Talk of Posthistoire or “post history” has itself become historic. Also the talk about an imperfect past seen as a promise for the future. Thinking about how something has turned out seems to be lost in the ubiquity of everyday opinions and emotions as well as in the boundless dynamic of digital memories. The past is made into a permanent virtual present, a “nostalgia for the present”, as Fredric Jameson puts it. Nonetheless everything past is fashionable: “la mode retro” as delight in the text of the past, in myriad formats and on all channels. These conditions provide an upswing for endless reviews in the media: retrospectives and revisions, the reshuffle of pasts under the reality of oblivion in today’s information society. Which new forms of repetition/re-recording, of re-writing, of staging and masquerading past knowledge are there, and how many can there be? How can the old data carriers book, library, card index and archive utilise their stored wisdom and the implied stability thereof for the (re-)generation of knowledge, perception and experience? How is the renewed fascination with the antiquated to be transferred into and applied as new methods and techniques for the adaptation of our established canon of values? What do we read in the sources, the testimonials and files to which a Franz Kafka had set to with libidinous fervor? What value has the temporalisation of the past under the auspices of deferred action, of the future perfect, the “there will have been”?
Andreas Huyssen
Villard Professor of German and Comparative Literature, Columbia University New York
Transnationale Verwertungen des Holocaust
Wednesday, May 21, 2008, 09:15 pm, Senatssaal, Unter den Linden 6
Elena Esposito
Sociologist, writer and professor at the University of Modena and Reggio Emilia
Finanzwirtschaft und Gesellschaft: Zukunft aus den Daten der Vergangenheit
Thursday, June 05, 2008, 09:15 pm, auditorium 1.101, Hegelplatz 2
Christoph Ransmayr
Lecture and discussion with professor Wendelin Schmidt-Dengler, University of Vienna
Blicke zurück und in die Ferne
Thursday, June 19, 2008, 09:15 pm, Senatssaal, Unter den Linden 6
Harun Farocki
Author and filmmaker
»Aufschub« – Die Ikonographie von KZ-Bildern (Film und Vortrag)
Thursday, July 03, 2008, 09:15 pm, auditorium 1.101, Hegelplatz 2