Neuer Forschungsschwerpunkt: Democratic Vistas - Reflections on the Atlantic World
»Today, ahead, though dimly yet, we see, in vistas, a copious, sane, gigantic offspring,« the poet and journalist Walt Whitman wrote in the opening paragraph of his 1871 essay Democratic Vistas. Democracy, Whitman contended, denoted a political and social order oriented to the future. It was an orientation that befitted the United States of America, a country without much of a past. What little of a past it did have was stained by slavery and four years of staggering bloodshed among its citizens. And yet, Whitman insisted, though discernible only dimly, American democracy promised to bring forth »gigantic offspring.« That promise, however, came at the price of peril: »The United States are destined either to surmount the gorgeous history of Feudalism, or else prove the most tremendous failure of time.« The nature of democracy, Whitman recognized, lies in its contingency. Democracies have no foundation but their own poetic self-making. They exist in a radically open future. Democracy is an experiment in the pursuit of freedom, equality, and happiness. Yet experiments, by necessity, can go wrong. The specter of tyranny is, and must remain, the underside of making and remaking the collective self." (the whole text see here)
Please find more information (in English) about the research focus »Democratic Vistas: Reflections on the Atlantic World« here.
Find the press release here.
Online-Podiumsdiskussion | Opening of the new research focus »Democratic Vistas«
Donnerstag, 18.02.2021
17:00 Uhr (Central European Time), Zoom meeting
Forschungskolleg Humanwissenschaften, Bad Homburg, und Institut für die Wissenschaften vom Menschen, Wien
Online-Podiumsdiskussion | Opening of the new research focus »Democratic Vistas«
Masha Gessen (New York), Shalini Randeria (Wien), Sławomir Sierakowski (Warschau), Johannes Völz (Frankfurt a. M.)
»Democratic Vistas, Autocratic Specters: Must We Reinvent Democracy?«
For details see our flyer (PDF)
Participation
Please register by email at anmeldung@forschungskolleg-humanwissenschaften.de. We will send you the Zoom link a couple of days before the event.
Contact
Iris Helene Koban, managing director of the Forschungskolleg Humanwissenschaften (i.koban@forschungskolleg-humanwissenschaften.de)