Faculty Seminar: On Political Messianism (reading The Totalitarian Experience, 2011)
Tzvetan Todorov
CNRS (National Center for Scientific Research), Paris
Date:聽October 5, 2011
Tzvetan Todorov and a small group of faculty discussed an excerpt from his book,聽The Totalitarian Experience聽(2011).
Co-sponsored by:聽The Consulate General of France,聽The Clough Center for the Study of Constitutional Democracy,聽The 51茶馆 College of Arts and Sciences,聽The 51茶馆 Department of Romance Languages and Literatures.
About the Book
The fall of the Berlin Wall marked the beginning of the collapse of the Soviet Union, as well as many other communist totalitarian regimes around the world.聽But it would be naive to assume that this historic, symbolic event and its aftermath have completely rid the world of totalitarianism. Instead, we should ask, what is the totalitarian experience and how does it survive today?聽This is the imposing question raised by Tzvetan Todorov in聽The Totalitarian Experience. Here, he recounts his own experiences with totalitarianism in his native Bulgaria and discusses the books he has written in the last twenty years that were devoted to examining such regimes, such as聽Voices from the Gulag, his influential analysis of Stalinist concentration camps.聽Through this retrospective investigation, Todorov offers a historical look at communism. He brings together and distills his extensive oeuvre to reveal the essence of totalitarian ideology, the characteristics of daily life under communism, and the irony of democratic messianism.
About the Author
Tzvetan Todorov聽is a philosopher, theorist, and literary critic. Born in Sofia, Bulgaria, he has lived in France since 1963. Since 1968, he has been a researcher at the National Center for Scientific Research, Paris, where he has been honorary director since 2005. He is author of numerous books, many of which have been translated into English, including聽The Poetics of Prose听(1977),听Introduction to Poetics聽(1981),听The Conquest of America聽(1984),听Mikhail Bakhtin: The Dialogical Principle聽(1984),听Facing the Extreme: Moral Life in the Concentration Camps聽(1996),听On Human Diversity听(1993),听Hope and Memory聽(2003), and聽Imperfect Garden: The Legacy of Humanism聽(2002), and聽The New World Disorder: Reflections of a European聽(2005). His most recent books include:聽The Limits of Art聽(2010) and聽The Totalitarian Experience聽(2011). He is member of many scholarly organizations and recipient of numerous prizes, including the Prix Jean-Jacques Rousseau (1991), the Spinoza (2004), and the Prince of Asturias (2008).
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RELATED BOOKS BY TZVETAN TODOROV
, Princeton, Princeton University Press, 2003.聽Identifying totalitarianism as the major innovation of the twentieth century, Tzvetan Todorov examines the struggle between this system and democracy and its effects on human life and consciousness.
, Chicago, Chicago University Press, 2010.Todorov offers a reasoned and often highly personal analysis of the tension between Western democracies and Islam. His analysis is rooted in Enlightenment values and yet open to the claims of cultural difference.