Memory and hope in post-historical politics

FRANCISCO NAISHTAT

Ghent

Congreso; Eighth European Social Science History Conference; 2010

University of Ghent

ABSTRACT We have become so used to the fragmentary and micro-political perspective expressed by the human sciences during the last twenty years, particularly following what Lyotard referred to as the end of Metanarratives like Worldhistory Weltgeschichte, that we manifest reluctance to play the language-game of hope within a macro-political frame, or within an historical horizon, which tends to be replaced by the conflict of memories. This is also true of the very language of politicians, which has become more and more ethnocentric over the last two decades, ignoring more and more the injustices of the dominant world order, and which completely privileges a more “micro-realistic” vocabulary, referring to the concrete interests, management and governance of particular countries, communities and regional geo-political blocks (whether rich like the European Union or the North America Free Trade Agreement –NAFTA, or poorer, like MERCOSUR). And when it comes to protesters, it is more and more difficult to mobilize the public about global issues because there is a feeling that concrete and direct intervention can only be limited to local issues. So the idea of justice and hope as referring to the whole world, to the whole humanity (a term which is nowadays being replaced by the word “humanitarian”, with a completely different meaning and scope, as charity, compassion or assistantship), seems more and more like an anachronism from the last century. I deal with this issue in relation with the crisis of the political identities of the political left at a global scale. The question I address is the relation between what seems to be a new regime d’historicité (Hartog) named “présentisme” and the historical roots of the political left.