Zbyt głośna historyczność. Użytkowanie przeszłości w Azji Wewnętrznej
Too Loud a Historicity. The Usable Past in Inner Asia

Author(s): Zbigniew Szmyt
Subject(s): Anthropology, Social Sciences, Cultural Anthropology / Ethnology, Culture and social structure
Published by: Wydawnictwo Naukowe Uniwersytetu Adama Mickiewicza
Keywords: Inner Asia; Mongolia Buryatia;, Tuva; usable past; politics of memory; mythopractice; shamanism; animism; Buddhism; post-socialism
Summary/Abstract: Too Loud a Historicity. The Usable Past in Inner Asia describes the inhabitants of postsocialist Inner Asia's search for usable past. Treating history as a policy directed towards the past, the author analyses how it is used at the state, local community and family level. A great deal of attention has been paid to practical forms of how the past functions beyond traditional historiography and historical policy, as well as beyond the institutions reproducing it: schools, museums, universities. The rich ethnographic material revealed bottom-up and non-extractual practices related to the visual, corporeal, material and ritual dimensions of the use of the past. The reader can therefore discover why Siberian Buddhists see Putin as a woman, why Altai shamans fight archaeologists, and why the spirits of the victims of communism in Mongolia demand to be remembered. The anthropological perspective used in the book to explain the social processes taking place in Siberia, Mongolia or the Chinese periphery can also be used to understand the reality that surrounds the reader.

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