We live in a time of acute historical anxiety. This anxiety manifests itself in various forms: ambivalence about our relationship to the past, a disorientating sense of ever-accelerating change, the fear of an unpredictable and uncontrollable future. How we conceive historical time is an essential component of the human effort to order and control lived reality. Historical anxiety occurs when established understandings of time no longer seem adequate to actual historical developments. This series will explore historical anxiety in the present and how it impacts our understanding of the past and future.

One form in which historical anxiety manifests itself is an ambivalent relationship to the past. For the past may possess a resonance that the present does not wish to acknowledge or cannot fully control. In today’s event, Jeffrey Andrew Barash will discuss how historical investigation can reactivate, in unanticipated ways, deep-seated, symbolically charged attitudes, assumptions, and myths from the past. His primary example will be representations and investigations of the American Civil War and Reconstruction era – a timely issue as symbols of the Confederacy are being reclaimed for contemporary political ends.

Jeffrey Andrew Barash is Professor Emeritus of Philosophy at the Université de Picardie, Amiens. His research focuses on political philosophy, historicism, historical memory, and modern German thought. Among his books, which have been translated into several languages, are Martin Heidegger and the Problem of Historical Meaning (2nd ed. 2003), Collective Memory and the Historical Past (2016), and Shadows of Being: Encounters with Heidegger and Historical Reflection (2022).

Academic Homepage: https://sofheyman.org/persons/jeffrey-andrew-barash

Nicholas Halmi is Professor of English and Comparative Literature at the University of Oxford and Margaret Candfield Fellow of University College, Oxford. His current research is concerned with historical consciousness and historicization in the aesthetic realm, and with cultural periodization and the concept of Romanticism. Among his publications is The Genealogy of the Romantic Symbol (2007). He is completing a book called Historization, Aesthetics, and the Past.

Website: https://nicholashalmi.org  
Homepage: https://www.english.ox.ac.uk/people/professor-nicholas-halmi