Time, Memory, and Cultural Change

Junior Visiting Fellows’ Conferences, Vol. XXV
IWM, Vienna 2009 [Published on the Web]

Edited by: Sean Dempsey and David Nichols

Contributions by: Shai Biderman, Thomas Carroll, Sean Dempsey, Andreas Gémes, Svetla Kazalarska, Christina Kleiser, David Nichols, Viktoria Sereda, and Vern Walker

Contemporary Art as Ars Memoriae:
Curatorial Strategies for Challenging the Post-Communist Condition

Svetla Kazalarska

The purportedly “post-modern” inflation of memory, attributable to the acceleration of history, manifests itself not only in the hyper-production of what Pierre Nora has referred to as “sites of memory.” The fall of the Berlin Wall in particular has brought about an unprecedented boom in “memorialist” cultural production such as museums, memorials, memoirs, films, archives, …
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Avishai Margalit’s Idea of an Ethics of Memory and its Relevance for a Pluralistic Europe

Christina Kleiser

Preview I would like to present the idea of an Ethics of Memory and how the Israeli philosopher Avishai Margalit dealt with it in his book The Ethics of Memory (2004) [1]. In this perspective, I want to discuss one of Margalit’s key concepts—that is “shared memory”—and its relevance for a pluralistic Europe, which brings …
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Antigone’s Autochthonous Voice:
Echoes in Sophocles, Hölderlin, and Heidegger

David Nichols

In the summer semester of 1942, Heidegger delivered his third and final lecture course on Hölderlin, subsequently published as Hölderlins Hymne »Der Ister«. The poet’s descriptions for the Danube, whose source is in the Black Forest, must have resonated deeply with the philosopher’s rustic proclivities. Heidegger was more interested in preserving this idyllic terrain than …
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The Big Leap: Heidegger, Nietzsche, Kafka

Shai Biderman

Deeply lost in the night. Just as one sometimes lowers one’s head to reflect, thus to be utterly lost in the night. All around people are asleep. It’s just play acting, and innocent self-deception, that they sleep in houses, in safe beds, under a safe roof, stretched out or curled up on mattresses, in sheets, …
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Wittgenstein and Method in the Study of Religion

Thomas D. Carroll

In the “Remarks of Frazer’s Golden Bough”, Wittgenstein shows his concern for clarity amidst the temptations surrounding the seeking of explanations, especially with respect to understanding cultural practices different from one’s own. Like many intellectuals in the English-speaking world in the early-to-mid twentieth century, Wittgenstein was fascinated by J. G. Frazer’s The Golden Bough. …
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The Poverty of Pacifism

Vern Walker

In 1972, the French journal L’Arc published a conversation between Gilles Deleuze and Michel Foucault entitled “Intellectuals and Power,” wherein they discuss the changing relation between theory and practice. There, Foucault says: “The intellectual’s role is no longer to place himself “somewhat ahead and to the side” in order to express the stifled truth of …
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Politics of Memory and Urban Landscape:
The Case of Lviv after World War II [1]

Victoriya Sereda

Lviv (Lwów, Lemberg, Lvov)—an East European city, located in the Polish-Ukrainian border zone, recently attracted the attention of many scholars. Its history and cultural heritage is an interesting source for studying cross-cultural influences and identity contests, politics of memory, processes of nationalization of urban space, as well as its symbolic marking.
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Deconstruction of a Myth?
Austria and the Hungarian Refugees of 1956-57

Andreas Gémes

Introduction The wave of refugees created by the 1956 Hungarian revolution constitutes a particularly interesting example of political migration. When studying this exodus and its effects, Hungary’s Western neighbour Austria deserves special attention since it was the country that at first received the majority of the refugees. Large-scale refugee movements typically have important political and …
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The Genesis of Secular Responsibility:
Aesthetic Education and the Neighbor

Sean Dempsey

In The Gift of Death (1995), a suggestive moment occurs when Jacques Derrida discusses the political theorist and sometimes Nazi jurist, Carl Schmitt, and his reading of Matthew 5: “You have heard that it was said, ‘You shall love your neighbor and hate your enemy.’ But I say to you, Love your enemies and …
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