Debates
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Tiempo histórico |
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I think that this is a vital
point. There is no world "out there" either from
the scientific or the historical perspective. It
is our curse or blessing that we can be nothing
other than homo-centric-- by which I do not mean
that every judgement is to be made solely
according to an egotistical human privilege.
There may be other worlds but we cannot know
them except through our being human and that is
what history allows us to grasp-- this being and
becoming human with respect to what we posit to
be "out there". History is about creating "human
meaning" we cannot create the meaning(s) for
other beings. We can only suggest our
relationship(s) to them-- it is these
relationships which some would hypostatize into
essences, an attitude which I consider to be
profoundly ahistorical and in many cases anti-humanist.
The humans whose traces we sense
in the present are no longer accessible. History
is one way of constructing a relationship to
those artefacts (traces) from which we may infer
the whole scope of possible beings. When I look
at a picture of myself as a boy, I can try to
construct a relationship between my present and
that image of someone else, someone no longer
there to whom I may (or may not) be able to
posit a meaningful relationship. This is not a
reconstruction of that past person. Rather it is
a process of using this image to reinterpret my
present. It is an enormously difficult task
without collateral evidence. Most people can
draw on some childhood friends or family members
to generate the necessary data. But when these
sources do not exist, then the redundancy is
extremely difficult if not impossible to
generate alone.
That is one reason why solitary
confinement and "disappearance" are so
destructive. The absence of these connections
and redundancies starves the present of its
constructive vitality. Without the tools to
create a past fictive, the present withers.
The standard of journalism which
is rightly criticised by humanists is guilty of
the same destruction. By neglecting or
destroying the connections between events-- even
within the same paper or broadcast-- by
fetishising "news" without history-- citizens
are stranded in a sea of mirage-like "facts"
without the least aid to bind this flotsam
together into a usable raft.
Mit freundlichen Grüßen/ Sincerely/ Cordialement/ Atenciosemente/ Cordiali saluti
Dr. Patrick Wilkinson
Institute for Advanced Cultural Studies Europe Kirchstrasse 32 D-40227 Düsseldorf +49 211 495 3010 +49 171 645 9153
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