Theodoulos Hadjimatheou’s Reviews > Cyprus and the Politics of Memory: History, Community and Conflict > Status Update

Where the socially irrelevant past stretches back hundreds or thousands of years, this means in fact that there is no history. Nothing can be said to be in the past, in the way one exclaims this is history, meaning it is over and done with and of no relevance to the present. History as a pile of grievances, a series of injuries inflicted by one or more historical actors.

Injuries a science point both backwards and forward in time. On the one hand they make perpetually busy activity that is passed, and does have a memorialisation function.. On the other hand they refer forward to the future to what has not cured and thus have an as if function.

What is not only about violence but also participation of violence, and that involves distinct temporality but we might call a time of war. All of this press conference for this frozen as someone has pressed the post button, all parties are aware of the wrong trigger, the wrong button, might begin the action again; the Cyprus conflict threatens to flare up again should any of his practic pants make their own move.