Seminar Synopsis:

The memory euphoria of the past half-century has, if anything, raised awareness of the constructed or invented nature of national memories and their complexity. Because the articulation between the normative rules of public memory and the at times politically incorrect claim to a right to private memory is representational and discursive, cultural artefacts, such as literary texts, films, photographs, videos or monuments have seismically materialized as go-betweens in the memory wars. The memories of empire in the Portuguese cultural tissue have been over the past 40 years after independence of the former colonies contentious sites, where a certain colonial melancholia clashes with a critical nostalgia that has been growing particularly amongst a generation of artists born after decolonization. Colonial melancholia is not simply a result of recent traumatic events, but spreads over two centuries in a pathological inheritance filled with resentment, humiliation, violence, denial, myth and mystification. This melancholic vision of the past has been mediated and disseminated by several media from texts to monuments, photos and films, which have either become accomplices in this regime of power, or have sought to subvert it and have finally created spaces of ambivalence and hybridity. A notorious example of the mediation of the colonial regime was of course photography.  Visibility was pivotal to the image world of the imperial regime, that not only needed to dominate the reality portrayed in the new medium, but which also made use of it for the sake of its own assertive self-representation. The talk inquires into this regime of visibility and seeks by means of a practice of interference to unravel the colonial discourse that used the perceived essentializing of reality supported by visual ‘objectivity’ to create a structure of feeling based on melancholy and nostalgia that would become the dominant  memory of empire in Portuguese culture.  Arguably, in this practice of interference resonates a practice of cultural literacy that allows for the reinterpretation and re-contextualization not only of what the images showed, but  what they meant. Then again, it is precisely a regained cultural literacy in the reading of the visual that lies at the root of the project of critical visual nostalgia enacted by contemporary video artists in the fragmented deconstruction of the imaginary wholeness of nostalgic thinking embedded in home movies.

Timed between the election's first and second rounds, this discussion brings together noted scholars and authors with unique and deep insight into contemporary French political culture.

Co-sponsored by the Europe Center and the French Culture Workshop

A brief write-up of this discussion titled "French vote a rejection of Sarkozy, panelists say" can be found in the May 7, 2012 edition of the Stanford Daily.

Event Summary:

Arthur Goldhammer opens the panel by arguing that the first round of the French presidential elections, not the second, are "the real story." For the first time in the history of the Fifth Republic, divisions between left and right were less pronounced than between the top two tiers of candidates (Hollande/Sarkozy, and Melénchon/Le Pen) especially regarding their attitudes toward European integration, globalization, and the Euro. Goldhammer points out that given France's role as a top global investor as well as a leading destination for foreign investment, the anti-globalization stance of the second tier candidates is unrealistic, although it enjoyed broad support at the polls. Sarkozy responded to this show of support by attacking the Shengen agreement and other aspects of the EU in a bid to win votes, while Hollande kept a low profile on the same issues. If Hollande wins, Goldhammer predicts, he will be tested by the markets and the global financial industry. He also points out that the Socialist and UNP parties are both internally divided on important issues.  If Sarkozy loses and decides to leave politics, Goldhammer predicts a power struggle for leadership of the party.

Laurent Cohen-Tanugi predicts that if Hollande wins, the outcome will be a statement against Sarkozy more than one in favor of Hollande. He echoes Arthur Goldhammer's concern about a strong market reaction to a victory by Hollande, who has positioned himself as pro-growth and has sanctioned Sarkozy for his strict austerity measures. Cohen-Tanugi adds that Hollande's focus is on domestic politics, and that he lacks significant international experience. Whoever wins, he cautions, France is in for difficult times.

Jimia Boutouba describes the rise of the extreme right – which has invoked nostalgia for a pre-globalization era - leading up to the elections. This rise has been dominated by Marine Le Pen and the Front National, which vows to defend the "French way of life" and (like Sarkozy as the election neared) has made anti-immigration rhetoric a key component of its platform. Le Pen, however, has attracted many first time, rural, and female voters, and has been successful in setting the tone and the agenda of national politics. Boutouba sees several problems with this trend toward defining the nation by what it opposes (Islam, globalization, international finance, etc), and warns it can be very disruptive to the political system, pointing to the recent fall of the Dutch government. More significantly, the anti-immigrant tone of the discourse discourages second and third generation descendants of immigrants from voting or participating in the political process.

A question and answer session following the roundtable addressed such questions as: Have both Hollande and Sarkozy radicalized their rhetoric and proposals to win support from far right and far left voters? Will the taxes and government spending (which is already very high in France, at 57%) promised by some politicians choke private sector growth? Which candidate will be most attractive to this new generation of French college graduates? What are the main differences between the three potential leaders currently jockeying for control of Sarkozy's party? To what extent would a Hollande presidency be beholden to Communists, Greens, and other extreme left parties? How will a Hollande presidency affect France's involvement with NATO, and relations with the United States? What are the prospects for the future of the Euro?

This talk will address a primary foreign policy challenge for independent Ukraine which has been to strike a proper balance between its relations with the West and those with Russia.  Today, democratic backsliding is upsetting the balance, which will undermine President Yanukovych’s ability to achieve his professed foreign policy aims.


Steven Pifer is a senior fellow at the Brookings Institution’s Center on the United States and Europe and director of the Brookings Arms Control Initiative.  He focuses on nuclear arms control, Russia and Ukraine.  He has offered commentary on these issues on CNN, Fox News, BBC, National Public Radio and VOA, and his articles have run in the International Herald Tribune, New York Times, Washington Post and Moscow Times, among others.

A retired Foreign Service officer, his more than 25 years with the State Department focused on U.S. relations with the former Soviet Union and Europe, as well as arms control and security issues.  He served as deputy assistant secretary of state in the Bureau of European and Eurasian Affairs with responsibilities for Russia and Ukraine (2001-2004), U.S. ambassador to Ukraine (1998-2000), and special assistant to the president and senior director for Russia, Ukraine and Eurasia on the National Security Council (1996-1997).

His publications include “Ukraine’s Perilous Balancing Act,” Current History (March 2012), “NATO, Nuclear Weapons and Arms Control,” Brookings Arms Control Series (July 2011); “The Next Round:  The United States and Nuclear Arms Reductions After New START,” Brookings Arms Control Series (November 2010); “Ukraine’s Geopolitical Choice, 2009,” Eurasian Geography and Economics (July 2009); and “Reversing the Decline:  An Agenda for U.S.-Russian Relations in 2009,” Brookings Foreign Policy Paper (January 2009).

Ambassador Pifer is a 1976 graduate of Stanford University with a B.A. in Economics.  He is a member of the Council on Foreign Relations. 

Co-sponsored by the Center for Russian, East European, and Eurasian Studies

This talk presents an unconventional look at the creation of a deadly barrier between East and West Germany.  It reveals how the Iron Curtain was not simply imposed by communism, but had been emerging haphazardly in both East and West long before the construction of the Berlin Wall in 1961.  From the end of the Third Reich, ad hoc enforcement of the tenuous border between the two Germanys led to the creation of difference where there was no difference, institutionalization of violence among neighbors, popular participation in a system that was deeply unpopular--and people normalizing a monstrosity in their midst.

Edith Sheffer is assistant professor of Modern European History at Stanford. Edith Sheffer came to Stanford as an Andrew W. Mellon Fellow in the Humanities in 2008 and joined the History Department faculty in 2010.  She recently completed Burned Bridge: How East and West Germans Made the Iron Curtain, and was the winner of the 2011 Fraenkel Prize, awarded by the Wiener Library Institute of Contemporary History, London. 

Co-sponsored by The Europe Center (TEC), the Center for International Security and Cooperation (CISAC), the Center for Russian, East European & Eurasian Studies (CREEES) and the Department of German Studies

Event Summary

Professor Sheffer's presentation includes a social history of the Iron Curtain during the Cold War. She examines the process by which culturally homogenous populations internalized ideas of difference, and erected arbitrary physical and mental borders accordingly. She argues that the Iron Curtain was a "wall of the mind" reinforced not only by Communist authorities but by the everyday actions of ordinary Germans. 

Professor Sheffer first outlines her recent book, Burned Bridge: How East and West Germans Made the Iron Curtain. Drawing on archives, news stories, and personal interviews with people from East and West Germany, she argues that the Berlin Wall was simply a visible manifestation of an existing rift within the country that had been building for 16 years.  She examines the process of institutionalization of difference, by which people living in a once-cohesive community with no stark religious or cultural differences began to view those on the opposite side of an arbitrary border as "other." Professor Sheffer offers several explanations for why Germans largely accepted the divide, including the gradual internalization by individual citizens, on both sides of the wall, of what Sheffer describes as "the living wall" and a "wall in the head formed by a wall on the ground."  The fact that the wall was a structural response to a social set of conflicts can explain why it both went up and came down so quickly, as the result of many small steps and individual actions.