October 2014
Intermediate to advanced
384 pages
13h 8m
English
Articulating the past historically does not mean recognizing it ‘the way it really was.’ It means appropriating a memory as it flashes up in a moment of danger. Historical materialism wishes to hold fast that image of the past which unexpectedly appears to the historical subject in a moment of danger. (Benjamin [1940] 2003, 391)
In 1989, on the verge of the end of history, when the end of socialism was being celebrated as the triumph of liberal democracy, all big narratives were buried in society or dismissed as ‘totalitarian’ or ‘essentialist.’184 Within the academy there was also a re-orientation, away from the grand narrative of history ...