Abstract
Ribeiro de Menezes examines the emergence in recent years of public history and debates around the ‘value’ of the humanities. She argues that scholars’ commitment to engaging nonacademic audiences, including those who may be the subjects of academic research, should be seen as part of the research process and assessed in terms of the potential contribution to knowledge, to dignity, and to a recalibration of the humanities beyond the confines of introverted theorizing. Such constructive engagement is far from simple, as many of the essays in the volume introduced here demonstrate. Taking the example of Belchite, Ribeiro de Menezes shows how a vigilant and contextualized reading of historical sites remains crucial to an understanding of memory debates as constantly shifting, and as shaped by the present and future as much as the past.
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Notes
- 1.
Much ink has been spilled on this topic, but see, for example, Helen Small, The Value of the Humanities (Oxford: Oxford University Press , 2013); Jonathan Bate, The Public Value of the Humanities (London: Bloomsbury Academic, 2011).
- 2.
Martha Nussbaum, Not For Profit: Why Democracy Needs the Humanities (New Haven, NJ: Princeton University Press , 2010), 17.
- 3.
Peter Brooks, “Introduction,” in his edited volume, The Humanities and Public Life (New York: Fordham University Press , 2014), 2.
- 4.
Judith Butler, “Ordinary, Incredulous” in Brooks, The Humanities and Public Life, 15–38 (29).
- 5.
Brooks, “Introduction,” 11.
- 6.
Elenore Belfiore notes this in “‘Impact’, ‘Value’ and ‘Bad Economics’: Making Sense of the Problem of Value in the Arts and Humanities,” Arts & Humanities in Higher Education 14, no. 1 (2015), 95–110 (99).
- 7.
Ralph J. Hexter, “Conquering the Obstacles to Kingdom and Fate: The Ethics of Reading and the University Administrator” in Brooks, The Humanities and Public Life, 83–91 (87).
- 8.
Small, The Value of the Humanities , 6. As Gabriel Moshenska points out with regard to “public archeology,” the public dimension rarely in fact originates with the public; see “Contested Pasts and Community Archeologies: Public Engagement in the Archeology of Modern Conflict,” in Europe’s Deadly Century: Perspectives on Twentieth-Century Conflict Heritage , ed. Robin Page, Neil Forbes, and Guillermo Pérez (Swindon: English Heritage , 2009), 73–79 (73).
- 9.
Paul W. Kahn, “On Humanities and Human Rights ” in Brooks, The Humanities and Public Life, 116–22 (116).
- 10.
David Cooper, Learning in the Plural: Essays on the Humanities and Public Life (East Lancing, MI: Michigan State University, 2014), 159.
- 11.
Cooper, Learning in the Plural, 156.
- 12.
Thomas Nagel, The View from Nowhere (Oxford: Oxford University Press , 1986), 4. One might also include here the work of Karan Barad, although she somewhat overestimates the longevity of the linguistic turn, which had already been left behind in cultural studies by the turn of the millennium. See her “Posthumanist Performativity: Toward an Understanding of How Matter Comes to Matter,” Signs, 28, no. 3 (2003), 802–31.
- 13.
Nagel, The View from Nowhere, 7.
- 14.
Emily Robinson, “Touching the Void: Affective History and the Impossible,” Rethinking History 14, no. 4 (2010), 503–20 (504).
- 15.
An excellent example is Rebecca Schneider’s, Performing Remains: Art and War in Times of Theatrical Reenactment (London and New York: Routledge, 2011).
- 16.
Robinson, “Touching the Void,” 508.
- 17.
Jerome de Groot, Consuming History: Historians and Heritage in Contemporary Popular Culture, 2nd ed. (London and New York: Routledge, 2016), 5.
- 18.
De Groot, Consuming History, 290.
- 19.
De Groot, Consuming History, 293.
- 20.
Tony Bennett, “Museums and the People,” in The Museum Time-Machine: Putting Cultures on Display, ed. Robert Lumley (London: Routledge, 1988), 63–86 (63).
- 21.
Laurajane Smith, and Gary Campbell, “The Elephant in the Room: Heritage , Affect, and Emotion,” in A Companion to Heritage Studies, ed. William Logan, Máiréad Nic Craith, and Ullrich Kocktel (Chichester: Wiley, 2016), 443–60 (447).
- 22.
Smith, and Campbell, “The Elephant in the Room,” 450.
- 23.
Alfredo González-Ruibal, “Topography of Terror or Cultural Heritage ? The Monuments of Franco’s Spain ,” in Page, Forbes and Pérez, Europe’s Deadly Century, 65–72 (66).
- 24.
González-Ruibal, “Topography of Terror or Cultural Heritage ?” 70–71. The use of forced labor to construct the Valle de los Caídos is discussed in Isaías Lafuente Esclavos por la patria: La explotación de los presos en el franquismo (Madrid : Temas de Hoy, 2002); Daniel Sueiro, El Valle de los Caídos: Los secretos de la cripta franquista (Madrid : La Esfera de los Libros, 2006), but the camps themselves remain unexcavated.
- 25.
Martin Brown, “Strange Meetings: Archeology on the Western Front,” in Page, Forbes and Pérez, Europe’s Deadly Century, 59–64 (60).
- 26.
Moshenska, “Contested Pasts and Community Archeologies,” 77. See also Laura MacAtackney, “The Contemporary Politics of Landscape at the Long Kesh/Maze Prison Site, Northern Ireland,” in Envisioning Landscape : Situations and Standpoints in Archeology and Heritage , ed. Dan Hicks, Laura MacAtackney, and Graham Fairclough (Walnut Creek, CA: Left Coast Press , 2007), 30–54.
- 27.
The old town has been recognized as a Bien de Interés Cultural; for a lengthy discussion of the fate of Belchite after the war , see Stéphane Michonneau, Fue ayer: Belchite, un pueblo frente a la cuestión del pasado (Zaragoza : Prensas de la Universidad de Zaragoza , 2017).
- 28.
Harry Fisher, Comrades: Tales of a Brigadista in the Spanish Civil War (Lincoln and London: University of Nebraska Press , 1997), 78.
- 29.
Quoted in Michonneau, Fue ayer, 89.
- 30.
Michonneau, Fue ayer, Chapter 2; Hugh Smith, “Seventy Years of Waiting: A Turning Point for Interpreting the Spanish Civil War ?” in Battlefield Tourism: History, Place and Interpretation, ed. Chris Ryan (Oxford: Elsevier, 2007), 99–110 (102); Alfredo González-Ruibal , Volver a las trincheras: Una arqueología de la guerra civil española (Madrid : Alianza, 2016), 118–37.
- 31.
Michonneau, Fue ayer, 42.
- 32.
Michonneau, Fue ayer, 60.
- 33.
Michonneau, Fue ayer, 16.
- 34.
Michonneau, Fue ayer, 125.
- 35.
Michonneau discusses this in detail in Fue ayer, Chapter 7.
- 36.
P. Zapater, “Las obras del nuevo Museo del Grabado de Fuendetodos siguen paralizadas desde 2014,” Heraldo, 27 May 2016; Álvaro Sierra, “El museo de Goya , donde las grietas dibujan un cuadro de despilfarro,” El Español, 22 January 2017.
- 37.
I am grateful to the University of Warwick Humanities Research Fund for supporting my field research in the Belchite area and to Alfredo González-Ruibal for allowing me to observe his team excavating in the area.
- 38.
Alison Ribeiro de Menezes, and Stewart King, “Introduction: The Future of Memory in Spain ,” Bulletin of Hispanic Studies 94, no. 8 (2017), 793–99; also my article, “Memory as Disruption: Entanglements of Memory and Crisis in Contemporary Spain ,” in the same issue, 883–901.
Bibliography
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Bate, Jonathan. The Public Value of the Humanities. London: Bloomsbury, 2011.
Belfiore, Elenore. “‘Impact’, ‘Value’ and ‘Bad Economics’: Making Sense of the Problem of Value in the Arts and Humanitites.” Arts & Humanities in Higher Education 14, no. 1 (2015): 95–110.
Bennett, Tony. “Museums and the People.” In The Museum Time-Machine: Putting Cultures on Display, edited by Robert Lumley, 63–86. London: Routledge, 1988.
Brooks, Peter, ed. The Humanities and Public Life. New York: Fordham University Press, 2014.
Butler, Judith. “Ordinary, Incredulous.” In Brooks, The Humanities and Public Life, 15–38.
Cooper, David. Learning in the Plural: Essays on the Humanities and Public Life. East Lancing, MI: Michigan State University, 2014.
De Groot, Jerome. Consuming History: Historians and Heritage in Contemporary Popular Culture, 2nd ed. London and New York: Routledge, 2016.
Fisher, Harry. Comrades: Tales of a Brigadista in the Spanish Civil War. Lincoln and London: University of Nebraska Press, 1997.
González-Ruibal, Alfredo. Volver a las trincheras: Una arqueología de la guerra civil española. Madrid: Alianza, 2016.
Hexter, Ralph J. “Conquering the Obstacles to Kingdom and Fate: The Ethics of Reading and the University Administrator.” In Peter Brooks, ed. The Humanities in Public Life, 83–91. New York: Fordham, 2014.
Hicks, Dan, Laura MacAtackney, and Graham Fairclough, eds. Envisioning Landscape: Situations and Standpoints in Archeology and Heritage. Walnut Creek, CA.: Left Coast Press, 2007.
Kahn, Paul W. “Humanities and Human Rights.” In Peter Brooks, ed. The Humanities in Public Life, 116–22. New York: Fordham, 2014.
Lafuente, Isaías. Esclavos por la patria: La explotación de los presos en el franquismo. Madrid: Temas de Hoy, 2002.
MacAtackney, Laura. “The Contemporary Politics of Landscape at the Long Kesh/Maze Prison Site, Northern Ireland.” In Envisioning Landscape: Situations and Standpoints in Archeology and Heritage, edited by Dan Hicks, Laura MacAtackney, and Graham Fairclough, 30–54. Walnut Creek, CA: Left Coast Press, 2007.
Michonneau, Stéphane. Fue ayer: Belchite, un pueblo frente a la cuestión del pasado. Zaragoza: Prensas de la Universidad de Zaragoza, 2017.
Nagel, Thomas. The View from Nowhere. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1986.
Nussbaum, Martha. Not For Profit: Why Democracy Needs the Humanitites. New Haven, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2010.
Ribeiro de Menezes, Alison. “Memory as Disruption: Entanglements of Memory and Crisis in Contemporary Spain.” Bulletin of Hispanic Studies 94, no. 8 (2017): 883–901.
Ribeiro de Menezes, Alison, and Stewart King. “Introduction: The Future of Memory in Spain.” Bulletin of Hispanic Studies 94, no. 8 (2017): 793–99.
Robinson, Emily. “Touching the Void: Affective History and the Impossible.” Rethinking History 14, no. 4 (2010): 503–20.
Schneider, Rebecca. Performing Remains: Art and War in Times of Theatrical Reenactment. London and New York: Routledge, 2011.
Sierra, Álvaro. “El museo de Goya, donde las grietas dibujan un cuadro de despilfarro.” El Español, 22 January 2017.
Small, Helen. The Value of the Humanities. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2013.
Smith, Hugh. “Seventy Years of Waiting: A Turning Point for Interpreting the Spanish Civil War?” In Battlefield Tourism: History, Place and Interpretation, edited by Chris Ryan, 99–110. Oxford: Elsevier, 2007.
Smith, Laurajane, and Gary Campbell. “The Elephant in the Room: Heritage, Affect, and Emotion.” In A Companion to Heritage Studies, edited by William Logan, Máiréad Nic Craith, and Ullrich Kocktel, 443–60. Chichester: Wiley, 2016.
Sueiro, Daniel. El Valle de los Caídos: Los secretos de la cripta franquista. Madrid: La Esfera de los Libros, 2006.
Zapater, P. “Las obras del nuevo Museo del Grabado de Fuendetodos siguen paralizadas desde 2014.” Heraldo, 27 May 2016.
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Ribeiro de Menezes, A. (2018). Public Humanities and the Spanish Civil War. In: Ribeiro de Menezes, A., Cazorla-Sánchez, A., Shubert, A. (eds) Public Humanities and the Spanish Civil War. Palgrave Studies in Cultural Heritage and Conflict. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-97274-9_1
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