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• 1 2017-03-08T06:48:07-08:00 Relation to Nietzche's "Plastic Power" 12 plain 2017-03-08T07:39:07-08:00

  In Friedrich Nietzche’s Untimely Meditations, On the Uses and Disadvantages of History for Life, published originally in 1876, he focuses on the difference in effect of both forgetting and remembering the past. He describes forgetting the past as being "unhistorical," where the events of the past do not effect your current life. A creature that is unhistorical lives strictly in the present. Niezche used the life of a cattle as a good example of an unhistorical life; it will be consistently satisfied and happy with grazing on grass and being alive. And, as humans, we tend naturally to be envious of this satisfaction with life. Humans, as any creature whose life is effected by the past, are "historical."  We frequently ruminate on the events of the past. But Nietzche argues that this shall not be abrasive to us so long as we maximize our plastic power--ones ability to assimilate the past and use it to “heal wounds, replace what has been lost, to recreate broken moulds.” (p. 62) In regards to this photo, it is important to acknowledge and assimilate the memory of the presence of women during the war. Forgetting the history of the women doctors, nurses and ambulance drivers who are so crucial to any war, restrict the realization of our potential power, and in turn, restricts our growth as humans. “The most powerful and tremendous nature [in humans] would be characterized by the fact that it would know no boundary at all at which the historical sense began to overwhelm it; it would draw to itself and incorporate it into itself all the past, its own and that most foreign to it, and as it were transform it into blood.” (p. 63) This metaphor of “transforming the past into blood” is meant to illustrate the essentiality of history to our being. What is regarded as the “history” of the Spanish Civil War is not what is depicted in these photos. Women and other minorities are widely forgotten from the history of what happened. This photo show hows false that history really is. In reality, women were just as present as men, occupying many of the same roles, and playing an equally significant part of the history of the Spanish Civil War.