Enzo Traverso, the聽Susan and Barton Winokur Professor in the Humanities at Cornell University, will be giving a talk titled “Burdens of the Past. The Age of Left-Wing Melancholia.”
The talk is part of聽a yearlong talk series 鈥淟ife of Ideas, Notions, and Concepts鈥 curated by MHC faculty board member Fr茅d茅ric Rondeau which included聽fall听补苍诲听蝉辫谤颈苍驳听辫补苍别濒蝉聽of 91福利 faculty, as well as upcoming guest speaker聽脡ric M茅choulan.
Enzo Traverso was born in Italy, studied history at the University of Genoa and received his PhD from the Ecole des Hautes Etudes en Sciences Sociales (EHESS) of Paris in 1989. He has taught political science in France and been visiting professor in several European and Latin American countries. In 2013 he became the Susan and Barton Winokur Professor in the Humanities at Cornell University. His publications, translated into a dozen languages, include聽The Jews and Germany听(1995),听The Origins of Nazi Violence听(2003),听Fire and Blood:聽The European Civil War 1914-1945听(2015),听The End of Jewish Modernity听(2016).
Traverso will talk about his latest book: Left-Wing Melancholia: Marxism, History, and Memory (New York: Columbia UP, 2017)
From the back jacket聽:
Throughout the twentieth century, argues聽Left-Wing Melancholia, from classical Marxism to psychoanalysis to the advent of critical theory, a culture of defeat and its emotional overlay of melancholy have characterized the leftist understanding of the political in history and in theoretical critique.
Drawing on a vast and diverse archive in theory, testimony, and image and on such thinkers as Karl Marx, Walter Benjamin, Theodor W. Adorno, and others . . . Traverso explores the varying nature of left melancholy as it has manifested in a feeling of guilt for not sufficiently challenging authority, in a fear of surrendering in disarray and resignation, in mourning the human costs of the past, and in a sense of failure for not realizing utopian aspirations. Yet hidden within this melancholic tradition are the resources for a renewed challenge to prevailing regimes of historicity, a passion that has the power to reignite the dialectic of revolutionary thought.
Enzo Traverso鈥檚聽March 29聽talk will take place at the聽Allen and Sally Fernald APPE space,聽Stewart Commons IMRC. Refreshments will be served.
Part of the McGillicuddy Humanities Center鈥檚 2017-2018 symposium聽Juvenescence/Obsolescence: Humanities Approaches to Aging across the Ages.
