Victoria Fareld
Biography
B. 1973. PhD, History of Ideas, University of Gothenburg 2007, with Att vara utom sig inom sig: Charles Taylor, erkännandet och Hegels aktualitet awarded with The Nordström- Lindroth Award for 2007. STINT Scholar at The Department of Political Science, The New School for Social Research, New York City in 2005-2006, Visiting Scholar at The Institut für Philosophie, Potsdam Universität and at Sophiapol, Université de Paris-X Nanterre in 2008. Currently employed as researcher at the Department of Literature, History of Ideas and Religion, University of Gothenburg. Co-director of Studies at the Centre for European Studies at Gothenburg University.
Ongoing research
Within the program Fareld contributes with two studies to Section II. The first is devoted to the problem “Forgiveness, Future and Past: History as Collective Self Inquiry in Arendt, Jankélévitch and Améry”, a study which has already received funding from RJ for the period 2009-11. The aim of this project is to discuss forgiveness and memory in relation to conceptions of guilt and responsibility in Western Europe since the post-war period, focusing on the writings of the above-mentioned authors. At the centre of attention is their understanding of the ethical relation between past, present and future, and the role they ascribe to history in the light of this relation. By reading their texts against the two current notions historical consciousness and uses of history, the analysis will contribute to a contemporary discussion about how history is used as a common space to express the failures of one’s own society. In a subsequent period (2012-14), this project will be further developed through a study of the public debates around memorials in Germany and France since the post-war period. In recent years the role of monuments in Europe has become a subject of debate and scholarly research. In contrast to the affirmative role of the monument in the 19th century, many monuments in Europe during the last decades manifest failures and regrets of Western civilization, notably the Shoah. In studying the debates around memorials, the focus is on how historical experiences are narrated and used in contemporary memory culture, as memorials reflect society not only through representing the past but also, and primarily, by manifesting society’s ongoing relation to this past.
Selected bibliography
– ”Minneskulturens former: inverterad monumentalhistoria” [The Forms of Memory Culture: Monumental History Inverted], Reflektionens gestalt (red. Kristina Fjelkestam), Södertörn Studies in Practical Knowledge 3, 2009
– Att vara utom sig inom sig: Charles Taylor, erkännandet och Hegels aktualitet [Being without Oneself within Oneself: Charles Taylor, Recognition, and Hegel’s Actuality], Glänta 2008
– ”Charles Taylor’s Identity Holism: Romantic Expressivism as Epigenetic Self-Realization”, Telos: A Journal of Radical Philosophy, No. 141 2007
– ”Contexts in Flux: The Constructive Practice of Backward Reading”, Ideas in History: The Nordic Society for the History of Ideas, Vol. 2 No. 3 2007
– “Wilhelm von Humboldts frihet som epigenetisk bildning” [“Wilhelm von Humboldt’s Idea of Freedom as Epigenetic Self-Cultivation”], Lychnos: Årsbok för idé- och lärdomshistoria 2006 [Annual of the Swedish History of Science Society], Lärdomshistoriska samfundet, 2006