Partisan Histories: The Past in Contemporary Global Politics [Hardcover]

Partisan Histories is an introduction to the multiple uses of history in contemporary political debate and conflict. 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, France, 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.History in Politics; P.Kenney & M.P.Friedman PART I: NEW REGIMES The Past in the Politics of Divided and Unified Germany; A.H.Beattie Apologizing for the Past Between Japan and Korea; A.Dudden Breaking the Silence in Post-Authoritarian Chile; K.Hite Political Uses of the Recent Past in the Spanish Post-authoritarian Democracy; C.Humleb?k PART II: NEW NATIONS Constructing Primordialism: Old Histories for New Nations (Kazakhstan and Armenia); R.Grigor Suny Knowledge For Politics: Partisan Histories and Communal Mobilization in India and Pakistan; S.Das & S.Basu Historiophobia or the Enslavement of History: The Role of the 1948 Ethnic Cleansing in the Contemporary Peace Process; I.Pappe Nigeria: The Past in the Present; T.Falola PART III: NEW LESSONS Histories and 'Lessons' of the Vietnam War; P.HagopianPROFESSOR PADRAIC KENNEY is Associate Professor of History at the University of Colorado, USA. He is the author of Rebuilding Poland: Workers and Communists 1945-1950 (Cornell University Press, 1997), and A Carnival of Revolution: Central Europe 1989 (Princeton University Press, 2002).

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