| Popis: |
This article weaves together different postwar moments in the first half of the twentieth century to investigate how rejuvenationist narratives of a “fresh start” helped societies across the divides of geography and ideology to recuperate from the ravages of war. Apart from initiating boys and girls into ideologically specific and gendered regimes of citizenship, the older generation crafted reverse rites of passage to absolve themselves of responsibility for violent conflicts that had resulted in unspeakable death and suffering. Youth organizations became key sites for making young bodies useful to the dual task of regenerating war-torn nations and exonerating those whose actions had contributed to war in the first place. The need for acquitting the old was particularly pressing in light of disputes about who was to blame for the loss of young lives—disputes that often carried the tonality of ageism rather than party politics. If recapturing the innocence of youth became tantamount to deflecting questions of guilt and accountability, then bonding with youth allowed powerful men (less so women) who bore the scars of struggle to engage in deliberate acts of erasure. The disremembering of age and history endowed the ruling classes with seemingly innocuous possibilities, especially the possibility to acquire a clean slate on which to forge new collective identities within the redemptive framework of youth. Just as history is distorted by memory, rejuvenation opened up new futures while giving license to forgetting troubling pasts. |
