Committing the Future to Memory

Committing the Future to Memory

History, Experience, Trauma

$80.00

Publication Date: 11th November 2013

Committing the Future to Memory: History, Experience, Trauma by Sarah Clift explores alternatives to the linear temporality of modern historiography through an examination of canonical philosophies of history, memory and identity. Close readings of John Locke and G.W.F. Hegel are set alongside explorations of Walter Benjamin, Hannah Arendt, and Maurice Blanchot, in order to set the book’s exploration of philosophical modernity in the context of contemporary interest in finitude, identity and the temporalities of trauma. Read More
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Committing the Future to Memory: History, Experience, Trauma by Sarah Clift explores alternatives to the linear temporality of modern historiography through an examination of canonical philosophies of history, memory and identity. Close readings of John Locke and G.W.F. Hegel are set alongside explorations of Walter Benjamin, Hannah Arendt, and Maurice Blanchot, in order to set the book’s exploration of philosophical modernity in the context of contemporary interest in finitude, identity and the temporalities of trauma. Read More
Description

Whereas historical determinacy conceives the past as a complex and unstable network of causalities, this book asks how history can be related to a more radical future. To pose that question, it does not reject determinacy outright but rather seeks to explore how it works. In examining what it means to be “determined” by history, it also asks what kind of openings there might be in our encounters with history for interruptions, re-readings, and re-writings.

Engaging texts spanning multiple genres and several centuries—from John Locke to Maurice Blanchot, from Hegel to Benjamin—Clift looks at experiences of time that exceed the historical narration of experiences said to have occurred in time. She focuses on the co-existence of multiple temporalities and opens up the quintessentially modern notion of historical succession to other possibilities. The alternatives she draws out include the mediations of language and narration, temporal leaps, oscillations and blockages, and the role played by contingency in representation. She argues that such alternatives compel us to reassess the ways we understand history and identity in a traumatic, or indeed in a post-traumatic, age.

Details
  • Price: $80.00
  • Pages: 264
  • Carton Quantity: 20
  • Publisher: Fordham University Press
  • Imprint: Modern Language Initiative
  • Publication Date: 11th November 2013
  • Trim Size: 6 x 9 in
  • ISBN: 9780823254200
  • Format: Hardcover
  • BISACs:
    PHILOSOPHY / Political
    PHILOSOPHY / General
    HISTORY / Historiography
Reviews
“This is a thoughtful and absorbing reflection on the subtle modalities of memory–cultural, psychological, political –in the modern period. At a time when we are all experiencing a surfeit of memory, Sarah Clift injects a new rigor and lucidity into the discussion.”---—Rebecca Comay, University of Toronto
Through the originality of her questions, her deft combination of close reading and conceptual generalization, the patience and lucidity of her analyses, and the remarkable surefootedness of her argumentation, Sarah Clift has succeeded in reinvigorating the interpretation of important works by Hannah Arendt, Walter Benjamin, John Locke, G. W. F. Hegel, and Maurice Blanchot. Her book will be of vital interest to political theorists, philosophers, literary critics, and intellectual historians, and may help to transform the discussion of fundamental issues they confront, most notably the relation between history and memory.---—Thomas Trezise, Princeton University
Author Bio
Sarah Clift is Assistant Professor of Contemporary Studies at the University of King's College, Halifax.

Whereas historical determinacy conceives the past as a complex and unstable network of causalities, this book asks how history can be related to a more radical future. To pose that question, it does not reject determinacy outright but rather seeks to explore how it works. In examining what it means to be “determined” by history, it also asks what kind of openings there might be in our encounters with history for interruptions, re-readings, and re-writings.

Engaging texts spanning multiple genres and several centuries—from John Locke to Maurice Blanchot, from Hegel to Benjamin—Clift looks at experiences of time that exceed the historical narration of experiences said to have occurred in time. She focuses on the co-existence of multiple temporalities and opens up the quintessentially modern notion of historical succession to other possibilities. The alternatives she draws out include the mediations of language and narration, temporal leaps, oscillations and blockages, and the role played by contingency in representation. She argues that such alternatives compel us to reassess the ways we understand history and identity in a traumatic, or indeed in a post-traumatic, age.

  • Price: $80.00
  • Pages: 264
  • Carton Quantity: 20
  • Publisher: Fordham University Press
  • Imprint: Modern Language Initiative
  • Publication Date: 11th November 2013
  • Trim Size: 6 x 9 in
  • ISBN: 9780823254200
  • Format: Hardcover
  • BISACs:
    PHILOSOPHY / Political
    PHILOSOPHY / General
    HISTORY / Historiography
“This is a thoughtful and absorbing reflection on the subtle modalities of memory–cultural, psychological, political –in the modern period. At a time when we are all experiencing a surfeit of memory, Sarah Clift injects a new rigor and lucidity into the discussion.”---—Rebecca Comay, University of Toronto
Through the originality of her questions, her deft combination of close reading and conceptual generalization, the patience and lucidity of her analyses, and the remarkable surefootedness of her argumentation, Sarah Clift has succeeded in reinvigorating the interpretation of important works by Hannah Arendt, Walter Benjamin, John Locke, G. W. F. Hegel, and Maurice Blanchot. Her book will be of vital interest to political theorists, philosophers, literary critics, and intellectual historians, and may help to transform the discussion of fundamental issues they confront, most notably the relation between history and memory.---—Thomas Trezise, Princeton University
Sarah Clift is Assistant Professor of Contemporary Studies at the University of King's College, Halifax.