Mittelweg 36
Eurozine
Mittelweg 36
2010-08-11
Abstracts for Mittelweg 4/2010
Bernd Greiner
The Economics of the Cold War: A Look Backward and Ahead
The Cold War was, among other things, an economic conflict. Trillions of U.S. dollars were spent by governments in the East and the West to wage the Cold War -- to keep an upper hand in the armament hot wars, to prove the superiority of their respective political system, or to pull key regions in the Third World over to their side. There can be no doubt that resources were destroyed on a scale that is comparable only to that of a world war, but some of this spending also promoted economic and social development. One of the most daunting legacies of the Cold War is the extensive environmental destruction that accumulated in East and West, collateral damage caused by arms production or economic modernization schemes. In the decades ahead, cleaning up just the worst of this damage is a task that will cost billions.
Júlia Garraio
Rape as a Key to Understanding a Failure to Come to Terms with the Past:
The Novels Der Verlorene by Hans-Ulrich Treichel and Die unvollendenten by Reinhard Jirgl
In the two novels Der Verlorene by Hans-Ulrich Treichel and Die Unvollendeten by Reinhard Jirgl, rape is a symbol of what can not be said and has not been overcome. These rapes convey a sense of the catastrophic consequences of sexual violence in wartime and at the same times put the slogans disseminated by the two Germanys in the context of Vergangenheitsbewältigung (the process of coming to terms with the past) to the test. As tropes that stand for two different but equally failed forms of Vergangenheitsbewältigung and pseudo-integration, the rapes portrayed in these works serve as keys to understanding the small and large histories of the two post-1945 Germanys.
Julijana Ranc
Communicating Ressentiments in actu: Anti-Jewish Affects and Arguments
This contribution focuses on what analytical categories can be employed to detect anti-Semitism. The text presents a comparative exploration of the explanatory and epistemological potential of the categories prejudice and ressentiment and the categories stereotype and topos. The analytical scope and empirical persuasiveness of each category are discussed on the basis of theoretical considerations and their application in social science research on anti-Semitism, drawing on empirical findings from thirty-two group discussions and some one hundred and thirty individual interviews.