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This article focuses on the solo exhibitions of Larissa Sansour entitled "In the Future They Ate from the Finest Porcelain" and "Archeology: In Abstentia" (2016), along with Wael Shawky's "Cabaret Crusades" trilogy (2010-2014). Their exhibitions offer fascinating reflections on the archive as construction and on the articulation of memory in traumatic contexts, whether these are the Nakba and the on-going colonisation of Palestine by Israel or the Christian Crusades to regain Jerusalem. In their films and their creations of breakable objects, such as the porcelain plate and the glass puppet, they open up new possibilities to think and write about the past in modes that take ambivalence and subjectivity at face value. Furthermore, by articulating chronotopes that are fundamentally disjunctive, not only do the artists suggest alternative and counter-modes of remembering the past, they also draw our attention on the act of narrating the past as political process. Thus, not only do they create alternative narratives drawn from other perspectives – here the Arab one –, but they also debunk the myth of the archive as a factual and objective piece of literature and foreground perspectivism and precariousness instead. In other words, Sansour and Shawky's artistic projects do not just aim at developing an Eastern historiography of traumatic times only, and certainly do not participate in a simplistic clash of civilisations narrative. Their works are eminently contextualised, but they also resonate well beyond the Middle-East and show what art can do with/to the archives, escaping adversarial narratives and using them to create dissonance, critical distance, personal and social transformations.

Of the many infeasible creatures and relics of ancient Greek mythos, the Golden Fleece from Jason and the Argonauts has drawn much attention from historians as to what it represented in terms of politics, technology and religion. However, we will instead explore the scientific basis to the possibilities of the existence of a gold fleeced ram. This article specifically addresses the biological and geochemical aspects to this multidisciplinary problem, and follows previous research carried out by this group regarding the physical and biophysical aspects.

Myth and mythologization in ideology and politcs. The mythologization of Japanese identity in the Meiji periodIs myth a word or a thought? Searching for the etymological roots proves to show that it is both. However, does it really exhaust all the possible understandings of the myth and does it enable the grasp of its multiple usages? Answering those questions seems very important not only because we do not have the precise definition of a myth but mainly for that reason that we often fail to notice that it functions in all the societies and political regimes playing quite a vital role at the same time. The purpose of this paper is not only sketching the possible answers but also their exemplification through the example of Japan in the period of Meiji. The choice of that example results from that fact it is a conspicuous example of the way in which political elites are engaged in creating symbols and rituals and in shaping national awareness. The examples of the process of shaping national identity presented in this paper are focused on demonstrating two fundamental myths related to the Emperor, the aim of which was to consolidate the national identity. Mitologizacja japońskiej narodowości. Mit a mitologizowanie narodu. W stronę mitu politycznego w nowożytnej JaponiiCzy mit to słowo, czy myśl? Etymologicznie okazuje się jednym i drugim. Jednakże czy wyczerpuje to możliwe rozumienia mitu oraz umożliwia uchwycenie jego rozlicznych zastosowań? Odpowiedzi na te pytania wydają się niezwykle ważne nie tylko dlatego, że nie posiadamy precyzyjnej definicji mitu, lecz przede wszystkim z tego względu, że często nie dostrzegamy, że funkcjonuje on we wszystkich społeczeństwach i systemach politycznych, pełniąc w nich niezwykle ważne role. Celem niniejszego artykułu jest nie tylko zarysowanie możliwych odpowiedzi, lecz także ich egzemplifikacja na przykładzie Japonii w okresie Meiji. Wybór tego przypadku wynika z tego, że stanowi on czytelny przykład tego, w jaki sposób elity polityczne angażują się w kreowanie symboli i rytuałów oraz kształtowanie świadomości narodowej. Przedstawione w artykule przykłady procesu kształtowania tożsamości narodowej skupione są na ukazaniu dwóch podstawowych mitów związanych z cesarzem, których zadaniem było konsolidowanie tożsamości narodowej.