Victoria Fareld, Stockholm university

2008-2015

Forgiveness, Future and Past: History as Collective Self Inquiry in Arendt, Jankélévitch and Améry

The overall aim of the project was to discuss forgiveness and memory in relation to conceptions of guilt and responsibility in Western Europe since the post-war period, focussing on the writings of Hannah Arendt, Vladimir Jankélévitch and Jean Améry. At the centre of attention was their understanding of the ethical relation between past, present and future, and the role they ascribe to history in the light of this relation. The analysis also aimed at contributing to a contemporary discussion about how history is used as a common space to express the failures of one's own society.

The most important result of the project is its contribution to a discussion about the conceptualization of time within historiography. In an effort to deal with crimes against humanity committed during the last century, historians have been forced to deal with a past that persists in the present. My research has contributed to a reconceptualization of the relation between history and the past in light of experiences of the persistence of the past, which challenges dominant ideas of a linear and irreversible time in favour of multi-layered and intermingled temporalities, expressed in terms of memory, mourning and trauma. These temporal modes complicate the prevailing view of the past as something separated and different from the present and call for a further reconceptualization of historical time.

The second important result of the project is its contribution to a deeper understanding of questions of guilt and responsibility in relation to the past. In the shadows of the great human failures of the 20th century, the study of the past deals not only with questions of knowledge and truth but also of justice, verdict and reconciliation. The research project has dealt with different ideas of historical guilt and responsibility, as well as their internal relations and boundaries. It has developed a theoretical discussion of the relation between history and ethics focussing on the relation between past and present as a relation of responsibility.

The third important result of the project is its contribution to an increased knowledge of the work of Améry and Jankélévitch, particularly in relation to questions of time, memory and history.

I have, throughout the project, dealt with different ideas about what it means to stand in a historical relation to the past. I have tried to think temporality as a multi-layered phenomenon in order to capture different ways in which the past is part of the present. Questions, which deal more profoundly with the concept of historical time - both time as a cultural phenomena and an analytical category - would take the present work further, focussing on the very historicizing operation by which the past (and the present) is turned into history. This operation is most clearly visible in contemporary history. The present project has generated a new research question about whether the expanding field of contemporary history can be seen as an expression of an ongoing transformation in European historical culture, which involves a change in our understanding of the past as history as well as in the way we constitute ourselves in time.

I have presented my research at several international conferences. I presented a paper about "Historicity and Victimhood in Améry" at a conference about Jean Améry held at the Hebrew University in Jerusalem 2011. At a symposium about history and secularization at the University of Gothenburg in 2011, I presented a paper about "History, Memory and Mourning". A paper with the title "Disordered Time as Moral Imperative: Jean Améry's Melancholic Historical Consciousness" was presented at a conference at King's College in Halifax, Canada in 2011.

The international scope of my project has furthermore been strengthened by my participation in the RJ funded research program "Time, Memory, and Representation: A Multidisciplinary Research Program on Transformations in Historical Consciousness", which has given me the opportunity to present my research both formally and informally to Swedish as well as international researchers attached to the program.

I have also presented my research to a general public outside of academia, in the form of lectures, conversations and panels, for instance at the Museum of World Culture, Atalante and Bwana Club in Gothenburg, at Philosophy Cafés in Turku and Lund as well as at Bonniers konsthall and Folkets hus in Stockholm.

The two most important publications of the project are "Historiens tid, rättvisans tid: Jankélévitch och det icke-preskriberbara", to be published in Historiens hemvist. Band II: Etik, politik och historikerns ansvar (eds. P. Lorenzoni, U. Manns), Makadam förlag, and the article "Ressentiment as Moral Imperative: Jean Améry's Nietzschean Revaluation of Victim Morality", i: Re-Thinking Ressentiment": On the Limits of Criticism and the Limits of its Critics (eds. M. Gallagher, J. Riou), Cambridge University Press 2015, pp. 53-70. The former article treats Jankélévitch's contribution to the debate in Germany and France 1964-65 on the statute of limitations for Nazi war criminals. Taking the debate as point of departure, I discuss the temporal dimensions of historical justice: the way historical time stands in opposition to ethical time and its effects on the writing of history. The later article analyzes, through Améry's notion of ressentiment, the question of temporal responsibility, that is, a temporally extended concept of responsibility which questions our traditional understanding of the relation between past, present and future.

The result of the project is published in the form of articles in peer reviewed scientific journals, anthology chapters and culture journals. Open access has unfortunately not been secured.

Publication

2015. ”Historiens tid, rättvisans tid: Jankélévitch och det icke-preskriberbara”, under utgivning i antologin Historiens hemvist. Band II: Etik, politik och historikerns ansvar (red. P. Lorenzoni, U. Manns), Makadam förlag.

2015. ”Ressentiment as Moral Imperative: Jean Améry’s Nietzschean Revaluation of Victim Morality”, i: Re-Thinking Ressentiment”: On the Limits of Criticism and the Limits of its Critics (eds. M. Gallagher, J. Riou), Cambridge University Press 2015, s. 53-70.

2013. ”L’être sans comme fond sans fond de l’être avec”, Being with the Without (eds. Marcia Sá Cavalcante Schuback, Jean-Luc Nancy), Stockholm: Axl Books, s. 51-57.

2013. ”Det forskningspolitiska nyspråket – bänd loss begreppen”, Till vilken nytta? En bok om humanioras möjligheter (red. Tomas Forser, Thomas Karlsohn), Göteborg: Daidalos, s. 229-237.

2012. ”De levande behöver de döda. Om historia, minne och sörjande”, Tid för Europa. Gemenskap, minne, hopp (red. Jon Wittrock), Göteborg: Daidalos, s. 219-229.

2011. ”History and Mourning”, Rethinking Time: Essays on Historical Consciousness, Memory, and Representation, (eds. Andrus Ers, Hans Ruin), Södertörn Academic Press, s. 235-244.

2011. “Minnet i historien”, Språket i historien, historien i språket, Göteborg: Institutionen för litteraturvetenskap, idéhistoria och religion, s. 329-339.

2011. ”Temporalt ansvar mellan minne och glömska. Förlåtelse och skuld hos Arendt”, Konsten att handla – konsten att tänka. Hannah Arendt om det politiska (red. Ulrika Björk, Anders Burman), Stockholm: Axl Books, s. 145-164.

2011. “För en tragisk humaniora”, Våra villkor i verkligheten. Den beskrivande ekonomins teori och praktik (red. Ewa Broniewicz, Thomas Polesie), Göteborg: BAS, s. 29-36.

2010. ”Bortom sorg och försoning: Om Jean Amérys historiemedvetande”, Glänta, nr 3-4, s. 65-73.

2009. ”Minneskulturens former: Inverterad monumentalhistoria”, Reflektionens gestalt (red. Kristina Fjelkestam), Södertörn Studies in Practical Knowledge vol. 3. Huddinge: Södertörns högskola, s. 36-50.