Tommaso Giordani has published a review of Quinn Slobodian’s Globalists for Jacobin Italia. It is available here.
Author Archives: Jorge Varela
Tommaso Giordani on Zeev Sternhell and Fascism
Tommaso Giordani has published an article in the Autumn issue of Il Pensiero Storico en
titled “Zeev Sternhell, l’antilluminismo, ed il fascismo come possibilità ricorrente“. Written in the Italian language, the article examines the centrality of the Enlightenment/anti-Enlightenment distinction in Zeev’s Sternhell’s work, arguing that it constitutes the conceptual core of the Israeli historian’s oeuvre. A shortened version of the same argument can be found in English in Ideology, Theory, Practice, the blog of the Journal of Political Ideologies, under the title “Fascism as a recurring possibility: Zeev Sternhell, the anti-Enlightenment, and the politics of an intellectual history of modernity“.
Piret Peiker on Eastern European Literature
Piret Peiker’s article “East European Literature from the Postcolonial Perspective” (“Ida-Euroopa kirjandus postkoloniaalsest vaatenurgast) was published in the anthology edited by Johanna Ross and Epp Annus Art Created for Several Masters: Soviet Colonialism and Estonia (“Mitmele isandale loodud kunst. Sotskolonialism ja Eesti”).Tartu: Tartu University Press, pp. 165-166.
The article focuses on the depiction of history and human agency in the East European Bildungsromane in the interwar and postwar periods. It uses postcolonial theory as its main approach.
You can find it in the below link (in Estonian):
Open Philosophy Seminar, 02.10.20
Henry Mead will give a paper in the Open Philosophy seminar series at Tallinn University on 02.10.20 (Room S-240). Title and Abstract below:
Modernist Temporalities: Fictions, Myths, and the ‘Religious Attitude’
This paper first considers Frank Kermode’s account of modernist apocalyptic thinking in The Sense of an Ending (1967) as a reference point for temporality studies, noting its distinctions between secular chronicity, epiphanic kairos, and intermediate forms identifiable in modern literature. Using this theory as a frame, the paper focuses on T.E. Hulme, whose essays capture a type of modernist ‘clerical scepticism’, as Kermode puts it, in treating assertions about progress or historical crisis as humanly-constructed ‘fictions’. The paper then traces Hulme’s analysis of early 20th century thought, moving from forms of positivist progress to a vitalist perspectivism – and considers his ‘religious attitude’ in his late writing, in relation to Kermode’s categories of ‘myth’ and ‘supreme fiction’.
Henry Mead on Modernist Anti-Humanism
Henry Mead has published an article, ‘The typewriter mind: modernism, populism and antihumanism’, in Textual Practice, 34.9 (Sep 2020), 1549-1573, DOI 10.1080/0950236X.2020.1808293 (open access here).
Tommaso Giordani on presentism
Tommaso Giordani has published an extended book review of Marek Tamm and Laurent Olivier’s book “Rethinking Historical Time” in the European Review of History. The review is available here.
Beyond the End of History? Chronicle of Higher Education
https://www.chronicle.com/article/beyond-the-end-of-history?cid=gen_sign_in
Intellectual History Seminar at Tartu University
Henry Mead will present a paper on ‘Modernism, Heresy and Temporalities’ at Tartu University, Jacobi 2-336, on Monday 9 November at 16.15.
On Progress and Coronavirus
Revolution in the 20th century podcast
Between the Times researchers Tommaso Giordani and Ksenia Shmydkaya spoke to Enriko Mäsak for the podcast Filotsoon. The topic of conversation was revolution and violence in the 20th century, and the discussion focussed on Georges Sorel, Stanislawa Przybyszewska, and their relation to the memory and heritage of 1789.
The podcast is available here: