment of 'the policy of restoration' – according both law and historical justice – meant 'the correction of a painful past'. According the French political strategy and national ideology this correction could be consummated only in the form of territorial and economic reparations. The logic of the French foreign policy doctrine demanded that the restored historical justice and the received compensation for the moral and material sacrifices – as the only possible political result of the military victory – were expedient only as guarantees against the new German aggression. Defending the principles of 'restoration, guarantees, reparations' as the common Entente's political war aims the French diplomats and politicians tried to balance the Allied interests during the war, to create the necessary diplomatical grounds and public atmosphere for accomplishment of own aims in the post-war Europe. The successful application of the 'restoration policy' in the armistice-terming supposed successful realisation of the other political principles in the process of peace treaties making; in French statesmen's view this realisation was tantamount to a provision of the sum of the political, economic and military measures, ensuring the Third republic against every attempt for German revenge.
The analysis of these principles points to their certain unclearness as notions of the political dictionary, to their tensibility and elasticity in the situations of seeking the means and methods for their concrete realisation. That determines their multi-dimensional nature (as possibilities for application) and multi-variance (as direction of action). Multi-dimension and multi-variance permitting the French statesmen – without abandoning the key positions – to limit or enlarge both the set of considerations or arguments in favour of their political action and the spheres of strategy's application according to the military turnabouts. This limitation and enlargement, in its own turn, determined the character and essence of the French propaganda.
The same theoretical context focuses our attention on the relation 'officers-politicians' altered under the position war's conditions. The change was engendered by the new profile of the war situation, by the trench life, by the departure from the elegant war strategy's formulae studied in the military academies. At the turn of the century the people thought of 'the art of war'; the first Great War's years converted it rather to the grand extermination game. The notion and the nature of 'enemy's defeat' expanded outside the traditional frameworks to enter into spheres ruled by the psychology, diplomacy and politics. The Marna victory and the General Staff's responsibility for the German defeat strengthened the military's weight and changed the soldiers' attitude towards the accepted conventional norms of social subordination (politicians-the military). On the other hand, the same facts and circumstances did not have the same effect on the other pole – the public opinion. Thus:
1. A new phenomenon was created (which was to cause a substantial repercussions with the decisive effects on the French foreign policy in Central Europe and the Balkans): the strain and contradiction between the French politicians and the military over the definition of the French national interest. The former derived it from the general political-economic and military-strategic situation on the continent, the latter – from the given specific situation. The prescriptions of the military tactics rarely coincided with the postulates of the global national interest. This phenomenon manifested itself at several levels. The opposition of the part of the officers of the Armee d'Orient escalated in disagreement with the official government policy toward a specific Balkan state. Their position could be situated in the polar scheme: 'insufficient satisfaction of the lawful allied national-territorial demands' – 'excessive and unjustified generosity towards the winners at the expense of the defeated'. Obviously, these officers exceeded their normal functions (the execution of the given official policy) and attempted to form and dictate a policy. Some of the reasons for this phenomenon were rooted in the character of war.
In this frame we examine the results of the specific realization of the policy of 'restoration... reparations... and guarantees...' towards the winners and the defeated on the Balkans; the existed but unrealized alternatives to this policy are focal points in this analysis.
How the different political parties narrate the founding events of national history?
How has been interpreted the common sites of national memory by the official school textbooks in Modern Bulgarian History? What remains and accumulates by the collective and historiography memory?
University of Graz).*
We hope that our book will bring young people closer to the various life worlds of the past and will contribute to better understanding and cooperation of the new generations of South East Europe.
0. TOC
1.Love and Marriage in Patriarchal Society 9
2.Body 19
3.Education 33
4.Ideal Woman? 45
5.Love and Marriage in Bourgeois Society 55
6.Work of Men, Work of Women 67
7.Leisure and Beauty in Modern Times 77
8-9 Politics and Emancipation 89
10. Love and Marriage in Communist Society
Keywords: POW, Everyday Life, Law, Homo Sacer, Social Trauma, War Legacy, Great War
By acknowledging the historicity of one woman's empowerment and analysing the diverse and complex resources of her distinct woman's economy-of "enjoying the possibility of risk taking, and a kind of openness" (Cixous/Mitchell), this study will support Tzvetan Todorov's statement that the "attitude to be a rescuer is not inherent in concrete national tradition or social milieu, but is a question of personal choice". So, how and why did Dorina Simpson make such choices, extending a helping hand to the excluded others, often in crisis situations, putting at risk her present and future? By searching for some answers, this text deals with Dorina Simpson's particular legacy, namely-her distinct charity work in colonial and postcolonial Mauritius, and her autobiographical writings, Where Do You Come From?, both transgressing norms and rules to unveil the politics that tend to corrupt.
By enhancing the concept of women's economy, within the capitalist economy of gift-echsnge relationships, it emphasis the role of woman's cultural intermediation between the fields of political and social powers. So this study shows why social productiveness of her female persistence, stugle and quest for justice ended in involving "both justice, as acknowledgement of wrongs and absence of structural inequalities" (Honneth/Doorn) for the helpless, one woman obtained another 'profit in return', the affective one - she dealt with her historical trauma.
This study is based on Dorina Simpson's private archive and documents in national archives (Bulgarian, British, and Italian) and international organizations (the World Health Organization and World Federation of Mental Health, ICRC) to which I was led by discovering the specific loci of both her social exclusion and prestigious recognition. And it is conceptualized within a microhistory paradigm, sharpening the scholar's attention to the uniqueness of human experience and hence to the fears, premotions, dreams and yearings if the separate being; so its approaches remain very sensitive to how individuals experience historical events by contesting the paradigm of norm and power.
Key words: transitional society, revolutionary violence, communist terror, transitional justice female petsistence, woman empowerment, mental health, disabled body, communist Bulgaria, colonial Mauritius, charity
behind when he dies, said Pascal. But what
inheritance of war (also involving the problem
of its heir) is left behind by the soldier who keeps
writing his notes and sending letters from the
front line when he faces something unimaginable
– dying by cholera? What else invisibly stands
behind such a soldier’s urgent need: is it to bear
witness, and is it to become an opportunity to
accumulate other affective (of the soldier’s anger,
rage, hatred, anguish, pain, fear and bitterness)
archives of the Balkan Wars? Is this witnessing a
condition in itself for penetrating the other, the
invisible reality of the fighting man’s world, so as
to problematise the other heritage of this war (the
sensitive man who has let himself be affected) and
its stakes (the questionable values of the modern
and traditional)? This article searches answers to
these questions.
Keywords:
Balkan wars, truth, body, affect, trauma, microhistory, witness, ego-documents, cholera, justice, moral order.
Възможна е и друга история на Балканските войни, настоява този текст, защото има и други истини за тях, архивирани в едно различно депо – тялото, чийто разпоредител е травмата. Тя несъзнавано трупа опит във войнишкото тяло, опит, “който се завръща като сцена от миналото или се заявява като непреодолим импулс да се повтаря” (Boheemen-Saaf). Доколкото този опит не може нито да се впише, нито да се замълчи, то той е условие да се изследва автентичността на преживяното и тематизира ситуацията на свидетеля – засегнатият от историята, но и отговорилият. Той оставя следи „как отделният индивид възприема и преживява историческите събития“ (J. Brewer), следи към качествено ново пространството – афектите като превърната форма на страстите (Фройд). С изследването на преживелищния индивидуален опит (целта на текста), практически се подрива хомогенната реалност на историята – тя все повече се разпада (в модуса на изтърпяното, изстраданото) на множество микроистории (животите на ‘елементарните частици’, които обаче се вписват и изказват по отношения на големия исторически разказ). Но как с въвеждането на индивида в историята през екзистенциални категории се открива подстъп към други исторически документи и оттук за нова социална и културна история на войната, е залогът на този текст.
on national media, symptomatic of „the state of things“, and based on the theory of affection, the article raises the question of the theoretical and empirical deficits in the historical education and cultural formation of students. It subjects through historical examples the role of the relational context in which the knowledge is absorbed and embodied to challenge the other context of knowledge - the affective. And with that, it
turns the scientific focus on the role of hidden curricula for civic education in history, which today define our tomorrow.
Keywords: theory of affect; social history; civic education; cultural formation; relational context; body history; microhistory; “Brave New World”
Резюме. Тръгвайки от ученически грешки по време на телевизионно състеза-ние по история в националния ефир, симптоматични за "състоянието на нещата", и основавайки се на теорията за афекта, статията поставя въпроса за теоретични и емпирични дефицити в историческото образование и културното формиране на учениците. Тя тематизира през исторически примери ролята на отношенческия контекст, в който се усвоява и въплътява знанието, за да се проблематизира и дру-гият контекст на познанието-афективният. И със самото това тя обръща научния фокус към ролята на скритите учебни програми за гражданско образование по история, които практически днес залагат нашето утре. Ключови думи: теория на афекта; социална история; гражданско образование; културно формиране; отношенчески контекст; история на тялото; микроистория; Заради Ева Николова* "Историята е тъмен вилает, засмя се жената, влязъл-невлязъл, винаги се каеш" Давид Албахари, Гьоц и Маер I. След предаването. Част 1. Приемайки да участвам в "Клуб история.бг"-един от новите формати на про-екта на БНТ1-история.бг, от чиито издания бях гледала бегло само едно-трето-то, аз не допусках с какво практически се заемам. С този текст, бързо нахвърлян след неговия запис, но после бавно обмислен, аз признавам, че преживяването е уникално кризисно заради неговия обществен залог-историческото знание и свързаното с него гражданско образование (и формиране). Осмисляйки учени-ческото състезание, с риск да попадна в нов капан-на дидактиката, аз исках да продължа разговора с ученици, за които историята е смислено занимание. Но нямах илюзии, че поводът е горчивият привкус, оставян от каскадно връхлитащи въпроси-"какво всъщност за тях е историята, какво практически това познание Discussions Дискусионно * Тя е ученичка в 3-ти клас, четвърто поколение, в 19-то училище "Елин Пе-лин", училището на загубилия състезанието отбор.
the First World War, the article reveals a different resource of women’s agency (and emancipation), i.e., the affective environment of women’s experience (their pain and their social suffering). Emphasizing the problem of (micro and macro) corruption, a specific social phenomenon that the anger of women made publicly visible, the article also stresses a new process, i.e., “becoming aware of what it means to be a woman”
and “what it means to be a man” (beyond the horizon of defined gender roles). The author reveals why it was precisely the anger of women (the poor one’s, in many cases uneducated) that expressed “the horror of their coercive situation showing its face” (M. Duras). Thus, the article is an attempt to rethink the national modern project and certain mechanical and idealistic interpretations (by left-wing and right-wing historians) of the growth of political awareness among new historical subjects: the people, the workers, women. Thus the author emphasizes how the new joint communities of men and women were formed (communities that cut across gender, social and class divisions) in the
course of resistance against the threatened ontology – what is in fact just and what isn’t.
In this way, the moral boundaries of society were revealed (inasmuch as the fact that those boundaries were being crossed provoked joint resistance against this transgression).
Along with this, other boundaries (those between good from evil) became clearly perceptible, and hence, a “new ethical society” became suddenly thinkable (a society in which hunger, bad hygiene and death from social diseases, such as typhus fever, tuberculosis, alcoholism, would no longer be part of the normal order of things). The article attempts to show how it was precisely the emancipation of (ordinary and often uneducated) women from their forced passivity and social unhappiness that contained other views of women about the social world.
Keywords: women's revolts, affect, microhistory, First World War, corruption, diseases,
gender studies
Изследвайки различни форми на женско политическо и гражданско учас-тие по време на Първата световна война, тази статия проявява различен ресурс на женска действеност (и еманципация), а именно-афективната среда на женския опит (нейната болка и нейното социално страдание). Поставяйки ударението върху специфичен социален феномен, който тъкмо женският гняв прави публич-но видим-корупцията (микро и макро), тя подчертава и нов процес-"да осъз-наеш какво е да си жена", но "какво е да си мъж" (отвъд нормативния хоризонт на определени социално-полови роли). Разкривайки защо в избухналия в публич-ното тъкмо техен гняв (на бедните, често лошо образовани жени) сега "роптае ужасът на принудителното им положение, показвайки лицето си" (М. Дюрас), тази статия е опит да се премисли националният модерен проект, както и някои механични и идеалистични тълкувания (на лявата и дясната историография) от-носно процеса на политическо осъзнаване на новите исторически субекти: народ; работници; жени. Затова тя акцентира как се формират друго новите съ-общности между мъже и жени (пресичащи полови, социални, но и класови разделения) в съпротива срещу заплашената онтология-кое практически е справедливо и кое не е; и със самото това не само се оголват моралните и етическите граници на тогавашното общество (доколкото тъкмо тяхното преминаване мобилизира обща съпротива срещу), но и се очертават и онези друго ясни граници (между "злото и доброто"), откъдето изплува за миг "новото етично общество" (в което гладът, лошата хигиена и смъртта от социални болести-тиф, туберкулоза, алкохолизъм, не е естественият ред на нещата). Или текстът се опитва, освен другото, да пока-же как тъкмо в различно еманципиращата се от своята ситуация (принудителна пасивност и социално нещастие) жена (обикновена и често необразована) се съ-държат други нейни виждания за света. Ключови думи: женски бунтове, афект, микроистория, Първа световна война, ко-рупция, болести, джендър изследвания
These other institutions and their practices mirrored the difference in Dorina Simpson’s own background. Her maternal ancestors were Russian nobles who were assigned diplomatic and administrative missions in Bulgarian Black Sea towns by the Russian Emperor’s chancellery. Her father was Nencho Iliev who belonged to the Bulgarian upper-middle class, a class over which the Communists ideology passed both a symbolic and an actual death sentence, defining it as the class “of treason and Fascist crimes, of political, social and cultural inefficiency". So the practice of charity of this "white colonial wife" was based on other morality. It targeted the suffering local black residents of Mauritius, seeking to restore human dignity in those socially marginalized as “wretched people”; in this other relation to the local sick, poor, miserable people what emerges is this elsewhere from which Dorina Simpson came – an authentic world of pain and suffering, the loci of marginal cultural identity within changing political regimes. This search for other practical effectiveness of charity work for the excluded others: disabled children and mentally ill women locked in "special prisons", as seemingly helpless and incapacitated, reveals other relation to other people’s suffering; a difference in the type of involvement by someone who, while belonging to the world of the rich, committed herself to assisting the suffering and the deprived. A different involvement that testified to the other fact – she came from a different background and had her own pain of being affected and deprived, as her autobiography certifies, therefore she could project them in other people’s affected and deprived existence, identify them and devote her efforts to creating a different charity aimed at taking away the pain of the others and relieving their suffering.
That was Dorina Simpson.
Indeed, it was as a response to these affectations and her deprivations, in her attempt to overcome her traumas that her "archive of a life" was born: the charitable deeds of Dorina Simpson and her autobiography, "Where do you come from?" An autobiography which she began after being forced to leave Mauritius and hence part of what she had given her heart to – another charity for the excluded others. Therefore she seemingly locked the enigma of the cultural and social efficiency of her charitable deeds that changed the lives of the excluded other, in her autobiography. And this is what Dorina Simpson actually lost in 1979: her heart.
I
In (post)colonial Mauritius, Dorina Ilieva-Simpson (1925–1991) struggled to lay the foundations of a charity aimed at the excluded others (people “superfluous and abject” in their disabled bodies). In a Bulgaria swiftly overtaken by the communist regime (1944-1947), when bourgeois Sofia was agonizing, Dorina was viewed as the daughter of the allegedly “fascist” writer Nencho Iliev ( and as Iliev’s “frivolous and indifferent” daughter ). Later, in the society of white British colonial wives (1950s and 60s), she was looked upon as a “bloody foreigner”. And yet, it was precisely she who fought to change the lives of those “doomed to a humiliating death” (in that unbearable iciness: a body-not-mine, a body physically scarred and socially stigmatized). Proceeding from the fact (“behind which thousands of motives might lie”) of an empowering utopian female ideal, this article attempts to outline the historicity of a kind of female subjectivation generated in the attempt to survive social suffering, that is the public and private disinheritance of a woman of bourgeois origin after the symbolic effect of “her father’s name” had lost its power, and her bourgeois origin had lost its value. Revealing these nodes of a woman’s painful life experience, in which the world became visible for Dorina in its negative present (“violence and fear”, “hypocrisy and non-compassion”, “jealousy and social hatred”), this text becomes an essay on another kind of female social loneliness (in, as it were, that body-not-mine, the hostage-of-the-other), in order to outline the social and cultural efficiency of another kind of female social economy (faith and compassion). Hence it aims at disclosing the other historical witnesses, truths, facts and archives – those of the excluded others – in whose optic the familiar historical past is “distorted” into its unknown other.
So, this article, based on a quasi-archive, the archive of a life (comprising Dorina Ilieva- Simpson’s autobiographical writings and her deeds, including her exceptionally efficient charity for disable people), tells the story of her journey from social exclusion to high recognition, the journey to her uniqueness. It analyzes how, in crossing geographical, political and cultural spaces, one woman emancipated herself and built a different woman’s subjectivity (by which she challenged the social horizons and political discourses related to women).
Cet article, basé sur des études empiriques (et informé par la théorie), s’intéresse aux effets sociaux des procédures disciplinaires dans l’armée bulgare. Il trace le lien étroit entre le front et l’arrière en montrant ce que les conditions critiques au front ont été en mesure de créer, notamment la nouvelle force – “le soldat saisit de colère juste”. Que nous dit cette colère de la réalité affective de l’expérience historique? Les scénarios du drame social de la guerre ont-ils été écrits dans le contexte de cette réalité? Quel est le profil des soldats et des femmes révoltés en 1917, qui se découpe derrière le cri: “Pour plus de justice“? Quel était son écho dans le parlement bulgare? En cherchant la réponse à ces questions, l’article fait ressortir la situation critique (notamment la crise morale et sociale produite par la corruption) au front et à l’arrière qui pratiquement décide de la manière dont la Bulgarie sortirait de la guerre.
The angry women outburst in public (during the war) makes increasingly visible to the public the other reality of the historical process – the social suffering, social anger, and dreams of people who had been left in the shadow of History and Politics. Yet, here, I would like to propose a study of ordinary women’s social anger, i.e. to be studied under scrutiny both what (horror of their coerced situation) exactly speaks in this women outburst (hungry revolts and strikes) in public and social differences that were revealed in different women ways (petitions and collective letters, among others by Bulgarian and Turkish, addressed to different official institutions) to protest against the war. Thus I would like to thematise and problematize women political and civic participation (made possible by total war mobilisation) and thereby to underline the new sources of women emancipation during war, i.e. the affective reality of their experience from all that befalls ordinary women as injustice: history, politics, hunger, diseases and deaths, and the ways they answer to it. The study bases on archives that still are not ‘open’, of military courts, of military investigations on ‘women’s revolts’, of women letters caught by censors and censorships reports (some of them probably done by women), private women archives of socialist activists, and collected memoirs on women revolts and so on. This study tackles with the core of ongoing debate on “the process that renders individual emotions collective and thus political”.
Abstract: This paper is based on the archival study of official documentation concerning the so-called “war prisoners’ problem” as well as on analysis of different witness to ‘what does mean to be a prisoner’; it aims at articulating the microarchive from macroarchive (within state archives) by studying the specific documents (of the experience “with personal name”) revealing the relations of individual to power. That study serves as a background that permits to pose several questions related to the legacy of Great war – lived experience (within prisoner’s camp, in this case) and its effect on the survivors. Relying on microanalysis (through case studies) the paper addresses the question of violence against prisoners and thereby it moves to focus on the events of camp’s everyday life that were formative for the new identities; the text also examines the problem of prisoner’s trauma, of the experience that bound the survivor’s present to its past. So this paper will pose, firstly, the question of the law practices – why they didn’t prevent the prisoner from becoming homo sacer (‘bare life’ in G. Agamben’s wording), and, secondly, the question: what helped him to cope with unbearable/traumatic – was it new social economy of empathos&sympathos? In conclusion, the text will problematize the legacy of war that still is unable to find its contemporary public heirs-recipients. As a result this paper is interested in the trauma produced by the war capture, and its social legacy.
Snezhana Dimitrova
Department of History
SWU “N. Rilski”
Blagoevgrad
One of the working hypotheses that the students will test in the course of the scientific expedition is to what extent historical memory is a result of the present and to what extent it reveals the work of trauma. The basic field work will be at places called, for the sake of convenience, sites of memory or sites of mourning, such as military graves (individual, dispersed, or gathered in official cemeteries) and the preserved (restored and unrestorable) army trenches (Doiran).
So, in agreement with Proust (Time Regained) that war “is something human, is experienced as love or hate, may be related as a novel […] and that, assuming war is scientific, then we shall have at least to depict it as Elstir depicts the sea, in reverse, - starting from illusions and convictions that little by little are corrected, just as Dostoyevsky would relate a life“), we attempted to reveal the stakes involved in the other legacy of this war, the soldiers’ experience (at the same time, we remain well aware of the ethical consequences of this scientific intention). Retracing the lost past, the war as experience, our scientific expedition followed the route (that the students have covered in imagination through the available soldiers’ testimonies: diaries and letters, official documents, regimental journals, reports, and correspondence) of a small artillery battery (part of the Second Army), whose position at the Thessaloniki front and the everyday life of its soldiers is the main background of the students’ research.
mark on the whole European 20th century. The consequences of the war played a decisive role for social,
political, cultural and economic processes that defined European (and world) development. In the course of the
war, conditions arose for the emancipation of a new historical agent - “suffering humanity”, while some
emblematic marginal social worlds – those of the “poor”, of “women”, of “children” – became increasingly
visible to the Grand Politics. The Great War, as it was called by the generation that experienced it and had great
difficulties in surmounting it, created new resources for negotiating the identities of the modern individual in the
framework of the nation state. It seems that precisely these aspects of the legacy of the First World War still
remain marginal for modern studies of Balkan history.
The specific focus of the conference will be the war as experienced by the “little beings”, by “those who
seemingly never existed”, those left in the shadow of the Grand History; in its subject matter, the conference will
emphasize everyday life at the frontline and in the rear, the everyday battle against other, invisible enemies:
against fear, anger, shortages, infectious diseases, corruption... We hope to contribute to revealing the other
legacy of this war, the lived experience of the survivors and of those who did not survive. Exactly what is the
legacy that comes down to us from the living dead and the dead live ones, from the participants in this war – a
heritage that, for one hundred years now, we seemingly refuse to inherit, and inherit something else in its place?
Why is this so? How does this happen and with whose complicity? These and many other questions related to the
Great War we shall try to address by students, teachers and researchers in various scientific fields, such as
history, philosophy, cinema, art, sociology, literature, interested in The First World War Phenomenon.
(Example of the Great War Bulgarian Soldiers’ War Writings)
Abstract
‘All quiet on the Front’ is the phrase to end the official front relation when the silence after the battles is ‘heard’ and when the war comes to shape in ‘grey everydayness’. It is almost the rule that after sending the official report the same officer turns to his intimate daily notes to do the same as his subordinates (ordinary soldiers) did, namely – to write down about all that is not quiet; and by this very act (reaching to the pencil and paper) they bear witness to the other invisible everyday war against shortages on the front (deficits of material necessities, of military and strategic resources, of sanitary and medical supplies, and emotional-psychological deprivation), daily war, no less patriotic than the military one; from these shortages emerge the outlines of Bulgarian society itself, whose stakes were getting defined more in the ideological perspectives of modern bourgeois order and civic society.
And thus he (the officer, the ordinary soldier) bears witness to his own fears, angers, pains, joyfulness, lacks of…, dreams, nightmares…, expectations… Exactly, such witness (from firing lines) is bound to testify there is a different (to the official one) truth of this war and there is different way of archiving the war experience; and thereby such phenomena (of experienced war and its archive – war trauma) is to challenge the conventional war historiography). These soldiers’ writings (however certifying what cannot be said it can neither be silenced) become an opportunity to approach the war experience through what Breuer set up as: “to show how historical circumstances were felt or perceived by the individual”. Moreover: this researching perspective allows studying in scrutiny what helps to bound up the front and rear, and what makes the front to break or to endure.
Then such research comes to be interested in the new soldier’s figure: individual as if overtaking by events which leave ‘him’ breathless, surpassed by unbearable, and then left witness is bound to be long lastingly seen as the same story, Shakespeare told about, history written by “idiot, plenty of noisy and meaningless”. So this essay aims at studying both the soldier’s desire to bear witness, and what stands behind such urgency to report on; that is why this desire is to be so precious in its authenticity of performed act: of writing and keeping writing. And such witness is to be appreciated about both: its fragmentariness, of meaningless, of the individual impossibility to catch the big important events (of war reality) – such lack of effort to rationalize, to reflect on the war’s reality allows the conventional historiography to dispute its historical relevance –, and individual willing of telling about little, banal, minima events of everydayness instead of reproducing war/nationalist pathos. And thus rather bearing witness to the reality which left accessible to him – usual, banal rhythm of everyday and articulates as a chronic; so I will be focused on the textual reality, as if, it shows the deficit of affective reality and remaining at the level of announcement, and ask to whether exactly such text is bound to bearing witness to the reality which remains inaccessible (war itself) and so leaving clues to this escaping reality in its impossibility to be told.
So, such archive does its work on ‘disrupting the smooth face’ of big war narratives, of nationalism, of religion war, of brutalization. Because going to the level on the individual experience the reality of war experience as homogeneous entity turned out to be broken down (in several microhistories) and thereby it is to provide the historians with other documents for new social and cultural history of this war.
As an empirical study this essay bases on both: the Bulgarian private collections of soldier’s letters, notebooks, and photos (given to the regional archives, dispersed soldiers’ writings within different private archives), and the documents of Censorships department documentation within Historical Military Archive.
Snezhana Dimitrova,
Department of History,
SWU “N. Rilski”, Blagoevgrad
(The Bulgarian case)
Abstract
This paper, on the one hand, is based on the analysis of the social legislation during the Great War – through the policies for applying and implementing the Regulations on Assistance for Soldier’s Families (October 1915) and the Law on People Hygiene Councils (autumn 1916) which represented a unique social effort to fight poverty and epidemics on the home front. On the other hand, it is focused on the soldiers’ writings – precious historical documents about another hidden war (against the shortages on the front, from them emerge the outlines of Bulgarian society itself). This new way of thinking of statesmen who now showed awareness of the need for greater social justice (which became a soldier’s right and the state’s obligation instead of something relegated to the sphere of private charity) witnessed to the power of another social process. I.e. the formation and growth of political awareness about the separately distinct existences that until then had been customarily seen by the upper bourgeoisie as merged all together in “the grey mass of soldiers” (considered to be socially apathetic and politically indifferent).
Hence this paper emphases on what did bound the front and the rear – demands of new social justice, but what social justice fought for the different social groups and what new social sensitiveness (about what is fair or unfair) is to be born within this war?, is to be answered by studying the ordinary soldiers’ testimonies to this war (their letters, notebooks…).
This study argues that the war’s drama in the Bulgarian case has been played out at home front, namely in relation to the world of social marginality – of beings who make a livelihood as hired labourers, as stated by Iliya Yanulov (1881- 1962), the “architect” of Bulgarian bourgeois social policy; until recently this social world had been invisible to the rulers. It shows how the people whose existences were left as if in the shadow of History became more and more visible to high political circles at the time when the fateful horizon was opening, the horizon of “the great historical events related to the hope of achieving a collective ideal” (this was how Bulgaria’s intervention in the war was publicly justified), and thereby this process is to challenge the stakes of modern and patriarchal social order. Facing with epidemics (posing, among others, the food supply problems) the society at war is to mobilize against another internal enemy – bacillus of diseases and corruption. But what then happens to the world that has been subjected to such mobilization (trough new social policy of modern bourgeois state), i.e. the world of “marginality and drabness”: the poor soldiers’ children and wife?, and to weather such emancipation (of the world of social sufferings) paradoxically is bound up with the birth of biopolitics and modern social welfare?, are the questions to be posed by this paper in order to ask about non-inherited legacy till today of this war.
So in conclusion this paper will outline what helps in leaving so unheard witnesses to the social sufferings during the war, or why the other archives – of pain and suffer, of this war are locked by the different (bourgeois, communist, post-communist) regimes and their discursive practices.
Snezhana Dimitrova,
Department of History,
South-West University “Neofit Rilski”
Blagoevgrad