Application Required. To apply for this seminar, please email Sarah Monks, sm3373@columbia.edu, with your degree program, area of interest, and list any previous courses you’ve taken with Professor Balibar. Be sure to indicate if you want to be registered for a letter grade or as an R-credit.
In the anniversary year of what was called once “The Great October Revolution”, the class will undertake a genealogy and semantic examination of this central category of modern philosophical thought. The general title is borrowed from a collection of essays by Reinhard Koselleck, “Futures Past: on the Semantic of Historical Time”, originally published (in German) in 1979, that includes a seminal essay on the word “revolution” (written in 1968). In the class I will confront the question of typical narratives of revolutionary moments in history (and history itself as a succession of such moments), and the question of antithetic concepts of revolution as social, political, cultural and technological phenomenon (particularly insisting on the competing schemes of transformation and antagonism). Rather than discussing the issue in a deductive manner, the class will be based on accurate readings of classical or more recent texts, which highlight some of the central themes and recurrent dilemmas. It will prepare for a discussion on the possibility of a “revolution in the imaginary of the revolution”.
