DOCSLIB.ORG

Boisi Center Interviews No

Total Page：16

File Type：pdf, Size：1020Kb

Download full-text PDF Read full-text
Boisi Center Interviews No the boisi center interviews no. 61: October 6, 2011 tzvetan todorov is a philosopher, theorist, and literary critic from Bulgaria. He has been a researcher at the National Center for Scientific Research in Paris since 1968, and honorary director there since 2005. He spoke with Boisi Center associate director Erik Owens following his presentation on the modern applications of the 5th-century Augustine-Pelagius debate on human liberty. owens: You grew up behind the Iron could be described without any mention this formal perspective either, not any Curtain. How has this influenced your of ideological components. This was my more than the Bulgarian. This was not work? professional profile at the time I was for any ideological reasons, but because leaving Bulgaria, and it remained so of the dominance in France of a sort of todorov: Very strongly, but in differ- for maybe ten more years. My original biographical and sociological approach to ent periods of my life, it influenced it in intention was to spend just one year in literature. The standard expression was different ways. I was twenty-four when I France, but this year became three years “life and work,” when you were writing left Bulgaria. This means that I had com- a thesis, you had to study all the events pleted my university studies, I had the of the author’s life, everything that was equivalent of a master’s degree. Before written on him, all the versions of his that I spent five years at the University works. This approach didn’t pay much of Sofia studying Slavic philology, that attention to the internal interpretation is, Slavic languages and literatures— of meaning, within the work itself. For a Bulgarian, Russian, and that of other certain number of years, my orientation Slavic countries. The study of literature was an attempt to remedy to that lack. in Bulgaria had to be conducted within a strict ideological framework. Literature My very first work was an anthology of was supposed to illustrate the major the Russian formalists. The Russian tenets of the communist ideology that we formalists were a group of literary critics were living in, and so the interpretation and scholars in the years just before of all writers was reduced in a way either and after the revolution, in a time of a to illustrating the communist idea, or relatively great political freedom. So, in to contradicting it, in which case they a way, I felt similar to them, fifty years deserved a more or less severe criticism. later. They were interested in the formal aspects of literary works, which allowed My first reaction to this was to get inter- because I decided to take a doctorate, them in the years after the revolution to ested in those aspects of literary works, sort of a Ph.D.; after that I married and avoid any political engagement. I selected of texts, which could escape from any my life became a French life instead of a and translated their writings and the ideological control. That’s how I became Bulgarian life, the way it is now. book was well received in France. At that a “formalist” in my youth—as a reaction In France I tried to learn more about time, there was an intellectual wave or a to the obligation to refer constantly to ide- the formal structure of literary works, fashion of structuralism, and this analy- ology. I tried to grasp the meaning of the but that wasn’t easy. In fact I discovered sis of literature appeared as an ingredient text by studying the grammatical struc- that French literary studies—because of a structuralist world view and way ture of its sentences, the choice of words, this was the larger framework of my of approaching study in humanities or the structure of narrative, of metaphor, interests—were not concerned with social sciences. of various literary devices, all things that 1 the boisi center interview: tzvetan todorov After ten or fifteen years living in France, tific institution devoted to pure research, wasn’t sure to know well. The fall of the my whole being was transformed, of which allowed me to choose freely the Berlin Wall acted as a kind of liberation course, because of the many differences topics of my work. I immersed myself in for me. Maybe the regime had to stop in the two situations, and I realized one this subject and spent three years work- existing in the real world so that I could day that there was no reason why in con- ing on it. I went to Mexico for a series of deal with it clearly enough in my mind. fronting literary works I should exclude lectures on another subject, but managed While it was alive, it was hard for me to everything concerning values, ideas, and to learn some Spanish, enough to read step outside of it, although I had lived meaning. At that point I started chang- the documents, and had discussions already for twenty-five years in France. In ing my attitude, using what I had learned with some specialists. The study of the a way its existence inhibited me. earlier as a tool, but no longer as an aim. conquest and the immediate aftermath As soon as the Wall fell, I felt I could deal I became interested in a certain number of the conquest became for me some- freely with this subject of totalitarianism of topics which in different ways were thing like a parable of the encounter of and thus with its opposite, democracy. still related to my Bulgarian identity, but The first book I wrote in this context was again, in a rather indirect way. called Facing the Extreme, an analysis One of them was the very fact that I was “I was convinced of what happened to morality in the raised in one context—geographical, concentration camp. I only know about cultural, ideological—which was Eastern that morality these experiences from the writings of Europe, the Balkans, an earlier part of didn’t disappear other witnesses, but there is a continuity the Ottoman Empire, with cultural in- between the life in and out of the camps, fluences coming from that past, but also there, as it was the camp was like a magnifying glass for belonging to the Slavic tradition, with the rest of the totalitarian world. Now, a major influence from Russian litera- frequently said, I was convinced that morality didn’t ture. And now I was living in France, in disappear there, as it was frequently said, Paris, which was “the capital of arts and that it was not a that it was not a purely Hobbesian world letters,” as it was perceived in Bulgar- purely Hobbesian of man becoming a wolf to other men, ia, and the French had different idols, or of war of all against all. If one read different gods that they were praying to. world of man carefully the testimony that came from I experienced a split within myself that the concentration camp, one could find all immigrants know about: I became si- becoming a wolf transformations of morality, rather than multaneously Bulgarian and French, and to other men, its disappearance. So that in a way, this was condemned to a permanent silent time again, but in a more positive way, I translation, not so much between two or of war of all was still dealing with what I experienced languages, but between two cultures. So in the first twenty-four years of my life. one of the topics of my research became against all.” That was a long answer to your short the tension between the unity of man- question. kind and the variety of cultures in which we are all necessarily immersed. owens: It actually provides a nice segue cultures. I wasn’t talking about myself, I for another question I wanted to ask. At The first work I did in this context was wasn’t interested in autobiography, but in the core of all political theory and theol- no longer about the Russian formalists, a way this biographical bias was behind ogy is a conception of human nature, or but about the conquest of America. This the words, was what motivated my work. here moral anthropology. I wonder if you event, especially in its early stages, be- In the following years, there was another could say a bit about your own under- came an amazing encounter of two parts change. I talk about it in this little book- standing of moral anthropology and how of humanity that had totally ignored each let, The Totalitarian Experience. The con- it influences your political theory today. other, and the outcome were not only mil- trast between my two worlds, the Bulgari- lions of victims but also some splendid todorov: I feel strongly opposed to an and the French, was not only cultural, documents—from the very beginning, at a kind of nihilistic attitude towards hu- it was also political. This brought me to the end of the 15th and especially in the man nature, morality, and basic human another major topic; I became more and 16th century—in Spanish and in native instincts. It isn’t the only view present in more interested in totalitarianism—the tongues. It was a wonderful example for contemporary debate, but it is extremely world in which I was raised and which my topic! By that time I had been hired in strong, maybe in France more so than in was also a part of myself in ways that I the CNRS, that marvelous French scien- the United States.
Load more

Recommended publications
  • Rehabilitating the Witch: the Literary Representation of the Witch
    RICE UNIVERSITY Rehabilitating the Witch: The Literary Representation of the Witch from the Malleus Maleficarum to Les Enfants du sabbat by Lisa Travis Blomquist A THESIS SUBMITTED IN PARTIAL FULFILLMENT OF THE REQUIREMENTS OF THE DEGREE Doctor of Philosophy APPROVED, THESIS COMMITTEE Dr. Bernard Aresu Dr. Elias Bongmba, Professor ofRe · ious Studies Holder of the Harry and Hazel Chavanne Chair in Christian Theology HOUSTON, TX DECEMBER 2011 ABSTRACT Rehabilitating the Witch: The Literary Representation of the Witch from the Malleus Maleficarum to Les Enfants du sabbat by Lisa Travis Blomquist The representation of the witch in French literature has evolved considerably over the centuries. While originally portrayed as a benevolent and caring healer in works by Marie de France, Chretien de Troyes, and the anonymous author of Amadas et Ydoine, the witch eventually underwent a dramatic and unfortunate transformation. By the fifteenth century, authors began to portray her as a malevolent and dangerous agent of the Christian Devil. Martin Le Franc, Pierre de Ronsard, Joachim du Bellay, Fran9ois Rabelais, and Pierre Comeille all created evil witch figures that corresponded with this new definition. It was not until the eighteenth century, through the works of Voltaire and the Encyclopedistes, that the rehabilitation of the witch began. By the twentieth century, Anne Hebert, Jean-Paul Sartre, Maryse Conde, and Sebastiano Vassalli began to rewrite the witch character by engaging in a process of demystification and by demonstrating that the "witch" was really just a victim of the society in which she lived. These authors humanized their witch figures by concentrating on the victimization of their witch protagonists and by exposing the ways in which their fictional societies unjustly created identities for their witch protagonists that were based on false judgments and rumors.
    [Show full text]
  • Narrative Theory
    NARRATIVE THEORY EDITED BY JAMES PHELAN AND PETER J. RABINOWITZ A Companion to Narrative Theory Blackwell Companions to Literature and Culture This series offers comprehensive, newly written surveys of key periods and movements and certain major authors, in English literary culture and history. Extensive volumes provide new perspectives and positions on contexts and on canonical and postcanoni- cal texts, orientating the beginning student in new fields of study and providing the experienced undergraduate and new graduate with current and new directions, as pioneered and developed by leading scholars in the field. 1 A Companion to Romanticism Edited by Duncan Wu 2 A Companion to Victorian Literature and Culture Edited by Herbert F. Tucker 3 A Companion to Shakespeare Edited by David Scott Kastan 4 A Companion to the Gothic Edited by David Punter 5 A Feminist Companion to Shakespeare Edited by Dympna Callaghan 6 A Companion to Chaucer Edited by Peter Brown 7 A Companion to Literature from Milton to Blake Edited by David Womersley 8 A Companion to English Renaissance Literature and Culture Edited by Michael Hattaway 9 A Companion to Milton Edited by Thomas N. Corns 10 A Companion to Twentieth-Century Poetry Edited by Neil Roberts 11 A Companion to Anglo-Saxon Literature and Culture Edited by Phillip Pulsiano and Elaine Treharne 12 A Companion to Restoration Drama Edited by Susan J. Owen 13 A Companion to Early Modern Women’s Writing Edited by Anita Pacheco 14 A Companion to Renaissance Drama Edited by Arthur F. Kinney 15 A Companion to Victorian Poetry Edited by Richard Cronin, Alison Chapman, and Antony H.
    [Show full text]
  • An Interview with Tzvetan Todorov
    Introduction / 1 KARINE ZBINDEN In Praise of Nuance: An Interview with Tzvetan Todorov Introduction There is something inordinately strange about “introducing” Tzvetan Todorov to the readers of The Canadian Review of Comparative Literature, for he has been a prominent figure in the humanities since the 1960s, engaging with a wide variety of domains, from semantics to semiotics, poetics to ethics, history to philosophical anthropology. Rather than indicating fragmentation of thought, this diversity testifies to an enduring interest in humankind and human experience explored from many different angles. His books, many of them bestsellers, are translated into numerous languages. Strangely, however, there has to date been little commentary on his thought. Perhaps this is due to the fact that his activity eludes categorical definition (is he a historian, a philosopher, a literary critic, a writer, or even a linguist?) — a characteristic it shares with that of another thinker, Mikhail Bakhtin, who has played a part in Todorov’s intellectual development. Todorov has crossed boundaries in various ways: literally, by emigrating from Bulgaria in his twenties and settling down in France; but also on an intellectual level, for he has acted as mediator between cultures. Shortly after his arrival in Paris, he translated some key Russian Formalist texts and helped introduce Roman Jakobson to a French readership; and later he wrote a critical introduction to the thought of Mikhail Bakhtin and the Bakhtin Circle at a time when few texts were yet available in French. More recently, he has focused on classic texts of French humanist thought, thus reconnecting his contemporaries to their intellectual heritage and linking the ideas of some of the first modern thinkers to our present preoccupations.
    [Show full text]
  • Narrative, Empire, and the Ambiguity of Conquest in Spain's American
    1 “DISCOVERIES ARE NOT TO BE CALLED CONQUESTS”: NARRATIVE, EMPIRE, AND THE AMBIGUITY OF CONQUEST IN SPAIN’S AMERICAN EMPIRE A dissertation presented by Joshua Weiner to The Department of History In partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy in the field of History Northeastern University Boston, Massachusetts June, 2009 2 © 2009 Joshua Weiner ALL RIGHTS RESERVED 3 “DISCOVERIES ARE NOT TO BE CALLED CONQUESTS”: NARRATIVE, EMPIRE, AND THE AMBIGUITY OF CONQUEST IN SPAIN’S AMERICAN EMPIRE B y Joshua Weiner ABSTRACT OF DISSERTATION Submitted in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy in History in the Graduate School of Arts and Sciences of Northeastern University, June 2009 4 ABSTRACT This dissertation focuses on the intellectual issues that surround the most dramatic form of human encounter: that of imperial conquest. By examining the modes of thought available to conquering societies I examine the way in which specific narrative traditions influence the process of justification and legitimization of expansion. Based on my analysis of a specific set of narratives created by Spanish in the Americas, a wide variety of published primary resources, and research in Spanish archives, I look into the narrative traditions of a number of societies in history, assess the construction of the reconquista narrative in Spain, and then cross the Atlantic to examine variety of interest groups that emerged across Spain’s American empire and the narratives that were produced to justify those interests. In successful cases the drama of conquest is normalized through the adoption or construction of legitimizing narratives that tap into prevailing societal self-conceptions or historical relationships.
    [Show full text]
  • European Identity
    Peaceful, prosperous, democratic and respectful of people’s rights, building talk about Europe need to We Europe is an ongoing challenge. For many years it seemed that Europeans lived on a continent of shared values and a common destiny. No one paid attention to the alarm bells warning of growing divisions across the continent, which have become more insistent since the economic and social crisis. Europe and We need to talk its values, previously taken for granted, are now being contested. These clouds are casting a shadow across Europe’s future, and old demons, long dormant, have started to raise their voices again. about Europe With a deepening values divide there is an urgent need for public debate and a reconsideration of how Europeans can strengthen the European project. Is a “Europe united in diversity” still feasible? Can a consensus be forged on a set of values pertaining to a common European identity? What should be done to preserve European unity? The Council of Europe, with its membership covering Europe from Vladivostok to Lisbon and from Reykjavik to Ankara, and its mission to promote democracy, human rights and the rule of law, provides an excellent framework for discuss- ing the current state of thinking and dynamics behind the concept of European identity. For these reasons, the Council of Europe, together with the École nationale d’administration in Strasbourg, held a series of European Identity Debates fea- turing eminent personalities from a variety of backgrounds including politics, civil society, academia and the humanities. European Identity This publication presents the 10 European Identity Debates lectures.
    [Show full text]
  • Why Narratology?1
    Why Narratology?1 John Pier2 Why narratology? What has narratology brought to the study of narrative, of literature, of discourse generally? What is the status of narratology among other disciplines? What difference does narratology make? These are some of the speculative questions I will attempt to answer today. I say “attempt to answer,” because various answers are possible and because few if any of them can fail to be challenged or to be formulated differently. Indeed, some people will simply shrug their shoulders and retort: “Why bother with narratology? Why take the trouble?” Now, it is not entirely by coincidence that the title of my talk, “Why Narratology?”, resonates with the question “What is narratology?” What is Narratology is in fact the title of a collection of essays, subtitled Questions and Answers Regarding the Status of a Theory, that was published exactly ten years ago under the editorship of Tom Kindt and Hans-Harald Müller, the first volume of the book series “Narratologia” at Walter de Gruyter Press, and appearing one year after the symposium of the same name organized by the Narratology Research Group at Hamburg University in 2002. Nor is it by coincidence that the question “What is narratology?” – itself open to widely divergent answers – leads us to considerations bearing on the history of narratology. The term, proposed by Tzvetan Todorov in his Grammaire du Décaméron in 1969, designates a “science of narrative” – not a science in the sense of the exact or natural sciences, as people have often assumed, but in the sense of poetics, a discipline with antecedents going back as far as Plato and Aristotle.
    [Show full text]
  • The RISE of DEMOCRACY REVOLUTION, WAR and TRANSFORMATIONS in INTERNATIONAL POLITICS SINCE 1776
    Macintosh HD:Users:Graham:Public:GRAHAM'S IMAC JOBS:15554 - EUP - HOBSON:HOBSON NEW 9780748692811 PRINT The RISE of DEMOCRACY REVOLUTION, WAR AND TRANSFORMATIONS IN INTERNATIONAL POLITICS SINCE 1776 CHRISTOPHER HOBSON Macintosh HD:Users:Graham:Public:GRAHAM'S IMAC JOBS:15554 - EUP - HOBSON:HOBSON NEW 9780748692811 PRINT THE RISE OF DEMOCRACY Macintosh HD:Users:Graham:Public:GRAHAM'S IMAC JOBS:15554 - EUP - HOBSON:HOBSON NEW 9780748692811 PRINT Macintosh HD:Users:Graham:Public:GRAHAM'S IMAC JOBS:15554 - EUP - HOBSON:HOBSON NEW 9780748692811 PRINT THE RISE OF DEMOCRACY Revolution, War and Transformations in International Politics since 1776 Christopher Hobson Macintosh HD:Users:Graham:Public:GRAHAM'S IMAC JOBS:15554 - EUP - HOBSON:HOBSON NEW 9780748692811 PRINT © Christopher Hobson, 2015 Edinburgh University Press Ltd The Tun – Holyrood Road 12 (2f) Jackson’s Entry Edinburgh EH8 8PJ www.euppublishing.com Typeset in 11 /13pt Monotype Baskerville by Servis Filmsetting Ltd, Stockport, Cheshire, and printed and bound in Great Britain by CPI Group (UK) Ltd, Croydon CR0 4YY A CIP record for this book is available from the British Library ISBN 978 0 7486 9281 1 (hardback) ISBN 978 0 7486 9282 8 (webready PDF) ISBN 978 0 7486 9283 5 (epub) The right of Christopher Hobson to be identified as author of this work has been asserted in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988 and the Copyright and Related Rights Regulations 2003 (SI No. 2498). Macintosh HD:Users:Graham:Public:GRAHAM'S IMAC JOBS:15554 - EUP - HOBSON:HOBSON NEW 9780748692811
    [Show full text]
  • Dante's 'Strangeness': the Commedia and the Late Twentieth- Century Debate on the Literary Canon
    This is a repository copy of Dante's 'Strangeness': The Commedia and the Late Twentieth- Century Debate on the Literary Canon. White Rose Research Online URL for this paper: https://eprints.whiterose.ac.uk/74716/ Book Section: Pich, F (2010) Dante's 'Strangeness': The Commedia and the Late Twentieth-Century Debate on the Literary Canon. In: Gragnolati, M and Camilletti, F, (eds.) Metamorphosing Dante. Appropriations, Manipulations, and Rewritings in the Twentieth and Twenty-First Centuries. Turia + Kant , Berlin , 21 - 35 (14). ISBN 978-3-85132-617-8 Reuse See Attached Takedown If you consider content in White Rose Research Online to be in breach of UK law, please notify us by emailing [email protected] including the URL of the record and the reason for the withdrawal request. [email protected] https://eprints.whiterose.ac.uk/ .&5".031)04*/(%"/5& "113013*"5*0/4 ."/*16-"5*0/4 "/%3&83*5*/(4 */5)&58&/5*&5)"/%58&/5:'*345$&/563*&4 &%*5&%#:."/6&-&(3"(/0-"5* '"#*0$".*--&55* "/%'"#*"/-".1"35 VERLAG TURIA + KANT WIEN–BERLIN Bibliografische Information der Deutschen Nationalbibliothek Die Deutsche Bibliothek verzeichnet diese Publikation in der Deutschen Nationalbibliografie; detaillierte bibliografische Daten sind im Internet über http://dnb.d-nb.de abrufbar. Bibliographic information published by Die Deutsche Nationalbibliothek The Deutsche Bibliothek lists this publication in the Deutsche Nationalbibliografie; detailed bibliographic data are available in the Internet at http://dnb.d-nb.de. ISBN 978-35132-617-8 Cover Design: Bettina Kubanek © by the authors © for this edition: Turia + Kant, 2010 VE RLAG TURI A + KANT A-1010 Wien, Schottengasse 3A/5/DG1 D-10827 Berlin, Crellestraße 14 [email protected] | www.turia.at $0/5&/54 .&5".031)04*/(%"/5& Fabio Camilletti, Manuele Gragnolati, Fabian Lampart .
    [Show full text]
  • Introduction
    Notes Introduction 1. Two statements, made in passing, by two celebrated historians of Nazism and Soviet communism respectively, are good evi- dence of this tendency to assume that totalitarianism equals a structural model of political rule. See Ian Kershaw’s observa- tion that ‘the totalitarian concept allows comparative analysis of a number of techniques and instruments of domination’ (Kershaw, ‘“Working Towards the Führer”: Reflections on the Nature of the Hitler Dictatorship’, in, Stalinism and Nazism: Dictatorships in Comparison, ed. Ian Kershaw and Moshe Lewin [Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1997], 88). See also Robert Service’s statement that ‘[f]ascism was in many ways a structural copy of [the Soviet order], albeit with a different set of ideological purposes’ (Comrades. Communism: A World History [London: Pan, 2008], 9). 2. Note that here I argue against something of an emerging consensus. The case for classifying Fascist Italy as totalitarian has recently been argued most forcefully by Emilio Gentile. See Gentile, The Sacralization of Politics in Fascist Italy, trans. by Keith Botsford (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1996). On the other hand, Hannah Arendt long ago established a convention of excluding the Italian case, mainly because it lacks a murderous aspect on anything approaching the same scale. See Arendt, The Origins of Totalitarianism (London: Schocken, 2004 [orig. 1951], esp. 256–9). 3. It is an intellectual red herring to construct an account of totali- tarianism around Mussolini’s article ‘The Doctrine of Fascism’ in the Enciclopedie Italiana of 1932 (in fact authored by the ‘philosopher’ of Fascism, Giovanni Gentile). This primary docu- ment source does have the distinction, though, of championing a positive conception of ‘totalitarian’, rendered equivalent with the Fascist conception of the state.
    [Show full text]
  • Stalinism As a Civilization: New Perspectives on Communist Regimes Astrid Hedin Stanford University
    POLITICAL STUDIES REVIEW: 2004 VOL 2, 166–184 Stalinism as a Civilization: New Perspectives on Communist Regimes Astrid Hedin Stanford University A new line of inquiry into the history of communist regimes and the cold war has emerged. Pioneered by Stephen Kotkin and other American historians, it views Stalinism as the defin- ing era of socialism, building a specific anti-capitalist and illiberal modernity that mustered voluntary participation and international legitimacy. This model of Stalinism as a rival civi- lization, held together by participatory totalitarianism, challenges older research on commu- nist regimes – both revisionist and totalitarian studies. However, the degree of originality of this perspective is questioned here, citing precursors, parallels and contrasts within European research and political science. The Soviet Union claimed to represent a politically, culturally and morally supe- rior modernity – a new civilization. A young generation of American historians take this claim seriously, focusing on the translation of ideological claims into discursive practice and how discourse helped secure the astonishing inner sta- bility of communist regimes. From this perspective, the most important foreign relation between the former East bloc and the West was neither the arms race nor the technological and economic rivalry, but the struggle for legitimacy – the clash of civilizations as competing modernities (compare Westad 2000; Wohlforth, 2001, pp. 224–7). In this review, I will focus on this new American research perspective on communist regimes, concentrating on the work of Stephen Kotkin as pioneer and trendsetter. I will offer a terminology to describe the new paradigm and outline its themes and some surrounding debates.
    [Show full text]
  • Frail Happiness : an Essay on Rousseau / Tzvetan Todorov ; Translated by John T
    frail Voices from the Gulag: Life and Death in Communist Bulgaria Facing the Extreme On Human Diversity: Nationalism, Racism, and Exoticism in French Thought The Conquest of America frail . and . The Pennsylvania State University Press University Park, Pennsylvania Cet ouvrage publie´ dans le cadre du programme d’aide a`la publication be´ne´ficie du soutien du Ministe`re des Affaires Etrange`res et du Service Culturel de l’Ambassade de France repre´sente´ aux Etats-Unis. This work, published as part of the program of aid for publi- cation, received support from the French Ministry of Foreign Affairs and the Cultural Service of the French Embassy in the United States. Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Todorov, Tzvetan, 1939– [Freˆle bonheur. English] Frail happiness : an essay on Rousseau / Tzvetan Todorov ; translated by John T. Scott and Robert D. Zaretsky. p. cm. Includes bibliographical references. ISBN 0-271-02110-1 (cloth : alk. paper) 1. Rousseau, Jean-Jacques, 1712–1778. I. Title. B2137 .T5713 2001 194—dc21 00-067600 First published in France as Freˆle bonheur: Essai sur Rousseau © Hachette, 1985 English translation © 2001 The Pennsylvania State University All rights reserved. Printed in the United States of America Published by The Pennsylvania State University Press, University Park, PA 16802-1003 It is the policy of The Pennsylvania State University Press to use acid-free paper for the first printing of all clothbound books. Publications on uncoated stock satisfy minimum re- quirements of American National Standard for Information Sciences—Permanence of Paper for Printed Library Materi- als, ANSI Z39.48–1992.
    [Show full text]
  • Politics of the Past: the Use and Abuse of History
    Cover History and Politics:Mise en page 1 3/20/09 4:04 PM Page 1 Twenty years after the end of the Cold War and the collapse of communism the battles about the right interpretation of the twentieth century past are still being fought. In some countries even the courts have their say on what is or is not the historical truth. But primarily politicians have claimed a dominant role Politics of the Past: in these debates, often mixing history and politics in an irresponsible way. The European Parliament has become the arena where this culminates. Nevertheless, not every Member of Parliament wants to play historian. That is the The Use and Abuse of History background of Politics of the Past, in which historians take the floor to discuss the tense and ambivalent relationship between their profession and politics. Pierre Hassner: “Judges are no better placed than governments to replace open Edited by dialogue between historians, between historians and public opinion, between citizens and within and between democratic societies. That is why this book is Hannes Swoboda and such an important initiative.” Jan Marinus Wiersma Politics of the Past: The Use and Abuse of History The of the Past: Politics Cover picture: Reporters/AP 5 7 2 6 2 3 2 8 2 9 ISBN 92-823-2627-5 8 7 QA-80-09-552-EN-C ISBN 978-92-823-2627-5 9 Politics of the Past: The Use and Abuse of History Edited by Hannes Swoboda and Jan Marinus Wiersma Dedicated to Bronisław Geremek Bronisław Geremek, historian, former political dissident and our dear colleague, was one of the speakers at the event which we organized in Prague to commemorate the Spring of 1968.
    [Show full text]