Journal articles on the topic 'Legends of Brittany'

The paper is a publication of unpublished text by E. Lucas Bridges about Indigenous Fuegians. It has been published earlier in Breizb ba Poblou Europa (Bretagneet Peoples d'Europe (Brittany and the Peoples of Europe, Pennadou an enor da/ Melanges en l’honneur de / articles to honor Per Denez, ed. Herve ar Bihan, published by Hor Yezh, Rennes 1999, pp. 427-441).

During the war, the accumulation of tensions, anguish and collective traumas form a "breeding ground" most conducive to the birth and proliferation of false news, rumors and legends. The first of them, spy mania, explodes in the first hours of the conflict. The home front becomes the scene of a veritable jingoistic outburst, leading many civilians to relentlessly hunt down this "enemy from within" demonized by propaganda focusing on German barbarism. In Brittany, this psychosis was cleverly prepared by pre-war publications denouncing the presence on the coast of a "vanguard of the German army". In this context, rumors and fantastic gossip abound and create suspicion towards anything that seems strange. These elements of false news, sometimes relayed by newspapers, are mainly spread orally, through wounded soldiers on leave or even refugees. They generally pass through the main communication crossroads, especially train stations. Thus, fed with rumors and legends, the population of the home front is actively involved in the hunt for spies, often degenerating into vengeful and irrational popular violence all the more embarrassing for the authorities that, as in this case, these spies are simply imaginary.

This article examines two bande dessinée versions of the Breton legend of the flooded city of Ker-Is, Robert Lortac’s 1943 À la découverte de Ker-Is (published in children’s magazine O lo lê) and Claude Auclair and Alain Deschamps’s 1981 Bran Ruz. It argues that through the continuation or appropriation of the legend, these comics offer ideologically filtered views of Bretonness and Brittany from two different politico-historical contexts, occupied France and the postcolonial era. The article also analyses how comic art can be used in productive ways to represent Brittany as a stateless culture, including through text-image reiteration or supplementarity, and using the double page for a bilingual parallel textual-visual practice. It concludes by suggesting that the study of internal colonialism and peripheries such as Brittany is an important addition to research into postcolonial comics.

Eddic poetry constitutes one of the most important genres in Old Norse or Scandinavian literature and has been studied since the earliest time of modern-day philology. The progress we have made in that field is impressive, considering the many excellent editions and translations, not to mention the countless critical studies in monographs and articles. Nevertheless, there is always a great need to revisit, to summarize, to review, and to digest the knowledge gained so far. The present handbook intends to address all those goals and does so, to spell it out right away, exceedingly well. But in contrast to traditional concepts, the individual contributions constitute fully developed critical article, each with a specialized topic elucidating it as comprehensively as possible, and concluding with a section of notes. Those are kept very brief, but the volume rounds it all off with an inclusive, comprehensive bibliography. And there is also a very useful index at the end. At the beginning, we find, following the table of contents, a list of the contributors, unfortunately without emails, a list of translations and abbreviations of the titles of Eddic poems in the Codex Regius and then elsewhere, and a very insightful and pleasant introduction by Carolyne Larrington. She briefly introduces the genre and then summarizes the essential points made by the individual authors. The entire volume is based on the Eddic Network established by the three editors in 2012, and on two workshops held at St. John’s College, Oxford in 2013 and 2014.

The ‘Yellow Plague’ (pestis flava, buidechair, ball felen, etc.) is a term used by Irish and Welsh authors working in the tenth century and later to describe several epidemics of the sixth and seventh centuries. This paper examines one particular set of stories about this illness found in Welsh sources written between 1100 and 1223, in which the Yellow Plague is responsible for a mass migration from Wales to Brittany. This legend, I argue, was likely created at Llancarfan in the late eleventh century from various older sources, including annals and saints’ Lives from Ireland and Brittany; I also provide an account of how this legend may have been transmitted to other Welsh centers, and suggest connections to other contem- porary works of pseudo-history, such as Geoffrey of Monmouth’s De gestis Britonum.

The evacuation of British children during World War II is read alongside the legend of the ‘Pied Piper’ after which the mass migration was officially named. While virtually every British account of World War II makes mention of the evacuation, most are silent on the question of its ominous title: ‘Operation Pied Piper’. This paper traces the legend's key theme – on influencing and being influenced – as it surfaces in the writing of one child analyst and one social worker charged with the responsibility of leading a family of five hostels for British youth. At a time when Hitler's deadly regime reached unprecedented heights across the Channel, the legend of the ‘Pied Piper’ becomes a highly suggestive metaphor for thinking about D. W. Winnicott and Clare Britton's writing on what authority could mean in the face of leadership gone terribly wrong. Quite another, profoundly intimate loss of leadership haunts their words as well: Sigmund Freud, in exile from Hitler's Europe and leader of the psychoanalytic movement, died in London just weeks after the first wave of Blitz evacuations. It is in this context that Winnicott and Britton articulated a theory of authority that could address the losses of history without at the same time demanding the loss of the mind.

This article considers the problem arising from the legend formed of St Helen’s British origin. The sources from Late Antiquity known to the early medieval Latin reader do not give an exact answer to the question of the saint’s motherland. Nevertheless, Aldhelm’s treatise Prosa de virginitate and the Old English translation of Bede from the eleventh century first mention her son Constantine the Great’s birth in Britain. Conspicuously, these testimonies became the basis on which the literary and mythological plot about St Helen began to develop. According to A. Harbus, the most likely source of the legend was the translation of Bede’s text mentioned above, which, in turn, went back to Eutropius. As a result of a misunderstanding, the phrase “Constantinus in Brittania creatus imperator” was translated as “Emperor Constantine, born in Britain”. According to our hypothesis, another possible source of the plot about Constantine was the reverse Latin translation of the Greek text that was used by Aldhelm. This text went back to the Greek version of Eutropius’ Breviary made by Paeanius in the fourth century AD. The legend of St Helen further developed relying on local folklore traditions, which received literary adaptation and reinterpretation. In Historia Anglorum by Henry of Huntingdon and Historia Britonum by Geoffrey of Monmouth, St Helen became the daughter of British King Coel. The Late Antiquity evidence of the saint’s low origin (stabularia) was ignored or forgotten. Welsh legendary-historical genealogies and folklore motifs reflected in The Mabinogion played an important role in the formation of the myth. It was the version of Geoffrey of Monmouth that became widespread and was used by English chroniclers until the fifteenth century. Interpreting the version of Geoffrey, Adam of Usk presents Britain as the ancestral home of the Roman emperors and the Greek Basileis. The stability of the myth of the British Helen is explained by its extraordinary attractiveness: it turned out to be an important link between Britain and the Roman Empire allowing the island’s “peripheral” history to be woven into the fabric of world history.

Somewhat to the surprise of the critics and the public, the exiled company of the Royal Opera House had a great success with their production of Benjamin Britten's “operetta,” Paul Bunyan, just before Christmas, 1997. Everyone knew the difficulties in advance – for instance, the piece has absolutely no dramatic momentum – but no one seems to have foreseen that the splendid music would carry all before it in a theatre, or that a highly accomplished cast would find so many moments of real comedy and pathos in performance. Even now it is hard to imagine the piece entering the regular repertory, but it is easy to foresee frequent revivals, and still more frequent concert performances.To an Americanist, however, the work presented as many unexpected problems as pleasures. The fault was entirely W. H. Auden's. His libretto is in many respects as brilliant and beautiful as the music (though at times it sinks to doggerel) but the theme he expounds sticks in my craw. Once upon a time the New World, he says, was nothing but virgin forest. Then Paul Bunyan, the giant, was born, and dreamed of felling trees – of being the greatest logger in history. And such he became. When the forests had all been cleared, “America” had emerged – the America of the farmer, the clerk, the hotel manager, and Hollywood. Paul Bunyan therefore moved on, leaving his followers with the message, “America is what you make it.”The difficulty is not simply that this myth of America seems ecologically and historically unsound to anyone who knows something of the pollution and despoliation inflicted by American logging companies; nor even that the total elimination of the natives from the story (except for one reference to fighting Indians) is a grave falsification; nor even that the accumulation of these and many other simplifications produce an effect that in today's terms is politically incorrect and in 1941 seems to have been thought patronizing. It is that to anyone with actual knowledge, however slight, of American history, Auden's myth is so inaccurate as to make any suspension of disbelief largely impossible. To take but one detail: as Auden said himself, Paul Bunyan is a post-industrial-revolution myth: he is a product of the nineteenth-century frontier, in the tall-tale tradition. The loggers, like the mountain men, the boatmen, the cowboys, and the slaves, were at the mercy of large economic forces; they consoled themselves for their impotence by developing the legend of the giant lumberjack who was invincible and omnipotent. The forests were far from virgin: if they were silent it was because first the game and then the original inhabitants had been driven off by the process of European settlement. Even in 1939, when the influence of F. J. Turner was at its height, Auden could have discovered these points – probably did discover them. But he chose to ignore them.

-Bill Maurer, Mimi Sheller, Consuming the Caribbean: From Arawaks to Zombies. New York: Routledge, 2003. ix + 252 pp.-Norman E. Whitten, Jr., Richard Price ,The root of roots: Or, how Afro-American anthropology got its start. Chicago: Prickly Paradigm Press/University of Chicago Press, 2003. 91 pp., Sally Price (eds)-Holly Snyder, Paolo Bernardini ,The Jews and the expansion of Europe to the West, 1450-1800. New York: Berghahn Books, 2001. xv + 567 pp., Norman Fiering (eds)-Bridget Brereton, Seymour Drescher, The mighty experiment: Free labor versus slavery in British emancipation. New York: Oxford University Press, 2002. 307 pp.-Jean Besson, Kathleen E.A. Monteith ,Jamaica in slavery and freedom: History, heritage and culture. Kingston; University of the West Indies Press, 2002. xx + 391 pp., Glen Richards (eds)-Michaeline A. Crichlow, Jean Besson, Martha Brae's two histories: European expansion and Caribbean culture-building in Jamaica. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2002. xxxi + 393 pp.-Christopher Schmidt-Nowara, Joseph C. Dorsey, Slave traffic in the age of abolition: Puerto Rico, West Africa, and the Non-Hispanic Caribbean, 1815-1859. Gainesville: University Press of Florida, 2003. xvii + 311 pp.-Arnold R. Highfield, Erik Gobel, A guide to sources for the history of the Danish West Indies (U.S. Virgin Islands), 1671-1917. Denmark: University Press of Southern Denmark, 2002. 350 pp.-Sue Peabody, David Patrick Geggus, Haitian revolutionary studies. Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2002. xii + 334 pp.-Gerdès Fleurant, Elizabeth McAlister, Rara! Vodou, power, and performance in Haiti and its Diaspora. Berkeley: University of California Press, 2002. xviii + 259 pp. and CD demo.-Michiel Baud, Ernesto Sagás ,The Dominican people: A documentary history. Princeton NJ: Marcus Wiener, 2003. xiii + 278 pp., Orlando Inoa (eds)-Samuel Martínez, Richard Lee Turits, Foundations of despotism: Peasants, the Trujillo regime, and modernity in Dominican history. Stanford CA: Stanford University Press, 2003. x + 384 pp.-Eric Paul Roorda, Bernardo Vega, Almoina, Galíndez y otros crímenes de Trujillo en el extranjero. Santo Domingo: Fundación Cultural Dominicana, 2001. 147 pp.''Diario de una misión en Washington. Santo Domingo: Fundación Cultural Dominicana, 2002. 526 pp.-Gerben Nooteboom, Aspha Bijnaar, Kasmoni: Een spaartraditie in Suriname en Nederland. Amsterdam: Uitgeverij Bert Bakker, 2002. 378 pp.-Dirk H.A. Kolff, Chan E.S. Choenni ,Hindostanen: Van Brits-Indische emigranten via Suriname tot burgers van Nederland. The Hague: Communicatiebureau Sampreshan, 2003. 224 pp., Kanta Sh. Adhin (eds)-Dirk H.A. Kolff, Sandew Hira, Het dagboek van Munshi Rahman Khan. The Hague: Amrit/Paramaribo: NSHI, 2003. x + 370 pp.-William H. Fisher, Neil L. Whitehead, Dark Shamans: Kanaimà and the poetics of violent death. Durham NC: Duke University Press, 2002. 309 pp.-David Scott, A.J. Simoes da Silva, The luxury of nationalist despair: George Lamming's fiction as decolonizing project. Amsterdam: Rodopi, 2000. 217 pp.-Lyn Innes, Maria Cristina Fumagalli, The flight of the vernacular. Amsterdam: Rodopi, 2001. xvi + 303 pp.-Maria Cristina Fumagalli, Tobias Döring, Caribbean-English passages: Intertextuality in a postcolonial tradition. London: Routledge, 2002. xii + 236 pp.-A. James Arnold, Celia Britton, Race and the unconscious: Freudianism in French Caribbean thought. Oxford: Legenda, 2002. 115 pp.-Nicole Roberts, Dorothy E. Mosby, Place, language, and identity in Afro-Costa Rican literature. Columbia: University of Missouri Press, 2003. xiii + 248 pp.-Stephen Steumpfle, Philip W. Scher, Carnival and the formation of a Caribbean transnation. Gainesville: University Press of Florida, 2003. xvi + 215 pp.-Peter Manuel, Frances R. Aparicho ,Musical migrations: transnationalism and cultural hybridity in Latin/o America, Volume 1. With Maria Elena Cepeda. New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2003. 216 pp., Candida F. Jaquez (eds)-Jorge Pérez Rolón, Maya Roy, Cuban Music. London: Latin America Bureau/Princeton NJ: Markus Wiener Publishers, 2002. ix + 246 pp.-Bettina M. Migge, Gary C. Fouse, The story of Papiamentu: A study in slavery and language. Lanham MD: University Press of America, 2002. x + 261 pp.-John M. McWhorter, Bettina Migge, Creole formation as language contact: the case of the Suriname creoles. Amsterdam: John Benjamins, 2003. xii + 151 pp.

Background. In recent years, there has been an increasing interest in the performing style issues in modern musicology. However, creative work of each musician provides new and new grounds for further reflection, in particular, the creativity of the outstanding contemporary singer Jonas Kaufmann. He is now at the height of his career and his works include opera roles and chamber programs based on the compositions by R. Wagner, J. Verdi, J. Massenet, J. Puccini, R. Strauss, F. Schubert, J. Bizet, and J. Paisiello. The urgency of this study exists owing to the lack of a scientific description of the creative work of J. Kaufmann. The objective of this study is to determine the main features of Kaufmann’s singing style from the point of view of the phenomenological approach. Methods. The complex research methodology is based on the theoretical substantiation of the analysis of a performer style through the positions of the phenomenology of creativity (research by E. Husserl, A. Losev, M. Arkadyev, G. Tsypin). The application of a systematic approach led also to the involvement of the theory of the performing style (research by V. Medushevsky, V. Moskalenko, and Yu. Nikolaievska). Results. The results of the research support the idea that J. Kaufmann’s singing style is a system of interrelated parameters. There are three components of the singing style. The first is related to the general phenomenon of style, the second – to the process of performance and the third – to the specifics of vocal performance. Thus, the musical style (component 1) is an expression of the peculiarities of musical thinking, and musical compositions are the product of dialogue and communication between the performer and the composer (according to V. Medushevsky). In this sense, the status of the performer, who, in fact, is the creator of the interpretation, is strengthened. For the theory of the performing style (component 2) the definition of V. Kholopova is relevant, that style is a «category-introvert» and the concept of «style of creative personality» (S.Shyp), «style of musical creativity» (V. Moskalenko), «type of creative personality» (E. Liberman),»archetype of a musician» (O. Katrych), which focus on individual characteristics, but in the perspective of the formation of universal features. The thinking of the performer-vocalist (component 3) is focused on the vocal-acting embodiment and reincarnation with the help of the voice as an instrument of what is laid down by the composer in the text of the composition, based on his own creative thinking and personality type. Thus, the definition is proposed: The performing vocal (singing) style is the integrity of the highest order, which manifests itself as a type of music-making, based on the characteristics of the timbre colouring of the sound and formed vocal techniques (orientation on language phonetics, rigor or improvisational freedom, expression, etc.). The noted theoretical provisions allow revealing more fully the specifics of J. Kaufmann’s performing style. In addition, basing on journalistic research, interviews and biographical materials, the periods of J. Kaufmann’s creative work has been proposed. Based on the guidelines of the phenomenology of creativity (G. Tsypin) and various interpretative versions of J. Kaufmann, the following components of his singing style have been formulated. 1. Intellectualism, conceptuality of the idea and «cyclicality» of the embodiment – the parameter that is manifested in the singer’s interpretation of the image of Faust in different interpretations (1999 – opera by F. Busoni, 2002, 2005, 2011, 2012, 2015 – dramatic legend by H. Berlioz and opera by S. Gounod, 2011 – symphony by F. Liszt). Moreover, the basis of the singer’s interpretations in the compositions by Ch. Gounod, F. Busoni, H. Berlioz is the German tradition of interpreting the image of Faust and, in particular, Goethe’s poem), which forms the integrity of the singer’s interpretative concept. It has been pointed out that J. Kaufmann always chooses complex programs (chamber cycles by R. Wagner, R. Strauss, G. Mahler) for the formation of liberabends, and the programs are dominated by song cycles «Five Songs on Matilda Wesendonk’s Poems» by R. Wagner, «Three Sonnets of Petrarch» by F. Liszt, «Seven Sonnets of Michelangelo» by B. Britten, «Winter Road» by F. Schubert, «Songs about the Dead Children» by G. Mahler), or evenings are even dedicated to the creative work of one composer (R. Wagner, R. Strauss, G. Mahler), which is reinterpreted by the singer and presented in a new emotional and intellectual key. 2. Commitment to director’s theatre. J. Kaufmann shares the views on the dominance of director’s theatre in the modern world, which he repeatedly noted in the interviews. And although, in particular, the interpretation of Faust as a character of the concepts of different directors is centred by the artist”s personal understanding of the depths of this image, still in different performances one can see its different shades (which depend on the director’s interpretations). 3. Composite system of vocal expression means that allow the singer to model different facets of images. It is noted that J. Kaufmann’s interpretations are characterized by: economy of performing means, commitment of the singer to the cantilena, the role of the rhythmic component in the vocal score, the ability to adjust his voice in different vocal ensembles, brilliant piano and mezzo voce, brightness of forte, filigree of diminuendo and more. J. Kaufmann treats the text (score) with respect, always knows the libretto, he never allows himself to exaggerate in terms of agogics, dynamics, etc.). In Kaufmann’s performance, masculinity always prevails. Conclusions. The essence of the phenomenon of J. Kaufmann’s work is the desire not to stand still, to move forward, to open new pages of music or to rethink already known ones, i. e. the tendency to constant self-development, in terms of phenomenology This applies to the interpretations of the works by F. Schubert, G. Mahler, R. Strauss, the mentioned interpretation of the image of Faust in the works of various composers, which demonstrates his constant rethinking. J. Kaufmann’s chamber performing is of great interest for the study of his style. The complexity and diversity of images, texts of works, the unity of style, the ability to distribute the power of the voice, to subordinate its capabilities to the artistic idea – these are the features that characterize a true master. In addition, in his control is to almost the entire tenor repertoire – opera, concert, and chamber. Overall, we regard him a singer of universal type.

Long, Heather and Ethan. Max and Milo Go to Sleep. New York: S&S/Aladdin, 2013. Print.In Max and Milo Go to Sleep, we read about two brothers who share a room. Max, the elder and very sleepy brother, is kept up by his younger brother Milo’s antics. Milo has tried counting sheep and still can’t sleep. Like any younger brother would, Milo calls to Max for help. Max suggests that Milo read a book but of course he doesn’t do that quietly, nor is that the last problem Milo has that night. After a series of problems, Max snaps. He can’t take Milo and his nightly sleep aversion routine. Mid lecture, Max realizes that Milo has finally gone to sleep. But will Max be able to catch his Zzzzs that night?This book is one of those children’s books that the parent may enjoy more than the child. It is written like a comic book so the cartoonish illustrations are crucial to the story. Max and Milo both have huge expressive faces which make it quite easy to pick up how each brother is feeling. Parents will surely sympathize and laugh out loud at Max’s exasperation with Milo who “never really [tries] to go to sleep.” A lot of detail was put into the pictures, for example Max had The Legend of Sleepy Hollow on his bedside table. My five-year old nephew thought that this book was ‘awesome and so funny’. Max and Milo is likely to become a bedtime favourite.Highly recommended: 4 stars out of 4 Reviewer: Brittany GregsonBrittany Gregson is a graduate of MacEwan University’s Library and Information Technology program.She works at the Family and Community Resource Centre, Alberta Children’s Hospital as the Child Health Information Specialist. Other than reading she enjoys both baking and crafting.

Introduction In November 2020, upon learning that the company’s Covid-19 vaccine trial had been successful, the head of Pfizer’s Vaccine Research and Development, Kathrin Jansen, celebrated with champagne – “some really good stuff” (Cohen). Bubbles seem to go naturally with celebration, and champagne is fundamentally associated with bubbles. Yet, until the late-seventeenth century, champagne was a still wine, and it only reached the familiar levels of bubbliness in the late-nineteenth century (Harding). During this period and on into the early twentieth century, “champagne” was in many ways created, defined, and defended. A “champagne bubble” was created, within which the “nature” of champagne was contested and constructed. Champagne today is the result of hundreds of years of labour by many sorts of bubble-makers: those who make the bubbly drink, and those who construct, maintain, and defend the champagne bubble. In this article, I explore some elements of the champagne bubble, in order to understand both its fragility and rigidity over the years and today. Creating the Champagne Bubble – the Labour of Centuries It is difficult to separate the physical from the mythical as regards champagne. Therefore the categorisations below are always overlapping, and embedded in legal, political, economic, and socio-cultural factors. Just as assemblage – the mixing of wine from different grapes – is an essential element of champagne wine, the champagne bubble may be called heterogeneous assemblage. Indeed, the champagne bubble, as we will see below, is a myriad of different sorts of bubbles, such as terroir, appellation, myth and brand. And just as any assemblage, its heterogeneous elements exist and operate in relation to each other. Therefore the “champagne bubble” discussed here is both one and many, all of its elements fundamentally interconnected, constituting that “one” known as “champagne”. It is not my intention to be comprehensive of all the elements, historical and contemporary. Indeed, that would not be possible within such a short article. Instead, I seek to demonstrate some of the complexity of the champagne bubble, noting the elaborate labour that has gone into its creation. The Physical Champagne and Champagne – from Soil to Bubbles Champagne means both a legally protected geographical area (Champagne), and the wine (here: champagne) produced in this area from grapes defined as acceptable: most importantly pinot noir, pinot meunier (“black” grapes), and chardonnay (“white” grape). The method of production, too, is regulated and legally protected: méthode champenoise. Although the same method is used in numerous locations, these must be called something different: metodo classico (Italy), método tradicional (Spain), Methode Cap Classique (South Africa). The geographical area of Champagne was first legally defined in 1908, when it only included the areas of Marne and Aisne, leaving out, most importantly, the area of Aube. This decision led to severe unrest and riots, as the Aube vignerons revolted in 1911, forcing the inclusion of “zone 2”: Aube, Haute-Marne, and Seine-et-Marne (Guy). Behind these regulations was a surge in fraudulent production in the early twentieth century, as well as falling wine prices resulting from increasing supply of cheap wines (Colman 18). These first appellations d’origine had many consequences – they proved financially beneficial for the “zone 1”, but less so for the “zone 2”. When both these areas were brought under the same appellation in 1927, the financial benefits were more limited – but this may have been due to the Great Depression triggered in 1929 (Haeck et al.). It is a long-standing belief that the soil and climate of Champagne are key contributors to the quality of champagne wines, said to be due to “conditions … most suitable for making this type of wine” (Simon 11). Already in the end of the nineteenth century, the editor of Vigneron champenois attributed champagne’s quality to “a fortunate combination of … chalky soil … [and] unrivalled exposure [to the sun]” (Guy 119) among other things. Factors such as soil and climate, commonly included in and expressed through the idea of terroir, undoubtedly influence grapes and wines made thereof, but the extent remains unproven. Indeed, terroir itself is a very contested concept (Teil; Inglis and Almila). It is also the case that climate change has had, and will continue to have, devastating effects on wine production in many areas, while benefiting others. The highly successful English sparkling wine production, drawing upon know-how from the Champagne area, has been enabled by the warming climate (Inglis), while Champagne itself is at risk of becoming too hot (Robinson). Champagne is made through a process more complicated than most wines. I present here the bare bones of it, to illustrate the many challenges that had to be overcome to enable its production in the scale we see today. Freshly picked grapes are first pressed and the juice is fermented. Grape juice contains natural yeasts and therefore will ferment spontaneously, but fermentation can also be started with artificial yeasts. In fermentation, alcohol and carbon dioxide (CO2) are formed, but the latter usually escapes the liquid. The secret of champagne is its second fermentation, which happens in bottles, after wines from different grapes and/or vineyards have been blended for desired characteristics (assemblage). For the second fermentation, yeast and sugar are added. As the fermentation happens inside a bottle, the CO2 that is created does not escape, but dissolves into the wine. The average pressure inside a champagne bottle in serving temperature is around 5 bar – 5 times the pressure outside the bottle (Liger-Belair et al.). The obvious challenge this method poses has to do with managing the pressure. Exploding bottles used to be a common problem, and the manner of sealing bottles was not very developed, either. Seventeenth-century developments in bottle-making, and using corks to seal bottles, enabled sparkling wines to be produced in the first place (Leszczyńska; Phillips 137). Still today, champagne comes in heavy-bottomed bottles, sealed with characteristically shaped cork, which is secured with a wire cage known as muselet. Scientific innovations, such as calculating the ideal amount of sugar for the second fermentation in 1836, also helped to control the amount of gas formed during the second fermentation, thus making the behaviour of the wine more predictable (Leszczyńska 265). Champagne is characteristically a “manufactured” wine, as it involves several steps of interference, from assemblage to dosage – sugar added for flavour to most champagnes after the second fermentation (although there are also zero dosage champagnes). This lends champagne particularly suitable for branding, as it is possible to make the wine taste the same year after year, harvest after harvest, and thus create a distinctive and recognisable house style. It is also possible to make champagnes for different tastes. During the nineteenth century, champagnes of different dosage were made for different markets – the driest for the British, the sweetest for the Russians (Harding). Bubbles are probably the most striking characteristic of champagne, and they are enabled by the complicated factors described above. But they are also formed when the champagne is poured in a glass. Natural impurities on the surface of the glass provide channels through which the gas pockets trapped in the wine can release themselves, forming strains of rising bubbles (Liger-Belair et al.). Champagne glasses have for centuries differed from other wine glasses, often for aesthetic reasons (Harding). The bubbles seem to do more than give people aesthetic pleasure and sensory experiences. It is often claimed that champagne makes you drunk faster than other drinks would, and there is, indeed, some (limited) research showing that this may well be the case (Roberts and Robinson; Ridout et al.). The Mythical Champagne – from Dom Pérignon to Modern Wonders Just as the bubbles in a champagne glass are influenced by numerous forces, so the metaphorical champagne bubble is subject to complex influences. Myth-creation is one of the most significant of these. The origin of champagne as sparkling wine is embedded in the myth of Dom Pérignon of Hautvillers monastery (1638–1715), who according to the legend would have accidentally developed the bubbles, and then enthusiastically exclaimed “I am drinking the stars!” (Phillips 138). In reality, bubbles are a natural phenomenon provoked by winter temperatures deactivating the fermenting yeasts, and spring again reactivating them. The myth of Dom Pérignon was first established in the nineteenth century and quickly embraced by the champagne industry. In 1937, Moët et Chandon launched a premium champagne called Dom Pérignon, which enjoys high reputation until this day (Phillips). The champagne industry has been active in managing associations connected with champagne since the nineteenth century. Sparkling champagnes had already enjoyed fashionability in the later seventeenth and early eighteenth century, both in the French Court, and amongst the British higher classes. In the second half of the nineteenth century, champagne found ever increasing markets abroad, and the clientele was not aristocratic anymore. Before the 1860s, champagne’s association was with high status celebration, as well as sexual activity and seduction (Harding; Rokka). As the century went on, and champagne sales radically increased, associations with “modernity” were added: “hot-air balloons, towering steamships, transcontinental trains, cars, sports, and other ‘modern’ wonders were often featured in quickly proliferating champagne advertising” (Rokka 280). During this time, champagne grew both drier and more sparkling, following consumer tastes (Harding). Champagne’s most important markets in later nineteenth century included the UK, where the growing middle classes consumed champagne for both celebration and hospitality (Harding), the US, where (upper) middle-class women were served champagne in new kinds of consumer environments (Smith; Remus), and Russia, where the upper classes enjoyed sweeter champagne – until the Revolution (Phillips 296). The champagne industry quickly embraced the new middle classes in possession of increasing wealth, as well as new methods of advertising and marketing. What is remarkable is that they managed to integrate enormously varied cultural thematics and still retain associations with aristocracy and luxury, while producing and selling wine in industrial scale (Harding; Rokka). This is still true today: champagne retains a reputation of prestige, despite large-scale branding, production, and marketing. Maintaining and Defending the Bubble: Formulas, Rappers, and the Absolutely Fabulous Tipplers The falling wine prices and increasing counterfeit wines coincided with Europe’s phylloxera crisis – the pest accidentally brought over from North America that almost wiped out all Europe’s vineyards. The pest moved through Champagne in the 1890s, killing vines and devastating vignerons (Campbell). The Syndicat du Commerce des vins de Champagne had already been formed in 1882 (Rokka 280). Now unions were formed to fight phylloxera, such as the Association Viticole Champenoise in 1898. The 1904 Fédération Syndicale des Vignerons was formed to lobby the government to protect the name of Champagne (Leszczyńska 266) – successfully, as we have seen above. The financial benefits from appellations were certainly welcome, but short-lived. World War I treated Champagne harshly, with battle lines stuck through the area for years (Guy 187). The battle went on also in the lobbying front. In 1935, a new appellation regime was brought into law, which came to be the basis for all European systems, and the Comité National des appellations d'origine (CNAO) was founded (Colman 1922). Champagne’s protection became increasingly international, and continues to be so today under EU law and trade deals (European Commission). The post-war recovery of champagne relied on strategies used already in the “golden years” – marketing and lobbying. Advertising continued to embrace “luxury, celebration, transport (extending from air travel to the increasingly popular automobile), modernity, sports” (Guy 188). Such advertisement must have responded accurately to the mood of post-war, pre-depression Europe. Even in the prohibition US it was known that the “frivolous” French women might go as far as bathe in champagne, like the popular actress Mistinguett (Young 63). Curiously, in the 1930s Soviet Russia, “champagne” (not produced in Champagne) was declared a sign of good living, symbolising the standard of living that any Soviet worker had access to (at least in theory) (Gronow). Today, the reputation of champagne is fiercely defended in legal terms. This is not only in terms of protection against other sparkling wine making areas, but also in terms of exploitation of champagne’s reputation by actors in other commercial fields, and even against mass market products containing genuine champagne (Mahy and d’Ath; Schneider and Nam). At the same time, champagne has been widely “democratised” by mass production, enabled partly by increasing mechanisation and scientification of champagne production from the 1950s onwards (Leszczyńska 266). Yet champagne retains its association with prestige, luxury, and even royalty. This has required some serious adaptation and flexibility. In what follows, I look into three cultural phenomena that illuminate processes of such adaptation: Formula One (F1) champagne spraying, the 1990s sitcom Absolutely Fabulous, and the Cristal racism scandal in 2006. The first champagne bottle is said to have been presented to F1 grand prix winner in Champagne in 1950 (Wheels24). Such a gesture would have been fully in line with champagne’s association with cars, sport, and modernity. But what about the spraying? Surely that is not in line with the prestige of the wine? The first spraying is attributed to Jo Siffert in 1966 and Dan Gurney in 1967, the former described as accidental, the latter as a spontaneous gesture of celebration (Wheels24; Dobie). Moët had become the official supplier of F1 champagnes in 1966, and there are no signs that the new custom would have been problematic for them, as their sponsorship continued until 1999, after which Mumm sponsored the sport for 15 years. Today, the champagne to be popped and sprayed is Chanson, in special bottles “coated in the same carbon fibre that F1 cars are made of” (Wheels24). Such an iconic status has the spraying gained that it features in practically all TV broadcasts concerning F1, although non-alcoholic substitute is used in countries where sale of alcohol is banned (Barker et al., “Quantifying”; Barker et al., “Alcohol”). As disturbing as the champagne spraying might look for a wine snob, it is perfectly in line with champagne’s marketing history and entrepreneurial spirit shown since the nineteenth century. Nor is it unheard of to let champagne spray. The “art” of sabrage, opening champagne bottle with a sable, associated with glamour, spectacle, and myth – its origin is attributed to Napoleon and his officers – is perfectly acceptable even for the snob. Sparkling champagne was always bound up with joy and celebration, not a solemn drink, and the champagne bubble was able to accommodate middle classes as well as aristocrats. This brings us to our second example, the British sitcom Absolutely Fabulous. The show, first released in 1992, featured two women, “Eddy” (Jennifer Saunders) and “Patsy” (Joanna Lumley), who spent their time happily smoking, taking drugs, and drinking large quantities of “Bolly” (among other things). Bollinger champagne may have initially experienced “a bit of a shock” for being thus addressed, but soon came to see the benefits of fame (French). In 2005, they hired PR support to make better use of the brand’s “Ab Fab” recognisability, and to improve its prestige reputation in order to justify their higher price range (Cann). Saunders and Lumley were warmly welcomed by the Bollinger house when filming for their champagne tour Absolutely Champers (2017). It is befitting indeed that such controversial fame came from the UK, the first country to discover sparkling champagne outside France (Simon 48), and where the aspirational middle classes were keen to consume it already in the nineteenth century (Harding). More controversial still is the case of Cristal (made by Louis Roederer) and the US rap world. Enthusiastically embraced by the “bling-bling” world of (black) rappers, champagne seems to fit their ethos well. Cristal was long favoured as both a drink and a word in rap lyrics. But in 2006, the newly appointed managing director at the family owned Roederer, Frédéric Rouzaud, made comments considered racist by many (Woodland). Rouzard told in an interview with The Economist that the house observed the Cristal-rap association “with curiosity and serenity”. He reportedly continued: “but what can we do? We can’t forbid people from buying it. I’m sure Dom Pérignon or Krug would be delighted to have their business”. It was indeed those two brands that the rapper Jay-Z replaced Cristal with, when calling for a boycott on Cristal. It would be easy to dismiss Rouzard’s comments as snobbery, or indeed as racism, but they merit some more reflection. Cristal is the premium wine of a house that otherwise does not enjoy high recognisability. While champagne’s history involves embracing new sorts of clientele, and marketing flexibly to as many consumer groups as possible (Rokka), this was the first spectacular crossing of racial boundaries. It was always the case that different houses and their different champagnes were targeted at different clienteles, and it is apparent that Cristal was not targeted at black rap artists. Whereas Bollinger was able to turn into a victory the questionable fame brought by the white middle-class association of Absolutely Fabulous, the more prestigious Cristal considered the attention of the black rapper world more threatening and acted accordingly. They sought to defend their own brand bubble, not the larger champagne bubble. Cristal’s reputation seems to have suffered little – its 2008 vintage, launched in 2018, was the most traded wine of that year (Schultz). Jay-Z’s purchase of his own champagne brand (Armand de Brignac, nicknamed Ace of Spades) has been less successful reputation-wise (Greenburg). It is difficult to break the champagne bubble, and it may be equally difficult to break into it. Conclusion In this article, I have looked into the various dilemmas the “bubble-makers” of Champagne encountered when fabricating what is today known as “champagne”. There have been moments of threat to the bubble they formed, such as in the turn of nineteenth and twentieth centuries, and eras of incomparable success, such as from the 1860s to 1880s. The discussion has demonstrated the remarkable flexibility with which the makers and defenders of champagne have responded to challenges, and dealt with material, socio-cultural, economic, and other problems. It feels appropriate to end with a note on the current challenge the champagne industry faces: Covid-19. The pandemic hit champagne sales exceptionally hard, leaving around 100 million bottles unsold (Micallef). This was not very surprising, given the closure of champagne-selling venues, banning of public and private celebrations, and a general mood not particularly prone to (or even likely to frown upon) such light-hearted matters as glamour and champagne. Champagne has survived many dramatic drops in sales during the twentieth century, such as the Great Depression of the 1930s, and the post-financial crisis collapse in 2009. Yet they seem to be able to make astonishing recoveries. Already, there are indicators that many people consumed more champagne during the festive end-of-year season than in previous years (Smithers). For the moment, it looks like the champagne bubble, despite its seeming fragility, is practically indestructible, no matter how much its elements may suffer under various pressures and challenges. References Barker, Alexander, Magdalena Opazo-Breton, Emily Thomson, John Britton, Bruce Granti-Braham, and Rachael L. Murray. “Quantifying Alcohol Audio-Visual Content in UK Broadcasts of the 2018 Formula 1 Championship: A Content Analysis and Population Exposure.” BMJ Open 10 (2020): e037035. <https://bmjopen.bmj.com/content/10/8/e037035>. Barker, Alexander B., John Britton, Bruce Grant-Braham, and Rachael L. Murray. “Alcohol Audio-Visual Content in Formula 1 Television Broadcasting.” BMC Public Health 18 (2018): 1155. <https://bmcpublichealth.biomedcentral.com/articles/10.1186/s12889-018-6068-3>. Campbell, Christy. Phylloxera: How Wine Was Saved for the World. London: Harper, 2004. Cann, Richard. “Bolllinger Signs Agency to Reclaim Ab Fab Status.” PR Week 4 Mar. 2005. 4 Mar. 2021 <https://www.prweek.com/article/472221/bollinger-signs-agency-reclaim-ab-fab-status>. Cohen, Jon. “Champagne and Questions Greet First Data Showing That a COVID-19 Vaccine Works.” Science 9 Nov. 2020. 4 Mar. 2021 <https://www.sciencemag.org/news/2020/11/champagne-and-questions-greet-first-data-showing-covid-19-vaccine-works>. Colman, Tyler. Wine Politics: How Governments, Environmentalists, Mobsters, and Critics Influence the Wines We Drink. Berkeley: University of California Press, 2008. Dobie, Stephen. “The Story of Motorsport’s First Ever Champagne Spray.” TopGear 15 Jan. 2018. 4 Mar. 2021 <https://www.topgear.com/car-news/motorsport/story-motorsports-first-ever-champagne-spray>. European Commission. “Wine.” 4 Mar. 2021 <https://ec.europa.eu/info/food-farming-fisheries/plants-and-plant-products/plant-products/wine_en#:~:text=Related%20links-,Overview,consumption%20and%2070%25%20of%20exports>. French, Phoebe. “Joanna Lumley and Jennifer Saunders to Star in Absolutely Champers.” The Drinks Business 20 Dec. 2017. 4 Mar. 2021 <https://www.thedrinksbusiness.com/2017/12/joanna-lumley-and-jennifer-saunders-to-star-in-absolutely-champers/>. Greenburg, Zack O. “The Real Story behind Jay Z's Champagne Deal.” Forbes 6 Nov. 2014. 4 Mar. 2021 <https://www.forbes.com/sites/zackomalleygreenburg/2014/11/06/why-jay-zs-champagne-news-isnt-so-new/?sh=6e4eb8f07528>. Gronow, Jukka. “Caviar with Champagne Good Life and Common Luxury in Stalin's Soviet Union.” Suomen Antropologi 4 (1998). Guy, Colleen M. When Champagne Became French: Wine and the Making of a National Identity. London: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2003. Haeck, Catherine, Giulia Meloni, and Johan Swinnen. “The Value of Terroir: A Historical Analysis of the Bordeaux and Champagne Geographical Indications.” Applied Economic Perspectives and Policy 41.4 (2019): 598–619. <https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/abs/10.1093/aepp/ppz026>. Harding, Graham. “The Making of Modern Champagne: How and Why the Taste for and the Taste of Champagne Changed in Nineteenth Century Britain.” Consumption Markets & Culture 42.1 (2021): 6-29. <https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/10253866.2020.1713765?journalCode=gcmc20>. Inglis, David. “Wine Globalization: Longer-Term Dynamics and Contemporary Patterns.” The Globalization of Wine. Eds. David Inglis and Anna-Mari Almila. London: Bloomsbury, 2019. 21-46. Inglis, David, and Anna-Mari Almila. “Introduction: The Travels and Tendencies of Wine.” The Globalization of Wine. Eds. David Inglis and Anna-Mari Almila. London: Bloomsbury, 2019. 1-20. Leszczyńska, D. “A Cluster and Its Trajectory: Evidence from the History of the French Champagne Production Cluster.” Labor History 57.2 (2016): 258-276. <https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/0023656X.2016.1161140>. Liger-Belair, Gérard, Guillaume Polidori, and Philippe Jeandet. “Recent Advances in the Science of Champagne Bubbles.” Chemical Society Reviews 37 (2008): 2490–2511. <https://pubs.rsc.org/en/content/articlelanding/2008/cs/b717798b#!divAbstract>. Mahy, Aude, and Florence d’Ath. “The Case of the ‘Champagner Sorbet’ – Unlawful Exploitation or Legitimate Use of the Protected Name ‘Champagne’?” EFFL 1 (2017): 43-48. <https://www.jstor.org/stable/26451418?seq=1>. Micallef, Joseph V. “How Champagne Is Bouncing Back after the COVID-19 Pandemic.” Forbes 15 Nov. 2020. 4 Mar. 2021 <https://www.forbes.com/sites/joemicallef/2020/11/15/how-champagne-is-bouncing-back-after-the-covid-19-pandemic/?sh=3300e4125784>. Phillips, Rod. A Short History of Wine. London: Penguin, 2000. Remus, Emily A. “Tippling Ladies and the Making of Consumer Culture: Gender and Public Space in ‘Fin-de- Siècle’ Chicago.” The Journal of American History 101.3 (2014): 751-77. <https://academic.oup.com/jah/article/101/3/751/796447?login=true>. Ridout, Fran, Stuart Gould, Carlo Nunes, and Ian Hindmarch. “The Effects of Carbon Dioxide in Champagne on Psychometric Performance and Blood-Alcohol Concentration.” Alcohol and Alcoholism 38.4 (2003): 381-85. <https://academic.oup.com/alcalc/article/38/4/381/232628>. Roberts, C., and S.P. Robinson. “Alcohol Concentration and Carbonation of Drinks: The Effect on Blood Alcohol Levels.” Journal of Forensic and Legal Medicine 14.7 (2007): 398-405. <https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/17720590/>. Robinson, Frances. “Champagne Will Be Too Hot for Champagne Research Warns.” Decanter. 12 Jan. 2004. 4 Mar. 2021 <https://www.decanter.com/wine-news/champagne-will-be-too-hot-for-champagne-research-warns-103258/>. Rokka, Joonas. “Champagne: Marketplace Icon.” Consumption Markets & Culture 20.3 (2017): 275-283. <https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/10253866.2016.1177990?journalCode=gcmc20>. Schneider, Marius, and Nora Ho Tu Nam. “Champagne Makes the Dough Sour: EUIPO Board of Appeal Allows Opposition against Registration of Champagnola Trade Mark Based on Evocation of Champagne PDO.” Journal of Intellectual Property Law & Practice 15.9 (2020): 675-676. <https://academic.oup.com/jiplp/article/15/9/675/5905791>. Schultz, Abby. “20 Minutes With: Frédéric Rouzaud on Cristal, Biodynamics, and Zero Dosage.” Penta. 31 Dec. 2018. 4 Mar. 2021 <https://www.barrons.com/articles/20-minutes-with-frederic-rouzaud-on-cristal-biodynamics-and-zero-dosage-01546280265>. Simon, André L. The History of Champagne. London: Octobus, 1972. Smith, Andrew F. Drinking History: Fifteen Turning Points in the Making of American Beverages. New York: Columbia University Press, 2013. Smithers, Rebecca. “Britons Turn to Luxury Food and Drink to See Out Dismal 2020 in Style.” The Guardian 28 Dec. 2020. 4 Mar. 2021 <https://www.theguardian.com/business/2020/dec/28/britons-turn-luxury-food-drink-see-out-dismal-2020-style?CMP=Share_AndroidApp_Gmail>. Teil, Geneviève. “No Such Thing as Terroir? Objectivities and the Regimes of Existence of Objects.” Science, Technology & Human Values 37.5 (2012): 478-505. <https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/abs/10.1177/0162243911423843>. Wheels24. “Champagne Returns to F1 podium.” 2 Aug. 2017. 4 Mar. 2021 <https://www.news24.com/wheels/FormulaOne/champagne-returns-to-f1-podium-20170802>. Woodland, Richard. “Rapper Jay-Z Boycotts ‘Racist’ Cristal.” Decanter 16 June 2006. 4 Mar. 2021 <https://www.decanter.com/wine-news/rapper-jay-z-boycotts-racist-cristal-94054/>. Young, Robert K. “Out of the Ashes: The American Press and France's Postwar Recovery in the 1920s.” Historical Reflections / Réflexions Historiques 28.1 (2002): 51-72. <https://www.jstor.org/stable/41299224?seq=1>.

IntroductionThe perception of the archive as the warehouse of tradition is inflected with the notion that what it stores is also removed from the everyday, at once ancient but also irrelevant, standing still outside time. Yet, if the past is of any relevance, the archive cannot maintain a rigid fixity that does not intersect with the present. In the work of the Atlas Group, the fabrication of “archival material” reflects what Hal Foster has termed an “archival impulse” that is constructed of multiple temporalities. The Atlas Group archive interrogates forms that are at once still, excavated from life, while still being in the present. In the process, the reductive singularity of the archive as an immobile monument is opened up to the complexity of a radical stillness through which the past enters the present in a moment of recognition. What is still, and what is still there, intersect in the productivity of a stillness that cuts through an undifferentiated continuity. This juncture echoes the Benjaminian flash which heralds the arrival of past in the presentTo articulate the past historically does not mean to recognize it ‘the way it really was’ (Ranke). It means to seize hold of a memory as it flashes up at a moment of danger. (Benjamin, Theses)Klee’s Angelus Novus stands still between past and future as a momentary suspension of motion brings history and prophecy into the present. For “the historian of the dialectic at a standstill”, Walter Benjamin, historical materialism was not simply a means of accessing the past in the present, but of awakening the potential of the future (Tiedemann 944-945). This, Rolf Tiedemann suggests, was the revolution of historical perception that Benjamin wanted to bring about in his unfinished Arcades Project (941). By carrying the principle of montage into history, Benjamin indicates an intention “to discover in the analysis of the small individual moment the crystal of the total event” (Benjamin Arcades 461). This principle had already been alluded to in his “Theses on the Philosophy of History” where he had written that a historical materialist cannot do without a present in which time stands still, and later, that it is in the arrest of thought that what has been and what will be “crystallizes into a monad” (Benjamin “Theses” 262-263).Everywhere in Benjamin’s writings on history, there is something of the irreducibility of the phrase “standing still”. Standing still: still as an active, ongoing form of survival and endurance, still as an absence of movement. The duality of stillness is amplified as semantic clarity vacillates between one possibility and another: to endure and to be motionless. Is it possible to reduce “standing still” to a singularity? Benjamin’s counsel to take hold of memory at the “moment of danger” might be an indication of this complexity. The “moment of danger” emerges as the flash of the past in the present, but also the instant at which the past could recede into the inertia of eternity, at once a plea against the reduction of the moment into a “dead time” and recognition of the productivity of stillness.Something of that “flash” surfaces in Gilles Deleuze’s reading of Michel Foucault: “a first light opens up things and brings forth visibilities as flashes and shimmerings, which are the ‘second light’” (Deleuze 50). The first flash makes “visibilities visible” and determines what can be seen in a given historical period, while the second makes “statements articulable” and defines what can be said (Deleuze 50). These visibilities and statements, however, are distributed into the stratum and constitute knowledge as “stratified, archivized, and endowed with a relatively rigid segmentarity” (Deleuze 61). Strata are historically determined, what they constitute of perceptions and discursive formations varies across time and results in the presence of thresholds between the stratum that come to behave as distinct layers subject to splits and changes in direction (Deleuze 44). Despite these temporal variations that account for differences across thresholds, the strata appear as fixed entities, they mimic rock formations shaped over thousands of years of sedimentation (Deleuze and Guattari 45). Reading Deleuze on Foucault in conjunction with his earlier collaborative work with Felix Guattari brings forth distant shadows of another “stratification”. A Thousand Plateaus is notably less interested in discursive formations and more concerned with “striation”, the organisation and arrangement of space by the diagrams of power. Striated space is state space. It is offset by moving in the opposite direction, effectively turning striated space into smooth space (Deleuze and Guattari 524).Whether on striation or stratification, Deleuze’s work exhibits more than a cautionary distrust of processes of classification, regulation, and organization. Despite the flash that brings visibilities and statements into being, stratification, as much as striation, remains a technique of knowledge shaped by the strategies of power. It is interesting however, that Deleuze sees something as indeterminate as a flash, creating structures that are as determined as stratum. Yet perhaps this is a deceptive conjecture since while the strata appear relatively rigid they are also “extremely mobile” (Deleuze and Guattari 553). Foucault had already given an indication that what the archaeological method uncovers is not necessarily suspended, but rather that it suspends the notion of an absolute continuity (Archaeology 169). He suggests that “history is that which transforms documents into monuments” (7). The task of archaeology, it would seem, is to recover documents from monuments by demonstrating rather than reversing the process of sedimentation and without necessarily relying on a motionless past. While there is a relative, albeit interstratically tentative, stillness in the strata, absolute destratification proceeds towards deterritorialisation through incessant movement (Deleuze and Guattari 62-63).If A Thousand Plateaus is any indication, the imperative for the creative thinker today seems to be stirring in this direction: movement, motion, animation. Whatever forms of resistance are to be envisioned, it is motion, rather than stillness, that emerges as a radical form of action (Deleuze and Guattari 561). The question raised by these theoretical interventions is not so much whether such processes are indeed valuable forms of opposition, but rather, whether movement is always the only means, or the most effective means, of resistance? To imagine resistance as “staying in place” seems antithetical to nomadic thinking but is it not possible to imagine moments when the nomad resists not by travelling, but by dwelling? What of all those living a life of forced nomadism, or dying nomadic deaths, those for whom movement is merely displacement and loss? In Metamorphoses Rosi Braidotti reflects upon forced displacement and loss, yet her emphasis nonetheless remains on “figurations”, mappings of identity through time and space, mappings of movement (2-3). Braidotti certainly does not neglect the victims of motion, those who are forced to move, yet she remains committed to nomadism as a form of becoming. Braidotti’s notion of “figurations” finds a deeply poignant expression in Joseph Pugliese’s textual maps of some of these technically “nomadic” bodies and their movement from the North African littoral into the waters of the Mediterranean where they eventually surface on southern European shores as corpses (Pugliese 15). While Braidotti recognizes the tragedy of these involuntary nomads, it is in Pugliese’s work that this tragedy is starkly exposed and given concrete form in the figures of Europe’s refugees. This is movement as death, something akin to what Paul Virilio calls inertia, the product of excessive speed, the uncanny notion of running to stand still (Virilio 16).This tension between motion and stillness surfaces again in Laura Marks’ essay “Asphalt Nomadism.” Despite wanting to embrace the desert as a smooth space Marks retorts that “smooth space seems always to be elsewhere” (Marks 126). She notes the stability of the acacia trees and thorny shrubs in the desert and the way that nomadic people are constantly beset with invitations from the “civilising forces of religion and the soporific of a daily wage” (Marks 126). Emphatically she concludes that “the desert is never really ‘smooth’, for that is death” (Marks 126). On this deviation from Deleuze and Guattari’s notion of the desert as smooth space she concludes: “we who inherit their thinking need to stay on the ground: both in thought, moving close to the surface of concepts, and literally, remaining alert to signs of life in the sand and the scrub of the desert” (Marks 126). In Marks’ appeal for groundedness the tension between motion and stillness is maintained rather than being resolved through recourse to smoothness or in favour of perpetual movement. The sedentary and still structures that pervade the desert remain: the desert could not exist without them. In turn we might ask whether even the most rigorous abstraction can convince us that the ground between radical nomadism and perpetual displacement does not also need to be rethought. Perhaps this complexity is starkest when we begin to think about war, not only the potentiality of the war-machine to destabilize the state (Deleuze and Guattari 391), but war as the deterritorialisation of bodies, lives and livelihoods. Is the war of nomadism against the state not somehow akin to war as the violence that produces nomadic bodies through forced displacement? One of the questions that strikes me about the work of the Atlas Group, “an imaginary non-profit research foundation established in Beirut to research and document the contemporary history of Lebanon” (Raad 68) through the production and exhibition of “archival” material, is whether their propensity towards still forms in the creation of documentary evidence cannot be directly attributed to war as perpetual movement and territorial flexibility, as the flattening of structure and the creation of “smooth space” (Deleuze and Guattari 389). One need only think of the reigns of terror that begin with destratification – abolishing libraries, destroying documents, burning books. On the work of the Atlas Group, Andre Lepecki offers a very thorough introduction:The Atlas Group is an ongoing visual and performative archival project initiated by Walid Raad …whose main topic and driving force are the multiple and disparate events that history and habit have clustered into one singularity named “The Lebanese Civil Wars of 1975-1991”. (Lepecki 61).While the “inventedness” of the Atlas Group’s archive, its “post-event” status as manufactured evidence, raises a myriad of questions about how to document the trauma of war, its insistence on an “archival” existence, rather than say a purely artistic one, also challenges the presumption that the process of becoming, indeed of producing or even creating, is necessarily akin to movement or animation by insisting on the materiality of producing “documents” as opposed to the abstraction of producing “art”. The Atlas Group archive does not contribute directly to the transformation of visibilities into statements so much as statements into visibilities. Indeed, the “archival impulse” that seems to be present here works against the constitution of discursive formations precisely by making visible those aspects of culture which continue to circulate discursively while not necessarily existing. In other words, if one reads the sedimentary process of stratification as forming knowledge by allowing the relationships between “words” and “things” to settle or to solidify into historical strata, then the Atlas Group project seems to tap into the stillness of these stratified forms in order to reverse the signification of “things” and “words”. Hal Foster’s diagnosis of an “archival impulse” is located in a moment where, as he says, “almost anything goes and almost nothing sticks” in reference to the current obliviousness of contemporary artistic practices to political culture (Foster 2-3). Foster’s observation endows this paper with more than just an appropriate title since what Foster seems to identify are the limitations of the current obsession with speed. What one senses in the Atlas Group’s “archival impulse” and Foster’s detection of an “archival impulse” at play in contemporary cultural practices is a war against the war on form, a war against erasure through speed, and an inclination to dwell once more in the dusty matter of the past, rather than to pass through it. Yet the archive, in the view of nomadology, might simply be what Benjamin Hutchens terms “the dead-letter office of lived memory” (38). Indeed Hutchens’s critical review of the archive is both timely and relevant pointing out that “the preservation of cultural memories eradicated from culture itself” simply establishes the authority of the archive by erasing “the incessant historical violence” through which the archive establishes itself (Hutchens 38). In working his critique through Derrida’s Archive Fever, Hutchens revisits the concealed etymology of the word “archive” which “names at once the commencement and the commandment” (Derrida 1). Derrida’s suggestion that the concept of the archive shelters both the memory of this dual meaning while also sheltering itself from remembering that it shelters such a memory (Derrida 2) leads Hutchens to assert that “the archival ‘act’ opens history to the archive, but it closes politics to its own archivization” (Hutchens 44). The danger that “memory cultures”, archives among them, pose to memory itself has also been explored elsewhere by Andreas Huyssen. Although Huyssen does not necessary hold memory up as something to be protected from memory cultures, he is critical of the excessive saturation of contemporary societies with both (Huyssen 3). Huyssen refers to this as the “hypertrophy of memory” following Nietzsche’s “hypertrophy of history” (Huyssen 2-3). Although Hutchens and Huyssen differ radically in direction, they seem to concur nonetheless that what could be diagnosed as an “archival impulse” in contemporary societies might describe only the stagnation and stiltedness of the remainders of lived experience.To return once more to Foster’s notion of an “archival impulse” in contemporary art practices, rather than the reinstitution of the archive as the warehouse of tradition, what seems to be at stake is not necessarily the agglutination of forms, but the interrogation of formations (Foster 3). One could say that this is the archive interrogated through the eyes of art, art interrogated through the eyes of the archive. Perhaps this is precisely what the Atlas Group does by insisting on manufacturing documents in the form of documentary evidence. “Missing Lebanese Wars”, an Atlas Group project produced in 1998, takes as its point of departure the hypothesisthat the Lebanese civil war is not a self-evident episode, an inert fact of nature. The war is not constituted by unified and coherent objects situated in the world; on the contrary, the Lebanese civil war is constituted by and through various actions, situations, people, and accounts. (Raad 17-18)The project consists of a series of plates made up of pages taken from the notebook of a certain Dr Fadl Fakhouri, “the foremost historian of the civil war in Lebanon” until his death in 1993 (Raad 17). The story goes that Dr Fakhouri belonged to a gathering of “major historians” who were also “avid gamblers” that met at the race track every Sunday – the Marxists and the Islamists bet on the first seven races, while the Maronite nationalists and the socialists bet on the last eight (Raad 17). It was alleged that the historians would bribe the race photographer to take only one shot as the winning horse reached the post. Each historian would bet on exactly “how many fractions of a second before or after the horse crossed the line – the photographer would expose his frame” (Raad 17). The pages from Dr Fakhouri’s notebook are comprised of these precise exposures of film as the winning horse crossed the line – stills, as well as measurements of the distance between the horse and the finish line amid various other calculations, the bets that the historians wagered, and short descriptions of the winning historians given by Dr Fakhouri. The notebook pages, with photographs in the form of newspaper clippings, calculations and descriptions of the winning historians in English, are reproduced one per plate. In producing these documents as archival evidence, the Atlas Group is able to manufacture the “unified and coherent objects” that do not constitute the war as things that are at once irrelevant, incongruous and non-sensical. In other words, presenting material that is, while clearly fictitious, reflective of individual “actions, situations, people, and accounts” as archival material, the Atlas Group opens up discourses about the sanctity of historical evidence to interrogation by producing documentary evidence for circulating cultural discourses.While giving an ironic shape to this singular and complete picture of the war that continues to pervade popular cultural discourses in Lebanon through the media with politicians still calling for a “unified history”, the Atlas Group simultaneously constitute these historical materials as the work of a single person, Dr Fakhouri. Yet it seems that our trustworthy archivist also chooses not to write about the race, but about the winning historian – echoing the refusal to conceive of the war as a self-evident fact (to talk about the race as a race) and to see it rather as an interplay of individuals, actions and narratives (to view the race through the description of the winning historian). Indeed Dr Fakhouri’s descriptions of the winning historians are almost comical for their affinity with descriptions of Lebanon’s various past and present political leaders. A potent shadow, and a legend that has grown into an officially sanctioned cult (Plate 1).Avuncular rather than domineering, he was adept at the well-timed humorous aside to cut tension. (Plate 3).He is 71. But for 6 years he was in prison and for 10 years he was under house arrest and in exile, so those 16 years should be deducted – then he’s 55 (Plate 5). (Raad 20-29)Through these descriptions of the historians, Lebanon’s “missing” wars begin to play themselves out between one race and the next. While all we have are supposed “facts” with neither narrative, movement, nor anything else that could connect one fact to another that is not arbitrary, we are also in the midst of an archive that is as random as these “facts.” This is the archive of the “missing” wars, wars that are not documented and victims that are not known, wars that are “missing” for no good reason.What is different about this archive may not be the way in which order is manufactured and produced, but rather the background against which it is set. In his introduction to The Order of Things Michel Foucault makes reference to “a certain Chinese encyclopaedia” in a passage by Borges whereanimals are divided into: (a) belonging to the Emperor, (b) embalmed, (c) tame, (d) suckling pigs, (e) sirens, (f) fabulous, (g) stray dogs, (h) included in the present classification, (i) frenzied, (j) innumerable… (xvi)“The uneasiness that makes us laugh when we read Borges”, writes Foucault, is the sense of loss of a “common” name and place (Order, xx). Whereas in Eusethenes, (“I am no longer hungry. Until the morrow, safe from my saliva all the following shall be: Aspics, Acalephs, Acanathocephalates […]”) the randomness of the enumerated species is ordered by their non-location in Eusthenes’ mouth (Foucault, Order xvii), in Borges there is no means through which the enumerated species can belong in a common place except in language (Foucault, Order, xviii). In the same way, the work of the Atlas Group is filtered through the processes of archival classification without belonging to the archives of any real war. There is no common ground against which they can be read except the purported stillness of the archive itself, its ability to put things in place and to keep them there.If the Atlas Group’s archives of Lebanon’s wars are indeed to work against the fluidity of war and its ability to enter and reshape all spaces, then the archival impulse they evoke must be one in which the processes of sedimentation that create archival documents are worked through a radical stillness, tapping into the suspended motion of the singular moment – its stillness, in order to uncover stillness as presence, survival, endurance, to be there still. Indeed, if archives turn “documents into monuments” (Enwezor 23), then the “theatre of statements” that Foucault unearths (Deleuze 47) are not those recovered in the work of the Atlas Group since is not monuments, but documents, that the Atlas Group archive uncovers.It is true that Benjamin urges us to seize hold of memory at the moment of danger, but he does not instruct us as to what to do with it once we have it, yet, what if we were to read this statement in conjunction with another, “for every image of the past that is not recognized by the present as one of its own concerns threatens to disappear irretrievably” (Benjamin, “Theses” 255). By turning monuments into documents it is possible that the Atlas Group reconfigure the formations that make up the archive, indeed any archive, by recognizing images of the past as being still in the present. Not still as a past tense, motionless, but still as enduring, remaining. In the work of the Atlas Group the archival impulse is closely aligned to a radical stillness, letting the dust of things settle after its incitation by the madness of war, putting things in place that insist on having a place in language. Against such a background Benjamin’s “moment of danger” is more than the instant of sedimentation, it is the productivity of a radical stillness in which the past opens onto the present, it is this moment that makes possible a radical reconfiguration of the archival impulse.ReferencesBenjamin, Walter. The Arcades Project. Trans. Howard Eiland and Kevin McLaughlin. Cambridge, Mass.: Belknap Press of Harvard U Press, 2002.———. “Theses on the Philosophy of History.” Illuminations. Ed. Hannah Arendt. New York: Schocken Books, 2007.Braidotti, Rosi. Metamorphoses: Towards a Materialist Theory of Becoming. Cambridge: Polity, 2002.Deleuze, Gilles. Foucault. Trans. Seán Hand. New York: Continuum, 1999.Deleuze, Gilles, and Felix Guattari. A Thousand Plateaus. Trans. Brian Massumi. New York: Continuum, 2004.Derrida, Jacques. Archive Fever: A Freudian Impression. Trans. Eric Prenowitz. Chicago: U of Chicago P, 1996.Enwezor, Okwui. Archive Fever: Uses of the Document in Contemporary Art. Göttingen: Steidl Publishers, 2008.Foster, Hal. “An Archival Impulse.” October 110 (Fall 2004): 3-22.Foucault, Michel. The Archaeology of Knowledge. Trans. Alan Sheridan. London: Routledge, 1992.———. The Order of Things. London: Routledge, 2002.Hutchens, Benjamin. “Techniques of Forgetting? Hypo-Amnesic History and the An-Archive.” SubStance 36.3 (2007): 37-55.Huyssen, Andreas. Urban Palimpsests and the Politics of Memory. Stanford: Stanford U P, 2003.Lepecki, Andre. “In the Mist of the Event: Performance and the Activation of Memory in the Atlas Group Archive.” Scratching on the Things I Could Disavow. Ed.Walid Raad. Köln: Verlag der Buchhandlung Walther König, 2007.Marks, Laura. “Asphalt Nomadism: The New Desert in Arab Independent Cinema.” Landscape and Film. Ed. Martin Lefebvre. New York: Routledge, 2006.Pugliese, Joseph. “Bodies of Water.” Heat 12 (2006): 12-20. Raad, Walid. Scratching on the Things I Could Disavow. Köln: Verlag der Buchhandlung Walther König, 2007.Schmitz, Britta, and Kassandra Nakas. The Atlas Group (1989-2004). Köln: Verlag der Buchhandlung Walther König, 2006.Tiedemann, Rolf. “Dialectics at a Standstill.” The Arcades Project. Walter Benjamin. Trans. Howard Eiland and Kevin McLaughlin. Cambridge, Mass.: Belknap Press of Harvard U P, 2002.Virilio, Paul. Open Sky. Trans. Julie Rose. London: Verso, 1997.