The essay builds upon the conceptual paradoxes of the process of sympathy/empathy as a historical method in its own right, pointing to its theoretical inadequacy as a cognitive tool as well as to its ideological complicity with a dominant view of history that throughout the major line of romantic historicism (say Herder, through Ranke and Carlyle, to Bancroft and Dilthey) presented itself, essentially and inevitably, as a history of the victors. Starting from these premises, the essay steps beyond or outside that line, invoking the inclusiveness of Benjamin’s critique of “the method of Einfühlung” or “identification affective” to reassess the merits as well as the limitations of those romantic counter-traditions that may be said to have tried to re-write and use history “to take possession,” in Benjamin’s terms again, “of the tradition of the oppressed”
Sympathy, Antipathy, and the History of the Vanquished
NORI, Giuseppe
2007-01-01
Abstract
The essay builds upon the conceptual paradoxes of the process of sympathy/empathy as a historical method in its own right, pointing to its theoretical inadequacy as a cognitive tool as well as to its ideological complicity with a dominant view of history that throughout the major line of romantic historicism (say Herder, through Ranke and Carlyle, to Bancroft and Dilthey) presented itself, essentially and inevitably, as a history of the victors. Starting from these premises, the essay steps beyond or outside that line, invoking the inclusiveness of Benjamin’s critique of “the method of Einfühlung” or “identification affective” to reassess the merits as well as the limitations of those romantic counter-traditions that may be said to have tried to re-write and use history “to take possession,” in Benjamin’s terms again, “of the tradition of the oppressed”I documenti in IRIS sono protetti da copyright e tutti i diritti sono riservati, salvo diversa indicazione.
