The International Tracing Service archives offer process-generated documents from resettlement programs for displaced persons (DP) after World War II. This paper addresses two key challenges to ...ongoing research based on those archival holdings: the generation of data; and the visual representation of that data in geographic information systems. Digital history offers the opportunity to go beyond case studies and use the wealth of process-generated documents as serial sources for algorithm-based analysis. However, data in that form does not exist as such, and thus needs to be generated – a process that implies interpretative acts such as abstraction, normalization, and trans-coding, which are shaped by the character of digital media. Can modeling a DP’s life into a series of events, and digitally processing the resultant data, help to find out more about the agency of DPs negotiating their destiny with the authorities? If the mostly hidden and implicit configurations of digital knowledge production are thoughtfully considered and geostatistical analysis is combined with close readings of selected source documents, hermeneutic and quantitative approaches can be reconciled via digital history. This mixed method approach has implications for research culture and the publication of such data.
The article combines Walter Benjamin's concept of the dialectical image and Gilles Deleuze's concept of the time-image to develop an approach to using film as an instrument in historical research.
Considering film as historical research entails thinking of it not just as a historical source or a kind of popularised presentation of history, but as a tool of production by which unique historical ...insights can be gained. Though film is widely regarded as a legitimate source material of historical scholarship, it is seldom employed as such. Siegfried Kracauer's investigation of the popular rise of Nazism in German society and Marc Ferro's study of Russian revolutionary history are among the pioneering works in this field. The presentation of history in film is at the very least discussed among historians as a serious option to aid the dissemination of historical insights into the classroom and the larger public realm. Increasing numbers of historical journals have started providing space for film reviews. Renowned historians like Robert Rosenstone and Natalie Zemon Davis have also participated in the production of historical films and published their reflections on the experience of this involvement. But, to think of film as a medium of historical research still seems to be a very odd idea for the overwhelming majority of historians..
Considering film as historical research entails thinking of it not just as a historical source or a kind of popularised presentation of history, but as a tool of production by which unique historical ...insights can be gained. Though film is widely regarded as a legitimate source material of historical scholarship, it is seldom employed as such. Siegfried Kracauer's investigation of the popular rise of Nazism in German society and Marc Ferro's study of Russian revolutionary history are among the pioneering works in this field. The presentation of history in film is at the very least discussed among historians as a serious option to aid the dissemination of historical insights into the classroom and the larger public realm. Increasing numbers of historical journals have started providing space for film reviews. Renowned historians like Robert Rosenstone and Natalie Zemon Davis have also participated in the production of historical films and published their reflections on the experience of this involvement. But, to think of film as a medium of historical research still seems to be a very odd idea for the overwhelming majority of historians..
Illegalized immigration is a highly iconic topic. The public perception of the current regime for mobility is profoundly shaped by visual and verbal images. As the issue of illegalized immigration is ...gaining increasing political momentum, the authors feel it is a well-warranted undertaking to analyze the role of images in the creation of illegalization. Their aim is to trace the visual processes that produce these very categories.The authors aim to map out an iconography of illegalized immigration in relation to political, ethical, and aesthetic discourses. They discuss the need to project new images as well as the dangers of giving persons without legal papers an individual face. Illegalization is produced by law, but naturalized through the everyday use of images. The production of law, on the other hand, is also driven by both mental and materialized images. A critical iconology may help us to see these mechanisms.
Film als historische Forschung aufzufassen, bedeutet, Film nicht nur als historische Quelle oder eine Art der populärwissenschaftlichen Präsentation von Geschichte zu begreifen, sondern als ein ...Arbeitsinstrument mit dem spezifische historische Einsichten gewonnen werden können. In diesem Artikel greife ich Robert Rosenstones Vorschlag, einige Filmschaffende als Historiker wahrzunehmen, auf und treibe ihn ein wenig weiter, indem ich Claude Lanzmanns Film "Shoah" als ein Model für die filmische Untersuchung der Geschichte untersuche. Lanzmanns Film als ein Modell zu behandeln und nicht nur als ein Beispiel, verweist auf Theodor W. Adornos Konzept des Modells als etwas, das ein Licht auf das Spezifische und mehr als das Spezifische wirft, ohne dies in einem allgemeinen Begriff aufzulösen. Ich anlysiere, wie der Film mit den spezifischen Problemen der Darstellbarkeit der Shoah umgeht und extrahiere verschiedene Modi der Einschreibung von Geschichte in den Film und der Konstruktion von Geschichte im Film. Um diese Modi weiter zu theoretisch zu erfassen, greife ich auf Walter Benjamins Begriff des dialektischen Bildes und Gilles Deleuze' Begriff des Zeit-Bildes zurück und verbinde die beiden Konzepte aus zwei unterschiedlichen philosophischen Traditionen. Die Analyse zeigt, dass Lanzmanns filmische Antwort auf das Problem der Darstellbarkeit der Shoah ein Modell entwickelt, das ein Licht darauf wirft, wie eine Historische Beziehung zur Vergangenheit nach Auschwitz aussehen kann und welche signifikante Rolle Film darin zu spielen vermag. Möglicherweise entsteht mit dieser durch Film etablierten historischen Beziehung das, wonach Adorno verlangt hat: eine neue Art der Wahrheit, die nicht an den korrumpierten Begriff der Adequatio gebunden ist.
Considering film as historical research entails thinking of it not just as a historical source or
a kind of popularised presentation of history, but as a tool of production by which unique
historical insights can be gained. In this essay I wish to take up Robert Rosenstone’s suggestion that we might consider some filmmakers as historians and push it a little further by exploring Claude Lanzmann's film Shoah as a model for the filmic inquiry into history. To treat Lanzmann's film as a model and not just an example refers to Theodor W. Adornos notion of a model as something that "covers the specific, and more than the specific, without letting it evaporate in its more general super-concept." I analyze how the film deals with the specific problems of representation of the Shoah and extract different modes of inscriptions of history into the film and different modes of construction of historical relations to the past events. To further theorize these modes of inscription and construction I employ Walter Benjamin's concept of the dialectical image and Gilles Deleuze's concept of the time-image by merging the two concepts from two different philosophical schools. The analysis shows that Lanzmann's filmic answer to the problem of representation established a model that sheds light on what a post-Auschwitz historical relation to the past could be, and what significant part films could play in this regard. Perhaps this historic relation established in film is the emergence of what Adorno had called for: a new kind of truth that is not bound to the corrupted concept of adequatio.
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