Sublime Historical Experience (Cultural Memory in the Present)

Ankersmit, F.R.

ISBN 10: 0804749361 / ISBN 13: 9780804749367

Published by Stanford University Press, 2005

About this Item

This is a very good clean copy with no inscriptions. It will be posted from the UK within 24 hours in a padded envelope by a family run bookstore. Please let me know if you require photos of the actual book and I will send them through to you.

Seller Inventory # 2mar25/10

Bibliographic Details

• Title: Sublime Historical Experience (Cultural Memory in the Present)
• Publisher: Stanford University Press
• Publication Date: 2005
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 0804749361
• ISBN 13: 9780804749367
• Binding: Soft cover
• Condition: Used: Very Good

About this title

Synopsis

Why are we interested in history at all? Why do we feel the need to distinguish between past and present? In this book, the author argues that the past originates from an experience of rupture separating past and present. Think of the radical rupture with Europe's past that was effected by the French and the Industrial Revolutions. Sublime Historical Experience investigates how the notion of sublime historical experience complicates and challenges existing conceptions of language, truth, and knowledge. These experiences of rupture are paradoxical since they involve both the separation of past and present and, at the same time, the effort to overcome this separation in terms of historical knowledge. The experience unites feelings of loss/pain with those of love/satisfaction, and thus is in agreement with how sublime experience is ordinarily defined. The experience is also precognitive since it precedes (the possibility of) historical knowledge. As such it is a challenge to traditional conceptions of the relationship between experience and truth or language. It compels us to disconnect the notions of experience and truth.

About the Author

Frank Ankersmit is Professor of History at the University of Groningen. Stanford University Press has published three of his previous books: Aesthetic Politics (1996), Historical Representation (2002), and Political Representation (2002).