Of Sleeps and Cycles

Digital Disruptions and the Myth of Awakening

Robert Harris’s dystopian novel, The Second Sleep (2019), follows Father Christopher Fairfax to a remote village in England to conduct the funeral of an elderly clergyman. Initially on a simple mission, soon the young priest finds clues that suggest the deceased priest had been conducting forbidden research into the past. As the investigation evolves, Fairfax finds evidence of a lost civilization, which we discover is our current digital era.

Disrupted (Post)identities

Memory, Place, and the Power of the ‘Post’

In a recent scholarly forum, I was invited to respond to a manuscript that explored the use of the prefix ‘post’ as a heuristic device, specifically in the context of post-apartheid South Africa. This exercise prompted me to pause and reflect on my own deployment of the term ‘post’ across multiple registers in my research, particularly as it relates to my positionality in (post)colonial Australia and (post)war/(post)socialist Poland. The exercise was catalytic: it opened a space to interrogate the ‘post’ not merely as a temporal marker, but as a powerful discursive tool that shapes our understanding of memory, place, and identity…

Multiple Frames

Remarks on the Framing of Borders and Migration

What do we address with the terms frame and framing? What are we talking about? When I get stuck and lost, I turn to Grimm’s German dictionary…

From Imagined Communities to Cultures of Collectivization

Collective Concepts between Praxeology and Theories on Schemata and Frames

The term ‘collectivization cultures’ obviously links collectivity and culture, prompting two simplified theses regarding this connection: the first is that culture is produced in or by collectivities. Thus, research from the fields of symbolic interactionism or cultural studies shows that cultures emerge in small groups or youth scenes. I do not deny the importance of this thesis. However, it tends to neglect the notion that collectivities are not simply there and produce culture, but are themselves cultural products. This is the second thesis: collectivities are something cultural, products…

Geopolitical Frames, Bold Lines

Online Global Solidarity and Mapping Russia’s War against Ukraine

In social media, transnational historiography, and the history of modern maps, frames are ever present and always relevant. Talking of modern Ukrainian geography and cartography, we might, as academics, relentlessly critique arbitrarily constructed lines. However, to say that all borders are artificial tools of propaganda or fictional inventions will not take us far. Ukrainians require bold lines and respect for sovereignty, and their overlaid thematic maps serve many purposes. Regarding the political geographies of boundaries protected by international law, independent Ukrainians must guard against geopolitical interference, often by relying on respect for fixed lines and frames. This is necessary both for practical NATO defense and alignment with European norms, as well as within higher education settings, where comparative, borderlands, and transnational studies foster debate on colonial, postcolonial,…