Memory without history: Who owns Guatemala’s past?
In the light and not in the light, in the darkness and not in the darkness, … motionless and in movement —Miguel Angel Asturias, Men of Maize’ On the edge of the Plaza Mayor, Guatemala City’s vast central square, a small…
The Indigenous and the Imported: Khatami’s Iran
Culture is what remains when one no longer believes in Utopia. —Farhad Khosrokhavar and Oliver Roy Comment sortir d’une revolution religieuse1 At the bar of my hotel in Tehran—or what used to be the bar in officially dry, postrevolutionary Iran—I sip…
What does it mean to be modern? Indonesia’s reformasi
How is a nation born? Otto von Bismarck, with his terrifying face, his huge body, and his heavy clothes, would answer “Through blood and iron.” … However, it is also essential to hold on to myths and even dreams—no matter…
Japan: The enigma of American power
“The Japanese can neither love the Americans nor endure being loved by them.” —Ambassador Sir Oliver Morland to the British Foreign Office, 1963(1) The air station at Kadena is not merely the largest of the 39 U.S. military bases in…
Remembering Japan: A bilateral history
“But the essence of a nation is that all the individuals share a great many things in common, and also that they have forgotten some things.” —Ernest Renan, What is a Nation?, 1881 A little more than a year ago,…
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