Thought and Civilization in Contemporary World  (20171)

Degree/study:Degree in Humanities
Year: 4th.
Term:1st
Number of ECTS credits: 4 credits
Hours of studi dedication: 100 hours
Teaching language or languages: catalan or by students request (Erasmus, etc) spanish
Teaching Staff:  Jordi Ibáñez  (group 1) / S. Barreiro (group 2)

1. Presentation of the subject

This course is devoted to case studies and general issues of culture, the history of ideas and thought in the twentieth century, emphasizing the great debates that define contemporary culture, the characteristics of today and the genealogies of present throughout of the century.

2. Competences to be attained

Transferable skills

Specific competences

1. Capacity for analysis and critical reflection on the contemporary world. 2. Ability to express their own ideas and articulating complex thoughts. 3. Independent learning and independent research. 4. Motivation and self-demands at work. 5.Intellectual independence and theoretical imagination.

1. Adequate knowledge of philosophical literature and current legal theory and the idea of ​​justice and its links with general questions of the humanities, contemporary culture and its impact on politics and morality of the world. 2. Select and view specific bibliography of the philosophical tradition, legal and social theory. 3. Ability to understand and comment on a philosophical or a legal text among others. 4. Accuracy and proper use of technical and philosophical terms. 5. Ability to relate the thought of an author with their backgrounds and followers or adversaries or later trends.

3. Contents

 

The memories of amnesia: history, temporality, monuments, moralities and identities in the twentieth century.

The course offers an introduction to the tag memory and a visit through memory institutions of the twentieth century. These institutions will be understood in a broad sense: as texts, laws, protest movements, ideological figures, forms of morality, theoretical attitudes, mnemonic objects and spaces, and so on. That is, as everything that is instituted, both give a physically and conceptually point of view, to emphasize the mnemonic dimension of the story and, above all, morality of mourning and memory. These institutions have to be understood, especially from the late sixties of the twentieth century as a way to vindicate the testimony of victims of a century not only fierce, but also aware of the tension between its new destructive and the critical awareness and informative power that politics, technological advances and the knowledge spreading have favored. These institutions also are political tools to create collective identities and control the representations of the more relevant historical facts, not only to give voice to victims and to review from morality or justice of the past. Philosophy, history, politics, art and urban planning (or thought about cities) are discursive fields concerned for the issue of memory. But so are anthropology, sociology, or more broadly social theory, its ethical implications (is there a moral imperative to remember?), The difference with the historiography, the politics of memory, the question of the monuments the possibility of a collective memory really spontaneous and civil laws on memory, memory-related issues for the victims of war, dictatorship or genocide, transitional justice processes and institutional forms of memory or public policy of memory.

 

We review authors, sociologists, philosophers and historians among others who wrote and thought about the question of memory, history and ethics of remembrance. From Nietzsche, Walter Benjamin Maurice Halbwachs or even Tzvetan Todorov, Paul Ricoeur or Reyes Mate or writings by historians reflecting on the issue as Jacques Le Goff, Pierre Nora, Julia and Tony Judt Santos. We will also work and study in seminars specific cases of representation and controversy surrounding the memory.

Units:
1. General Introduction to the course.
2. The idea of collective memory made by Maurice Halbwachs.
Reading around Quadres sociaux de la mémoire (1925)
3. Theses on the Philosophy of History Benjamin (1940).
4. Memory and amnesia after 1945.
5. Reading of Natural History Sebald destruction.
6. The question of anamnetic imperative. Reading Adorno.
7. The first wave anamnestic: 1962-1979.
8. The issue of memory in Spain 1936-2007.
9. The problem of the monuments.
10. Theoretical and political openings.

 

*The full version with the sections: 4. Assessment, 5. Bibliography and teaching resources, 6. Methodology, and 7. Planning of activities is available in the original version.

 

4. Assessment

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5. Bibliography and teaching resources

5.1. Basic bibliography

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5.2. Complementary bibliography

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5.3. Teaching resources

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6. Metodology

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7. Planning of activities

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