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An Ethics of Remembering: History, Heterology, and the Nameless Others
What are the ethical responsibilities of the historian in an age of mass murder and hyperreality? Can one be postmodern and still write history? For whom should history be written?
Edith Wyschogrod animates such questions through the passionate figure of the "heterological historian." Realizing the philosophical impossibility of ever recovering "what really happened," this historian nevertheless acknowledges a moral imperative to speak for those who have been rendered voiceless, to give countenance to those who have become faceless, and hope to the desolate. Wyschogrod also weighs the impact of modern archival methods, such as photographs, film, and the Internet, which bring with them new constraints on the writing of history and which mandate a new vision of community. Drawing on the works of continental philosophers, historiographers, cognitive scientists, and filmmakers, Wyschogrod creates a powerful new framework for the understanding of history and the ethical duties of the historian.
Edith Wyschogrod animates such questions through the passionate figure of the "heterological historian." Realizing the philosophical impossibility of ever recovering "what really happened," this historian nevertheless acknowledges a moral imperative to speak for those who have been rendered voiceless, to give countenance to those who have become faceless, and hope to the desolate. Wyschogrod also weighs the impact of modern archival methods, such as photographs, film, and the Internet, which bring with them new constraints on the writing of history and which mandate a new vision of community. Drawing on the works of continental philosophers, historiographers, cognitive scientists, and filmmakers, Wyschogrod creates a powerful new framework for the understanding of history and the ethical duties of the historian.
- GenresPhilosophyHistory
302 pages, Paperback
First published January 1, 1998
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Displaying 1 - 2 of 2 reviews
December 3, 2023
I really really adored this book. It is a very coherent account of how we handle memory and recollect our histories, and how we have to challenge them.
Heyerological historians! I loved the analysis of Wugustine, and the extensive engagement with Heidegger. I found the analaysis very rich.
The ethics
“The image is not the averse of ethics, but, by holding beings and discourse in abeyance, bracketing them, opens a space of disclosure beyond iconicity that is homologous with the non-discursiveness of the face”
The historian is implicated in various discursive types. Anyone covering important issues should check this out, I feel. I wish the theory was more accessible.
“The heterological historical is stationed in the non-space of ethics, must tolerate the wounding by time, without allowing themselves to be overcome by it, for they work in the discursive space, opened by the wounding and recovery.”
Confronted by another aporia of Hegelian discourse, a danger intrinsic to historical writing, the effacing of the victims name. In the very act of memory ration, the name will be separated from its bar, becoming an empty signifier.
Man made mass death
No historical account can remain disinterested. The heterologous commanded to rescue the name from its historic, in a narrative of events that could not have been. Here as she speaks as a cutely as possible.
The heterological historian is at the point where they neither ignore, nor is overwhelmed by the catechism, is neither injured to alterity, nor so wounded by in that they cannot speak that enables them to evade totalization
from the non-space of ethics, on that precipice between a barren region where information could move and a swirling maelstrom where information moves so wild lead the chaos ruled
Heyerological historians! I loved the analysis of Wugustine, and the extensive engagement with Heidegger. I found the analaysis very rich.
The ethics
“The image is not the averse of ethics, but, by holding beings and discourse in abeyance, bracketing them, opens a space of disclosure beyond iconicity that is homologous with the non-discursiveness of the face”
The historian is implicated in various discursive types. Anyone covering important issues should check this out, I feel. I wish the theory was more accessible.
“The heterological historical is stationed in the non-space of ethics, must tolerate the wounding by time, without allowing themselves to be overcome by it, for they work in the discursive space, opened by the wounding and recovery.”
Confronted by another aporia of Hegelian discourse, a danger intrinsic to historical writing, the effacing of the victims name. In the very act of memory ration, the name will be separated from its bar, becoming an empty signifier.
Man made mass death
No historical account can remain disinterested. The heterologous commanded to rescue the name from its historic, in a narrative of events that could not have been. Here as she speaks as a cutely as possible.
The heterological historian is at the point where they neither ignore, nor is overwhelmed by the catechism, is neither injured to alterity, nor so wounded by in that they cannot speak that enables them to evade totalization
from the non-space of ethics, on that precipice between a barren region where information could move and a swirling maelstrom where information moves so wild lead the chaos ruled
February 11, 2018
Very dense, some power lost in academic jargon (says the academic). Nonetheless astute and helpful for the postmodern scholar concerned with the ethics of the task.
Displaying 1 - 2 of 2 reviews