Author and audience in Catalepton

2020 ◽  
pp. 48-69
Author(s):  
Joseph Farrell
Keyword(s):  
Frame Of Reference ◽  
First Century ◽  
End Of History ◽  
The End Of History

Catalepton presents itself as a work of Vergil’s youth that reflects the time when it is set. It represents Vergil as a belated neoteric and a critic of littérateurs; and it reflects on the downfall of an unnamed individual evocative of Pompey. This chapter argues that such topics have a double frame of reference, speaking both to the collection’s dramatic date and to the time when it was written, probably in the first century AD. The collection represents Vergil as preoccupied with literary belatedness and inferiority; the death of oratory; the pernicious influence of rhetores; issues surrounding monarchy; the end of history—all themes more characteristic of early imperial intellectuals than of Vergil. Yet the author of Catalepton presents Vergil’s concerns with plausibility. One may therefore infer that the author’s double focus addresses an early imperial audience on two levels, commenting on contemporary concerns, and reflecting on a posited similarity between two historical moments (the collection’s dramatic date and the period when it was produced).

Generation fables and the ‘end of history’

2019 ◽  
pp. 87-112
Author(s):  
Jennie Bristow
Keyword(s):  
First Century ◽  
Historical Period ◽  
End Of History ◽  
The Past ◽  
Early Twenty ◽  
The Social ◽  
The Sixties ◽  
The End Of History ◽  
Twenty First Century ◽  
Outside The Box

This chapter examines ‘generationalism’ — using the language of generations to narrate the social and political. It argues that generationalism means that we are in danger of taking historical stories way too personally. The chapter shows that the generationalism of the Sixties was as much about the failure of established institutions and ideologies to grasp what was happening as it was about the experience of the kids and the counterculture. Moving on half a century, the generationalism of the early twenty-first century tells us as much about our present anxieties as it does about the Sixties as a historical period. Whereas the Sixties Boomer was, until fairly recently, a source of wistful fascination, often bringing with it a romanticised nostalgia for a time when people felt they could think and live outside the box, the Boomer-blaming of the present day mobilises the stereotype as an example of everything that is seen to be wrong with the past.

The pertinence of revolution

2001 ◽  
Vol 27 (4) ◽  
pp. 675-681
Author(s):  
Roberto González Gomez
Keyword(s):  
International Relations ◽  
Third World ◽  
New Left ◽  
First Century ◽  
End Of History ◽  
Western Countries ◽  
The Subject ◽  
Historical Phenomenon ◽  
The End Of History ◽  
The 1960S

Fred Halliday has been impertinent enough to write this book at a time when the collapse of the European socialist bloc and the undiluted hegemony of a trans-nationalized capitalism, encourages the beatific neo-liberal confidence in the ‘end of history’. For this book brilliantly emphasizes the meaning and the importance of revolutions both as an historical phenomenon and in terms of its relevance for the twenty-first century, especially for those countries of the South. Probably few academics in Western countries are as well positioned as Halliday to write about the subject: his early links with the New Left in the 1960s, his interest in the study of Third World conflicts and revolutions, and of course his role as a theoretician of international relations, have equipped him well. His study analyses revolutions in all of their complexity and range, from the British to the Iranian, the French to the Bolshevik, the Chinese to the Cuban. The result is a substantial, profound, richly analytical book, that almost requires writing another book to discuss its various qualities. I will however restrict myself here to making a few comments about the issues I deem particularly significant.

Bells and Alarm Clocks: Theatre and Theatre Research at the Millenium

1999 ◽  
Vol 24 (1) ◽  
pp. 98-108 ◽  
Author(s):  
Maria Shevtsova
Keyword(s):  
First Century ◽  
Speed Of Light ◽  
Jean Baudrillard ◽  
End Of History ◽  
Hospital Operations ◽  
The End Of History ◽  
Twenty First Century ◽  
Year 2000 ◽  
As If

Space, as Einstein has taught us, has no limits, and time is relative to where you are moving and the speed of light. Our millenium, then, is only a speck in eternal space. It is, nevertheless, a point relative to which we are positioned and on which we place a limit—a date—so that our actions may be chronicled, measured, and brought to some sort of completion, thus releasing us from living forever in the present. Yet, notwithstanding our ability to construct, contain and count time, somewhere someone has made a slip, for there is a ‘glitch’ in the system that still prevents millions of computers from recognizing the year 2000, by which devilry we are sent back to less than zero, to zero twice, 00. This error may well have disastrous consequences, although it would be preferable not have any of them happen—hospital operations failing, aeroplanes losing their bearings and going down in apocalyptic spectacles that are considered appropriate for a millenial ending. is as if this error might be interpreted as a token of what Jean Baudrillard, in a different context that has nothing to do with computers, sardonically suggests may be our desire to wipe out history, even, perhaps, to start again from scratch. Baudrillard's is, of course, one of multiple theses on the ‘end of history’ and millenial nothingness that have emerged, not least via the theatre, with the approach of the twenty-first century.

From Derrida's Deconstruction to Stiegler's Organology: Thinking after Postmodernity

Derrida Today ◽  
2020 ◽  
Vol 13 (1) ◽  
pp. 33-47
Author(s):  
Anne Alombert
Keyword(s):  
Philosophical Critique ◽  
End Of History ◽  
The Subject ◽  
The End Of History

The aim of this paper is to question the significance of Derrida's deconstruction of the concepts of subject and history. While ‘postmodernity’ tends to be characterized by philosophical critique as the ‘liquidation of the subject’ or the ‘end of history’, I attempt to show that Derrida's deconstruction of ‘subjectivity’ and ‘historicity’ is not an elimination or destruction of these concepts, but an attempt to transform them in order to free them from their metaphysical-teleological presuppositions. This paper argues that this transformation, which begins in Derrida's and continues in Stiegler's texts, leads to the notions of ‘psycho-social individuation’ and ‘doubly epokhal redoubling’. I maintain that such notions ‘supplement’ the metaphysical concepts of subject and history by forcing a reconsideration of the technical conditions of psychic individuation and the technological conditions of ‘epochality’.

The End of History Museums: What's Plan B??

2008 ◽  
Vol 30 (4) ◽  
pp. 9-27 ◽  
Author(s):  
Cary Carson
Keyword(s):  
Historic Sites ◽  
The Public ◽  
End Of History ◽  
House Museums ◽  
The Past ◽  
History Museums ◽  
Plan B ◽  
The End Of History ◽  
The Way

Abstract Are historic sites and house museums destined to go the way of Oldsmobiles and floppy disks?? Visitation has trended downwards for thirty years. Theories abound, but no one really knows why. To launch a discussion of the problem in the pages of The Public Historian, Cary Carson cautions against the pessimistic view that the past is simply passéé. Instead he offers a ““Plan B”” that takes account of the new way that learners today organize information to make history meaningful.

Sign in / Sign up

Export Citation Format

Share Document