Revolution: an Intellectual History, a discussion with Prof. Enzo Traverso (Cornell University)

• Department of History

The Intellectual History Working Group hosts a discussion on the concept of revolution is a key to understand our modernity, not only its social and political structures but also its ideas and collective imagination, until its aesthetic forms.

Abstract

Instead of depicting their history as a chronological sequence, revolutions should be interpreted as collective eruptions that destroy the established order, break the linearity of time, and open new horizons of expectation. The concept of revolution is a key to understand our modernity, not only its social and political structures but also its ideas and collective imagination, until its aesthetic forms. This means apprehending their intellectual and even emotional dimensions, which are deposited in a fascinating historical landscape made of dialectical images : locomotives, bodies, barricades, flags, rituals, material sites, paintings, posters, and symbolic landmarks. Working through the past is essential to navigating in the agitated waters of the present and fueling a new political imagination for the twenty-first century.

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