The Ethos of History

At a time when rapidly evolving technologies, political turmoil, and the tensions inherent in multiculturalism and globalization are reshaping historical consciousness, what is the proper role for historians and their work? By way of an answer, the contributors to this volume offer up an illuminating collective meditation on the idea of ethos and its relevance for historical practice. These intellectually adventurous essays demonstrate how ethos—a term evoking a society’s “fundamental character” as well as an ethical appeal to knowledge and commitment—can serve as a conceptual lodestar for history today, not only as a narrative, but as a form of consciousness and an ethical-political orientation.

At a time when rapidly evolving technologies, political turmoil, and the tensions inherent in multiculturalism and globalization are reshaping historical consciousness, what is the proper role for historians and their work? By way of an answer, the contributors to this volume offer up an illuminating collective meditation on the idea of ethos and its relevance for historical practice. These intellectually adventurous essays demonstrate how ethos—a term evoking a society’s “fundamental character” as well as an ethical appeal to knowledge and commitment—can serve as a conceptual lodestar for history today, not only as a narrative, but as a form of consciousness and an ethical-political orientation.

Acknowledgements

Introduction: The Ethos of History
Stefan Helgesson and Jayne Svenungsson

Chapter 1. Towards a New Ethos of History
Aleida Assmann

Chapter 2. The Vampire, the Undead and the Anxieties of Historical Consciousness
Claudia Lindén and Hans Ruin

Chapter 3. History, Justice and the Time of the Imprescriptible
Victoria Fareld

Chapter 4. Narrating Pasts for Peace? A Critical Analysis of Some Recent Initiatives of Historical Reconciliation through ‘Historical Dialogue’ and ‘Shared History’
Berber Bevernage

Chapter 5. Psychoanalysis and the Indeterminacy of History
Joan W. Scott

Chapter 6. Does Time Have a Gender? Queer Temporality, Anachronism, and the Desire for the Past
Kristina Fjelkestam

Chapter 7. ‘The One Who Should Die Is the One Who Shall Live’: Prophetic Temporalities in Contemporary Colonial Brazil
Patricia Lorenzoni

Chapter 8. Radical Time in (Post)Colonial Narratives
Stefan Helgesson

Chapter 9. Engaged History
Marcia Sá Cavalcante Schuback

Chapter 10. Speakers for the Dead: Digital Memory and the Construction of Identity
Alana M. Vincent

Chapter 11. History Begins in the Future: On Historical Sensibility in the Age of Technology
Zoltán Boldizsár Simon

Afterword
Hans Ruin

Index