Preliminary Programme

Although the changes in conceptual paradigms turn out to be imposible to date with precision one could argue that from the 90s the narrative turn in philosophy of history coexists and is in part beeing replaced by the theoretical consequenses of the so called memory boom (J.Winters). This last one, constitutes an important cultural phenomenon that goes beyond purely academic studies, but indicates also the limitations and exhaustion of a purely linguistic approach to epistemology of history. In this framework, I examine critically the notion of experience in the work of D. Lacapra and F. Ankersmit (but also R. Kosellecks notion of Erfahrungsraum)) and I try to explore posible answers to the question about the ways of access to the "reality" of the past. (Show less)

In Sublime Historical Experience (Stanford University Press, 2005), F. Ankersmit distinguishes four types of forgettings, two of them are named trauma 1 and trauma 2 (321-7). The first two decades after World War II are an example of forgetting of what Ankersmit has named “trauma 1”. In this type of trauma the terrible painful experience is “forgotten”, “repressed”. But a reconciliation of experience and identity can be achieved as soon as the traumatic experience can be successfully subsumed in a “right story”. For Ankersmit, those “are changes in and not of our identities” (330) or to say it metaphorically “the building of new cities or highways are changes within the borders of our country, changes that leave these borders themselves unaffected”.
However, Ankersmit recognizes that there are other variants of historical events which caused what he named the fourth type of forgetting or trauma 2. The French Revolution is an example of this second type of trauma that, unlike the Holocaust, provokes a definite rupture with a former identity. The previous world is lost for ever by the acquisition of a new identity. For Ankersmit, the Revolution is an ineluctable barrier between a pre-revolutionary world and a post-revolutionary world. The main difference between this type of trauma and trauma 1 is that the present is so utterly apart from the past that no story could restore the same identity. This past only can be the object of historical knowledge. The fracture is complete: “We have been ejected, expelled or exiled from the past, or rather, because of some terrible event (such as the French Revolution) a world in which we used to live naively fell apart into a past and a present” (328). If it is possible to restore the identity in trauma 1, this will be impossible in trauma 2.
Until this point, we have stated Ankersmit´s viewpoint. This paper intends to deal with a question that underlies Ankersmit´s thesis but he does not posit: Why do some events bring out pasts as different worlds? Why do some events (like the French Revolution) and not others (like the Holocaust and Latin-American´s state terrorisms) provoke such a rupture with the present that they originate pasts that only can be objects of knowledge? How do those pasts arise? (pasts about which historians can write without challenging moral, political and juridical concerns of the present). When can an event “turn over the page” of history? Why would anybody say the same from the Holocaust or Latin-American state’s terrorism? Why do some events create historical regimes and others live under memory ones? This paper intends to deal with these questions specially focusing on Latin-American’s experience. (Show less)

We have become so used to the fragmentary and micro-political perspective expressed by the human sciences during the last twenty years, particularly following what Lyotard referred to as the end of Metanarratives like Worldhistory (Weltgeschichte), that we manifest reluctance to play the language-game of hope within a macro-political frame, or within an historical horizon, which tends to be replaced by the conflict of memories. This is also true of the very language of politicians, which has become more and more ethnocentric over the last two decades, ignoring more and more the injustices of the dominant world order, and which completely privileges a more “micro-realistic” vocabulary, referring to the concrete interests, management and governance of particular countries, communities and regional geo-political blocks (whether rich like the European Union or the North America Free Trade Agreement –NAFTA, or poorer, like MERCOSUR). And when it comes to protesters, it is more and more difficult to mobilize the public about global issues because there is a feeling that concrete and direct intervention can only be limited to local issues. So the idea of justice and hope as referring to the whole world, to the whole humanity (a term which is nowadays being replaced by the word “humanitarian”, with a completely different meaning and scope, as charity, compassion or assistantship), seems more and more like an anachronism from the last century. I deal with this issue in relation with the crisis of the political identities of the political left at a global scale. The question I address is the relation between what seems to be a new regime d’historicité (Hartog) named “présentisme” and the historical roots of the political left. (Show less)

Founding moments of nations seem intrinsically significant. Nevertheless commemorations of the bicentennial of Mexico Independence and the centennial of Mexican Revolution will show that the meanings of such events are constructed on the basis of contemporary politics. My paper will analize which dimensions of that political past are malleable (and to what extent) and which are relatively fixed (as inserted in myths, but also in institutional legacies). (Show less)