Name: Hope and Memory: Lessons From the Twentieth Century
Price: 83.24 NZD
Availability: InStock
Author: Tzvetan Todorov
ISBN: 9780691171425

portada Hope and Memory: Lessons From the Twentieth Century

Hope and Memory: Lessons From the Twentieth Century

Type

Physical Book

Author

Tzvetan Todorov

Publisher

Princeton University Press

Year

2016

Language

English

Pages

362

Format

Paperback

ISBN13

9780691171425

Synopsis "Hope and Memory: Lessons From the Twentieth Century "

Both a political history and a moral critique of the twentieth century, this is a personal and impassioned book from one of Europe's most outstanding intellectuals. Identifying totalitarianism as the major innovation of the twentieth century, Tzvetan Todorov examines the struggle between this system and democracy and its effects on human life and consciousness. Totalitarianism managed to impose itself because, more than any other political system, it played on people's need for the absolute: it fed their hope to endow life with meaning by taking part in the construction of a paradise on earth. As a result, millions of people lost their lives in the name of a higher good. While democracy eventually won the struggle against totalitarianism in much of the world, democracy itself is not immune to the pitfall of do-goodery: moral correctness at home and atomic or "humanitarian" bombs abroad. Todorov explores the history of the past century not only by analyzing its spectacular political conflicts but also by offering moving profiles of several individuals who, at great personal cost, resisted the strictures of the communist and Nazi regimes. Some--Margarete Buber-Neumann, David Rousset, Primo Levi, and Germaine Tillion--were deported to concentration camps. Others--Vasily Grossman and Romain Gary--fought courageously in World War II. All became exemplary witnesses who described with great lucidity and humanity what they had endured. This book preserves the memory of the past as we move into the twenty-first century--arguing eloquently that we must place the past at the service of a just future.

Tzvetan Todorov

(Author)

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Tzvetan Todorov (Sofia, 1939 – Paris, 2017) was a Bulgarian-born French linguist, philosopher, historian of ideas, and literary theorist. Professor at the CNRS in Paris and visiting scholar at Yale, Harvard, and Columbia, he began his work in literary theory with Theory of Literature of the Russian Formalists (1965) and Literature and Signification (1967), pioneering texts in semiotics and narratology. From the 80s, he shifted towards historical and ethical essays, reflecting on the Enlightenment and totalitarianisms.

Among his most influential titles are The Conquest of America: The Question of the Other (1982), Facing the Limit (1991; Facing the Extreme), and The Abuses of Memory (1995). His exploration of evil and memory in the 20th century is summarized in Memory of Evil, Temptation of Good (2000) and The Totalitarian Experience (2010). These works, of an essayistic and historiographic genre, did not receive specific literary awards, but Todorov was honored with the Prince of Asturias Award for Social Sciences in 2008 and received distinctions such as the Medal of the Order of Arts and Letters in France.

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