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The European Legacy
Toward New Paradigms
Volume 6, 2001 - Issue 1
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Original Articles

Liberation from the Past

Pages 37-47 | Published online: 02 Jul 2010

References

  • Weil , E. 1976 . Wen und Würde der erzählenden Geschichte , 2 Göttingen : Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht . New stories, fortifed with proof, deductions and evidence:
  • 1903 . Entwurf einer Gesetzlichen Organisation der Denkmalpflege in Oesterreich , Wien : Bundesdenkmalamt . The cult of monuments: A. Riegl, Der moderne Denkmalkultus, in idem
  • Mastroianni , G. 1998 . "II peso della tradizione," . Storiografia , 2 : 41 – 56 . The "weight of the past":
  • Mastrogregori , M. 1998 . "La tradizione dei ricordi. Osservazioni e postule" . Storiografia , 2 : 57 – 99 . It is not the past which exists, but its memories. There is to be attributed to the past, as I have said in my paper, the existence which Kant called noumenal; it is to be added that the importance of affairs, of the "res gestae," and the fullness of their consequences play a primary role in the process which gives life to the tradition of memories. Besides, only for convenience did I speak exclusively of the visible traces of vanished realities, neglecting the signs of time passed on our still living reality. On the problem of the tradition of memories:
  • Lasting objects and signs exist. Until the eighteenth century, important developments gave life to traditions. The correlation is not perfect, in the sense that not all important developments give life to traditions (it is enough to glance at the historical role of secrets, taboos, the sacred and the inexpressible); but up to that date, in general, existing traditions derived from developments that were, in their own way, important. From the nineteenth century onwards, instead, we witness a proliferation of traditions freed from the importance of facts. The whole archive of a government ministry is preserved, on principle, and the need to select the most important documents whilst getting rid of the others is dictated only by the lack of material space. The dominant historicist principle, in a broad sense, is that everything must be preserved, because one day everything could become important.
  • Leopardi , G. 1955 . Le lettere , 342 Milano : Mondadori . Leopardi unmored in Rome in 1822:
  • Febvre , L. 1993 . "Crise de la civilisation, avenir de l'Europe (Strasbourg, mars 1953)," . Rivista di storia della storiografia modern , XIV ( 1-2 ) : 128 Lucien Febvre Kdrl V Hitler: : "Charles Quint, consideré comme un des grands réalisateurs de l'Europe!!!-Merci bien. Mais pourquoi pas une médaille de Napoléon 1? on de Hitler?" (there was at that moment an official European project of striking a medal for Karl V)
  • Benjamin , W. 1982 . Gesammelte Schriften, band V, Das Passagem-Werk , Frankfurt/M : Suhrkamp Verlag . The present opens a space of knotvability:, chap. N 7a, 8 (Reflections on the theory of knowledge). Knowability is the translation of Benjamin's term Erkenmbarkeit.
  • 1991 . II carattere della filosofia moderna , Napoli : Bibliopolis . Croce and the contemporary history: B. Croce, Teoria e storia della storiografia, Bari, Laterza (1927), chap. I: "Storia e cronaca," p. 1-17; see also idem, chap. I: "II concetto della filosofia come storicismo assoluto," 9-28
  • Halbwachs , M. 1925 . Les cadres socianse de la mémoire , Paris : Albin Michel . Hdlbwachs: of, chap. III: "La reconstruction du passé," 83-113
  • Bautier , R.-H. 1968 . "La phase cruciale de l'histoire des archives: la constitution des dépots d'archives et la naissance de l'archivistique (XVIe-début du XIXe siècle)," . Archivum , XVIII : 139 – 49 . Current and historical archives:ef
  • Meinecke , F. 1936 . Die Eutstehung des Hiistorisnms , Muenchen u. Berlin : Oldenbourg . Meinecke, Auervach, Orlando:
  • Auerbach , E. 1944 . Mintesis. Dangestellte Wirklichkeit in der abendländis-chen Literatur , Bern : A. Francke .
  • Orlando , F. 1993 . Gli oggetti desueti nelle immagini della letteratura. Rovine, reliquie, rarita, robaccia, Iuoghi inabitati e tesori , Torino : Einaudi .
  • de Chateaubriand , F. R. 1995 . Memorie d'oltretomba , vol. I , 107 Torino : Einaudi-Gallimard . as regards Chateaubriand, see
  • Celati , G. 1986 . "Il bazar archeologico," ” . In idem, Finzioni occidentali , 187 – 215 . Torino : Einaudi . The city as archaeological labyrinth: of
  • Saisselin , G. 1990 . Le bourgeois et le biblot , Paris : A. Michel . Museums, large department stores, objects for thinking and photogrphy:
  • Douglas , M. and Isherwood , B. 1979 . The World of Goods , New York : Basic Books .
  • Sontag , S. 1990 |1977| . On Photography , New York : Anchor Books . chap. I: "In Plato's Cave."
  • Hacking , I. 1995 . Rewriting the Soul: Multiple Personality and the Sciences of Memory , Princeton : Princeton University Press . Multiple personality syndrome in the USA:
  • Tocquet'ille and the individual. At the end of his nineteenth-century journey in America, Tocqueville came to the conclusion that one result of democracy was that of making each person fix his attention on himself. See A. De Tocqueville, Dc la Démocratie en Amérique, deuxième partie, chap. II: "De l'individualisme dans les pays démocratiques."
  • Hc lias no time to think about the past. More precisely, he has no time to have experience of the real past, but only of fantastic images and myths. If, in fact, the reality of things is, as Vladimir Nabokov suggests, the gradual accumulation of information and experience about them, where a lily is more real for a botanist than for a florist and is more real for the rlorist than for his customer-if this is reality, the modern individual has no taste for the reality of the past. He lingers on the surface of the traces of the past, from the nineteenth century on, huge, colorful and eventful.
  • Nietzsche's indulgent spectator: F. Nietzsche, Unzeilgemiisse Betrachtungen, zuvites Stück: Vom Nutzen und Nachteilen der Geschichte, Section 5.
  • Croce , B. 1935 . "Antistoricismo," ” . In idem, Ultimi saggi , Bari : Laterza . Anti-historicism:
  • Antoni , C. 1931 . "Storicismo e antistoricismo," . Ciriltà moderna , : 3 – 20 . ; for the dialogue with Thomas Mann, see
  • Cutinelli-Rèndina , E. , ed. 1991 . Carteggio Croce-Mann , 3 Napoli : Pagano .
  • Wittgenstein , L. 1992 . Note snl "Ramo d'oro" di Frazer , Milano : Adelphi . as regards Wittgenstein: of.
  • Antonelli , P. 1995 . Mutant Materials in Contemporary Design , New York : Museum of Modem Art . Mutant materials:
  • Goethe and the liberation from history: the allusion is to the Maximen und Reflexionen.
  • To think of history and tell it, the only possible liberation from the past. It is to be underlined, even if obvious, that we are dealing with history that inspires us with a lust for truth, not dry, pedantic erudition, which does nothing but bury the past, producing only illegible tombstones.
  • Pasolini , Cf. Pier Paolo . 1992 . Petrolic , 262 – 3 . Torino : Einaudi . The past, a storehouse of incomprehensible fragments, and the mystery of experience, : "Ci sono delle cose ehe si vivono solo attraverso il corpo … cosicché il mistero dell'esperienza esistenziale è un mistero per eccellenza del passato: non solo del Passato come esso ci appare nel Presente (mistero dei padri), ma anche del Passato come esso ci appare nel Future (mistero dei figli). (…) Tale continuità invade tutta Ia vita, è il suo registre continue. La stabilizzazione del Presente, le Istituzioni e il Potere ehe le difende, si fondano su questo sentimento del Passato, corne mistero da rivivere: se noi non ci illudessimo di rifare le stesse esperienze esistenziali dei padri, saremmo presi da un'angoscia intollerabile, perderemmo il senso di noi, l'idea di noi. (…) C'è qualcosa di assoluto nel pensiero del potente ehe vuole stabilizzare il Passato; mentre c'é qualcosa di precario nel pensiero della vittima ehe vuole distruggere il passato."
  • Discontinuous tradition. Cf. Thomas Pynchon, V. (1963), chap. VII: "Perhaps history this century is rippled with gathers in its fabric such that if we are situated at the bottom of a fold, it's impossible to determine warp, woof or pattern anywhere else. Uy virtue, however, of existing in one gather it is assumed there are others, compartmented off into sinuous cycles each of which come to assume greater importance than the weave itself and destroy any continuity. Thus it is that we are charmed by the fimny-looking automobiles of the '30's, the curious fashions of the '20's, the peculiar moral habits of our grandparents. We produce and attend musical comedies about them and are conned into a false memory, a phony nostalgia about what they were. We are accordingly lost to any sense of a continuous tradition. Perhaps if we lived on a crest, things would be different. We could at least see."

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